I'm only in it for the sample sentences

Dear Internet,

It's damp and gloomy around Constitution City these days. Plus I am vaguely ill, as per usual. I'm spending the afternoon at my favorite friendly neighborhood coffee shop, "doing homework" and "being productive".

One of the things that I especially like, in a linguistics article, is when there is a whole list of sentences that is supposed to illustrate some important linguistic point. And I almost always think the lists of sentences are extremely entertaining, especially taken as a group.

For instance, from the article I am ostensibly reading right this second:

3.19
a. Your attitude upsets/is upsetting me.
a'. Your boorish behavior upsets/is upsetting me.
b. Your clothes nauseate/are nauseating me.
b'. The smell of your clothes nauseates/is nauseating me.

Whoever wrote these examples needs to get some new friends I think.

Then, after I am done reading this article and doing my homework, I have many, many things to do this weekend.

First is a fancy reception for the NSF project I'm working with. For the occasion, I am wearing brand new, very attractive, red shoes. I should update my profile; now I have THREE pairs. The new ones look like this:



The problem with me buying fancy new shoes and wearing them to grownup events is that I inevitably just show everyone my new shoes and force them to have long conversations with me about how great my new shoes are. Rather than discussing collaborative research efforts and visual language processing and other important things that I am supposed to be talking about. Oh well.

Second is a birthday party for Julie. Happy birthday Julie! This party is the social event of the season, it seems- Julie is so popular that everyone and their brother in law is flying in from out of town for the occasion. So that should be very fun and socially rewarding. I'll probably talk about my shoes a lot there too, unless I change into less fancy garb for the night.

Third (I'm not counting things I always do like sleep and drink coffee) is, my favorite friend Keith is in town from New Orleans where he is a Professor Of Economics, so he and his lovely lady friend and I are going to eat breakfast together. Breakfast! at 10 in the morning! On Saturday! I am so industrious these days, getting out of bed before noon and everything!

Fourth is more homework. A lot of it. And a lot of laundry. My bedroom had been looking substantially improved since the last time we talked about it, but this past week was a killer and we're back to not being able to see any square inches of floor, these days.

Fifth! Sixth! and Seventh! I'm supposed to go to THREE parties tomorrow night. I'm going to have to do some social-life triage, I think, because I usually start falling asleep on my way from the first thing I try to do to the second. If I try to do more than one thing. On an evening.

You know.

Then more things, but I am bored of thinking about it all right now. It sounds so exhausting. I'll have to coax myself gently from one event to the next by telling myself lots of encouraging remarks about the availability of various beverages and how much I like talking about my new shoes to people.

Meanwhile, here's what's been going on in my article: Leon is a fool, the window is shattered, the children cried, John ate fish, the balloon popped, the sky reddened, and Mary learned French.