Day Off Follies

[leahbobet]

Yesterday involved one (1) semantics assignment, one (1) book history midterm, and one (1) paper on the main methods used by the English language to enlarge the lexicon in 1982 due, all in a row. This weekend was a mite stressful. Today has officially been a day off.

You can tell it was a day off because I voted in the provincial election, but I did it in my jammies*. :p

*pours the booze and prepares for the 9pm vote-count drinking game*

*You can do this when the polling station's just downstairs in your lobby. It made me feel like awesome.

Comments

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

That would be awesome.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

They bring the polling station to you? This is how democracy should work all over, damn it!

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

They set them up at various places in the riding and when you get your little card in the mail, it tells you which one to go to. For the past two elections (this one and the last municipal) it's been in the lobby of my building. Before that it was across the street in a common room sort of thing there, and occasionally at the community centre out back behind me.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Also, I love the fact that you still have ridings. All ours - even the great Ridings of Yorkshire, for cryin' out loud! - have been abolished.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Aww. And I'd just found out the etymology of 'riding' this week too.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

From 'thriding', meaning a third, I think? There were certainly three Yorkshire Ridings. Not sure how that translates to Canadian constituencies...?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yup. And they were called the North Thriding, etc. And if you say that together it's easy to drop the 'th' on the beginning, misanalyzing it as part of North or South. Hence the riding.

I guess the structure -- and the words for it -- got brought over early by people familiar with it from Yorkshire.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup. And they were called the North Thriding, etc. And if you say that together it's easy to drop the 'th' on the beginning, misanalyzing it as part of North or South. Hence the riding.

Hee. You know, that had never occurred to me? Love it...

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

It showed up in my Modern English in the World lecture last week, predictably because we had the election yesterday. I retained that one probably because it's such an obscure etymology. I mean, not at all what you'd expect just confronted with the end product.