Arcane abbreviations, books, and Xanderbug. In that order.

Today I've been "chasing footnotes" so that I can write a paper and finish up my very last incomplete.  I love doing that... I feel like a super-sleuth.  Today's joy:  Seeing the reference "Yad Hil. Ishut 13.5" everywhere.  I had no clue what it meant.  My best guess was on the last word, with "I" meaning and, and "Shut" meaning Shealot v'tshuvot, literally "questions and answers," probably responsa from the Middle Ages.  But after some serious searching, I found out that Maimonides' 1170-1180 law code Mishneh Torah is subtitled "Sefer Yad HaHazakah," "Book of the Strong Hand."  And "Hilchut Ishut" is a section of it!  I still didn't know why the book was subtitled that until I talked to the head of library, who knows all things Jewishly esoteric.  He told me that Yud Dalet, the letters that make up the word "Yad," stands for the number 14 in gematriya, Jewish numerology.  And of course... the Mishneh Torah has 14 sections.

In terms of fun reading, I finally finished all five books in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.  It took me a while since each book was over a thousand pages.  For spoilers' sake I won't say anything except that it was an excellent fantasy series, and well worth reading if you like that genre.  After such immersion in a magical world I needed a dose of reality, so along came Stephen Bloom's Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America, all about the Hasidic Jews who founded the AgriProcessors kosher-meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa.  It felt more memoir than journalism, and was nice to read, but didn't leave me with much lasting impact.  I'm now currently on Catherine Hezser's The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine, which is admittedly slow academic reading but which I find really fascinating.  I've already talked to my thesis advisor about possibly including some of the articles in his syllabus the next time he teaches the World of the Rabbis class.

And lastly, something cute:

This morning Xander was screwing up his face and making ppbbthhht noises.  

"What are doing?"  I asked.  

"I have a hair on my tongue," he told me.  He stuck out his tongue as far as it would go and tried to scrape off the hair with his fingers. 

A minute or so later he took his fingers out of his mouth and resumed playing.

"Did you get it?" I asked.  

His reply was perfectly timed, so matter-of-fact: "No.  I ate it!"