ACHOO! I Love You!

BD is plowing snow with "Rick's Jeep," our 1972 Toyota Landcruiser fixed with a blade.  I finished baking a couple of things for this evening's posole party, a very small event organized so that my administrator friend can come and chill out following a hairy budget meeting that is going on right now at the college.  Ugh.  We still should shovel snow from the shed roofs so that an unpleasant incident won't occur that would result in flattening all the equipment, bikes, etc. squirreled inside the old wooden structures.  I was up there the other day when BD was teaching and realized that if I fell (highly likely, considering the giant boots sliding like bear paws) I had no cell phone on my person to call the medics.  Hmn.  So instead of climbing up there now I should just clean a pit of a house if the guests are going to have a place to sit down. My mom was supposed to go on a little tour of New York City this week, but it was cancelled due to snow.  Bummer, because she would have definitely bought me something good.  LBSF is a pretty impressive woman, and not just because she's my mother (and not just because she's one of 3 people reading this blog...).  We'll get to her life story later when I track down some photos.  In the meantime, just know that she's one of those people who you know loves you although she doesn't say it every five seconds.  This topic--saying "I love you," or "love you," Turrette's fashion when closing every single conversation--came up in yesterday's history of anthropology class discussion as we mused over what a Durkheimeo-Maussian "social fact" might be.  One student suggested that saying "bless you" after someone sneezes is not just a Tylorian "survival" but an actual superorganic social fact that is somehow connected to the idea of "the gift."  I said I didn't know about that, but that it reminded me of how saying "I love you" has been expanded (and reduced) to a sort of a "gesundheit" that one is increasingly expected to utter before hanging up.  Wonder what the girls think about this...we'll find out this afternoon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8hk9pUtVwA