Palfrey's life

I appear to have managed to survive my birthday. This is something that was a slight harder than may appear at first sight. Things started (as planned) with some drinkies in the Richmond Springs. Me and rob_is_raze managed to sit there for about half-an-hour or so before others started to appear. This gave enough time to acquire a decent table, and to evaluate the cider menu. They had 5, not 6, one of the 5 was off and another was cloudy (not my favourite type of cider in general), so I started some work on the remaining 3. We were joined in due time by Dan, by Ian (him of my really awful "cyclops" joke for those counting) and by samj (who had to rapidly depart to help the ill omylouse), and then by rattieally and chocojon. Much fun and cider was had. At some later point in the evening, myself, Dan, Ian and rob_is_raze decided to wander onwards, and ended up in what was "Le Chateau" (can't remember the new name, but looks pretty much indentical inside). At some point in the midst of all of this, I became somewhat the worse for wear, and proceeded to have a series of conversations with a certain porcelain receptacle of note. Due to a) some remarkably cool barstaff whom I owe much gratitude to and b) my suddenly manifesting ability to be "the world's most polite drunk" in the words of Mr. White. This appears to consist of remembering the words "excuse me" while ones stomach wishes to make a rapid exit. Anyways. Some time and iced water later, we decided to brave the outdoors. After a brief stop to allow others to grab various fast food things, me and rob_is_raze completed this nostalgia-filled celebration with wandering back past MVB, and various other important landmarks of note to my Bristol years on our way back.

Headed back on coach+tube to parents, had birthday meal up the local greek restaurant (which we've been to lots of time, but not recently), and then went home to watch the "Jerry Springer: The Musical" TV things. Anything that's gotten 15,000 complaints *before it's even shown* can't be that bad but given as I've only ever seen a handful of fragments of the show, and didn't watch the "everything you need to know about Jerry Springer" show beforehand, there were some significant bits that confused me a lot. There was a number of very good bits - the second act was certainly a lot stronger than the first one IMHO - but there was a lot of stuff that made no sense at all (I don't have any ideas about what legal things are heading towards Jerry for example).

Heading back to Delft, I had my best ever airport check-in experience ever. BMI have introduced this quick check-in system so you can self check-in using your credit/debit card if you paid for the flight with it. Then all I had to do was to bypass the main check-in queue and go straight to the rapid bag check-in line (with no-one else in front of me). Doddle. Then we have barely any customs/screening stuff, and before I know it I'm on the plane. Ok, it got delayed 20 minutes at the UK end, and had to take 15 minutes to taxi at Schiphol because they landed *6 kilometres* from the terminal, but hey, you can't have everything. And now I'm back in Delft, and my ordered copy of Blue Gender has finally arrived. <burns style laugh+hands rubbing>Excellent...

(Oh, and if anyone can remember where the creator for the icon I'm using is, I'd love to know because my hair is now short)

I have a question for anyone more linguistically minded that's been kicking around my head for a while. This is regards Sapir-Whorf, and got triggered by the conversation with a linguist a couple of weeks ago (hey, she was cute...). Anyways, here's the question: I'm confused about what Sapir-Whorf is meant to be. The version I was arguing about on Boxing Day involved the idea that if you don't have a word for something, then you can't express the concept. Where as the Wikipedia entry and my own random memories seems to think that it's more about your language shaping how you categorise the world, and influencing your thought patterns in that way instead.

So, anyone here know any better? Anyone actually read any of the darn papers on this sort of thing?