On Saturday and Sunday I...
Sep. 8th, 2003 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quislibet...read me [*] some articles, failed to see either of two former Boston-area people who were in town for the weekend, mowed the lawn, DMed an almost combat-free session of AD&D, failed to go to a burlesque show, and, finally, read more articles, until they began to fall from my sleep-loosened hands.
Meanwhile, J., in between pursuing her own studies or seeking adventure by means of a halfling cleric, made 21 jars' worth of two different kinds of pear jam, as the damn things (the pears, I mean, not the jars) keep falling from the tree in the backyard in large numbers and need eaten [**].
---
[*] Effectively a middle voice, expressed here with the first-person pronoun as reflexive indirect object (a sort of dative of advantage), or something.
[**] This usage of "need" plus the passive participle, without "to be" (one would expect in standard English "need to be eaten"), is not uncommon in parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania, but will certainly provoke mockery from, e.g., girlfriends raised in New Hampshire (as will pronouncing "spinach" as "spinage"). Such a construction may originate from Scottish usage (and indeed, a quick search on google for "needs eaten" yields at least one Scottish arse with just such a need, although I have, regretfully, declined to pay the 15-dollar website membership fee necessary to pursue this avenue of linguistic research).
Meanwhile, J., in between pursuing her own studies or seeking adventure by means of a halfling cleric, made 21 jars' worth of two different kinds of pear jam, as the damn things (the pears, I mean, not the jars) keep falling from the tree in the backyard in large numbers and need eaten [**].
---
[*] Effectively a middle voice, expressed here with the first-person pronoun as reflexive indirect object (a sort of dative of advantage), or something.
[**] This usage of "need" plus the passive participle, without "to be" (one would expect in standard English "need to be eaten"), is not uncommon in parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania, but will certainly provoke mockery from, e.g., girlfriends raised in New Hampshire (as will pronouncing "spinach" as "spinage"). Such a construction may originate from Scottish usage (and indeed, a quick search on google for "needs eaten" yields at least one Scottish arse with just such a need, although I have, regretfully, declined to pay the 15-dollar website membership fee necessary to pursue this avenue of linguistic research).
