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[kittydesade]

Ba is used in the past tense instead of is. It causes lenition.
Present: Is muinteoir é. He is a teacher.
Past: Ba mhúinteoir é. He was a teacher.
Present: Is Meirieánach é a hathair. Her father is American.
Past: Ba Mheiriceánach é a hathair. Her father was American.

Ba becomes b' before a vowel. Remember that f is made silent by lenition. As the fh is not pronounced the word is treated as beginning with the following vowel.

B'Éireannach é. He was Irish.
B'fheirmeoir mór é. He was a big (i.e. prosperous) farmer.

When placed before an adjective ba is more likely to mean 'would'. Compare:

Is maith liom cupán tae ar maidin. I like a cup of tea in the morning.
Ba mhaith liom cupán tae anois. I would like a cup of tea now.
Ba bhreá liom bualadh leo. I'd love to meet them.

There are two ways of saying any. One is to put aon, literally one, before the word. The other is to put ar bith after it. e.g.
Ní fhaca mé aon duine. I didn't see anybody (lit. one person).
Ní fhaca mé duine ar bith. I didn't see any person.
Níor cheannaigh mé aon rud. I didn't buy one thing.
Níor cheannaigh mé rud ar bith. I didn't buy anything.


Bleargh. It's Friday! Yay! I have birthday monies from my Mom! YAY! We have a mail order sale coming! .... Yay? I mean, I can see the logic, we're not pulling in the mail order business to which we would like to become accustomed. Or even much at all. But mail order sales also tend to mean nothing but work gets done at work, which means I'd better bust my butt and make progress on some of the things I'm working on so I don't have to work at that point. And batch cook, just in case. I have no idea if the slump is due to the economy, at which point there's not much we can do about it, or other things we can do something about. Or something.

Apparently the secret to making fruit-flavored water is to put maybe a teaspoon of whatever fruit juice you want in a quart or so of water and shake it up real good. Because there was probably a teaspoon of fruit juice left in this bottle when the boy filled it with water and it still tastes like fruit. Unfortunately I'm one of those rare people who prefers water, and hates all this flavored water bullcrap. Maybe if I rinse it out a few more times it'll taste like normal water.

I also kind of need to check in. Maybe this afternoon. And there's two blog posts I need to do today so, mm. I guess today's intent is to draft Gods and Monsters as quickly as possible, do those two blog posts, and then this weekend I'll have for White Lightning, Sandborn, and Black Ice. As well as cleaning things and weeding things and gardening and tidying and so on.

It's Friday. Again. It's also my birthday on Sunday. Again. Time keeps crawling on and I never know where the hell it's all gone. On the other hand, I can't exactly say I don't enjoy the time I've had, or regret the things I've done? I'm enjoying myself. So I guess I can't really feel that bad about time passing. It's been well spent.