zomg socialization!

For the first time in OVER A YEAR, we went down to Austin on Saturday to celebrate a friend's birthday. Met up with a group at a restaurant (a Brazilian steakhouse) and sat and ate and talked for two hours. Afterward, checked in to our hotel, collapsed with exhaustion from socializing and spent a blissful afternoon napping and not doing anything and, more to the point not feeling guilty about not doing anything because we were in a hotel! We couldn't!*

I also, again, mused on how "luxury hotel," which this place claimed to be, has been degraded to mostly mean "a step up from Motel 6," and not actual luxury. (I was not expecting luxury, of course, as the price we paid was a normal not-Motel-6 price.)

Our evening's entertainment consisted of poking at Google Maps until we found a kebab shop within walking distance--the hotel was in a great location for walking to some decent restaurants--then heading to Barnes & Noble to browse in a physical bookstore for the first time in OVER A YEAR, then walking to Amy's Ice Cream where we sat on a bench outside and ate ice cream, because it was one of the two weeks of the year in Texas when the weather isn't too hot, too cold, too rainy**, to too-mosquito-filled to do so.

And then the next morning we checked out--via app, which was a new experience--and met up with a friend at a breakfast/brunch place to have a leisurely meal before heading back home.

Overall, a good weekend, and we now have to hole up like hermits for six months to recharge from ACTUAL PEOPLE.



*It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to book a hotel locally for a day or two every so often, just to actually get away.
**It would have been too rainy two days before and too rainy the day after, I think. Texas has been having its usual storm-clear-storm-clear spring weather.

Language details

As part of poking at Italian Renaissance-ish history for Deadwater and Deadfall I have discovered a (very small) world of Italian luxury real estate YouTube channels who, thanks to the pandemic, have started making virtual showing videos of the various villas, palazzos, and castles they're trying to sell. This is one of them which I gather is a family-run business who have put their youngest, best-looking, English-speaking member up as host. He's got that sort of stilted real estate agent delivery down (the couple of times he's spoken Italian I can still recognize the delivery), flavored with not working in his primary language. (Which, I hasten to admit, is far above my level in any other language!)

But one repeat phrase stands out to me, since it doesn't quite work and is a signal that the writer (not sure who) isn't working in their original language. "There is so much light." He points out the light in every room that isn't a dark dungeon with that phrase, and I believe that they're translating an Italian phrase--possibly 'tanta luce' or 'molto luce' but I don't know enough Italian to really guess--as "so much light" without getting the nuance that in that phrasing you're usually waiting for an implied "that": "There is so much light (that) you can read without turning a lamp on." And while you can say "There is so much light." and be understood, normally the delivery would be "There is so much light!" or "There is so much light!" The way he's delivering it, it would be better as "There's a lot of light," or with a teeny bit more elaboration, "The windows let in a lot of light."

Anyway, not an earth-shattering observation, just one I realized now and wanted to tell someone.