Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Pumpkin Chunkin'

I might have misled you all a little bit last week. See, while that pumpkin terrified the living hell out of the four-year-old version of me, thus removing the pall over my eyes and allowing me to see pumpkins as demonic, orange globes that they truly are, this time of year isn't hell for me. Mostly because I don't live in a pumpkin patch. If I did, however, I think I'd probably be a touch more anti-pumpkin than I already am. At this point, I don't fear the pumpkins so much as I did when I was younger; I'm bigger than they are (mostly). The thing I dislike most about pumpkins? Scooping their innards out while carving them. But, I do it, because of paternal mandates and parental instinct to make happy holiday memories.

Plus, pumpkins make an excellent pie. And cookies. And, I'm not opposed to a little pumpkin-pie-flavored creamer for in my coffee. And, as Tennyson ee Hemingway pointed out a couple of weeks ago, they make excellent soup. Thanks for the sharp reminder, my antipodean friend.

They also make excellent projectiles.

As Del-V mentioned last week, there's an annual event in the wilds of Delaware centered around throwing, heaving, launching and shooting pumpkins as far as humanly possible. Being that I'm both a man and easily amused, this event really excites me--perhaps the two are intertwined, I dunno, kind of like a caduceus or something similar. I have vowed that, someday, I will attend the Annual Punkin Chunkin event live and in person. I mean, a place like Millsboro, Delaware can't be too tough to find, right?

My attention was brought to the Pumpkin Chunkin contest through a special I saw on Discovery Channel one Christmas. I think it was my first Christmas after moving to North Carolina, and while everyone was getting the midday meal ready, my brother-in-law and I sat and watched this show about how a bunch of people design and build their own machines to hurl pumpkins as far as humanly possible. It involved trebuchets and mangonels and onagers, so you know I was hooked. We actually got yelled at for holding up the meal because we wanted to see if some guy with a massive trebuchet could set a new world record. Since no man stands between my father-in-law and his holiday meals, we had to miss the final throw and eat delicious, homemade food. Oh, the agony.

As an aside...how fucking cool would it be to just own a trebuchet?

Anyway, I thought that, since we've just been through the pumpkin's greatest month when not in pie form, we could step away from blowing them up and just watch them get thrown toward the horizon.

Here's a nice little example of some of the contraptions used to punish our favorite orange gourds. It's taken from the 2004 competition.

I realize that there's nothing, technically, being blown up, but it's still effing cool, right?

Because I like to go that extra effort to try and bring you guys the good stuff, I read through the rules for the competition. Well, I can safely say this isn't some Mickey Mouse Horseshit Dog and Pony Show (as my grandfather used to say). You've got to actually know what the hell you're doing to be out there firing off your trebuchet and hurling your pumpkins into the distance.

Have I mentioned how cool it would be to have your own trebuchet? I have? Okay, then let's move this along.

Anyway, there's seven adult divisions in the Punkin Chunkin contest: air cannons, centrifugal, catapults, trebuchets, human power, human power centrifugal, and torsion catapult. I won't get into the specifics of each kind, but obviously air cannons use compressed air, trebuchets are catapults with huge counterweights on them, and centrifugals are machines that spin, generating enough force and energy to convert the pumpkins into tiny dots and craters.

In case you're wondering, there are also youth divisions for competition, broken into 11-17 year old teams and under-10s. In a word, that's effing awesome.


And, when you're done watching the pumpkins flying off into the wild blue yonder, you can head down the road and drink yourself stupid at the Dogfish Head Brewery and maybe make some girls feel really uncomfortable on the boardwalk at Rehobath Beach. Oh, Delaware, with your teeny, tiny landmass, your fighting blue hens, your three counties, and your abundance of cities that start with the letters "Mil" (Milton, Milford, Millsboro...), who knew that you held so many wondrous and delicious creations?

By the way...Delaware Board of Tourism...I'm totally available to whore myself out for your state. Just say the words and sign the checks. I even promise to talk about something other than your duty-free liquor stores.

Odds and Ends

Try Not to Breathe: Remember that little story I told you last Thursday? You know, the one where I puked almost on a girl I was having a wonderful first date with?

Well, last Thursday night, I re-enacted what happened to my wife. Apparently, everyone who told me that I should have called her back didn't get the full feel for what I had just done to this poor girl.

So, let me re-describe it. Imagine, someone has puckered up and has moved in to kiss you. Your lips touch. Just as they touch, you hear a horrible noise like a backed-up sink gurgling, and then the person whose lips are touching yours has his cheeks inflate like a pufferfish as vomit pours into his mouth. That's what it was like.

My wife screamed. She visibly shuddered. "Oh my God," she said, "that poor girl. No wonder she was so traumatized. That was awful."

And she had this reaction even without me actually puking into my mouth and then bringing it up in a wastebasket.

The One I Love: Everyone who told me that I should have called her back when we got back to school for the spring semester...we can only say what if.

If I had called her back...maybe we would have gone out again. I mean, yeah, she was really nice and seemed to really like me. I mean, she was kissing on me and holding my hand and snuggling up and all, right? Maybe we would have felt a spark, dated for the remainder of her undergraduate career, and then after she graduated, we could have gotten married. I don't know where she went to law school, but maybe it was ND. We could have finished our respective degrees at the same time, and then moved off to some fabulous location.

If that would have happened, maybe we'd have a couple of kids. Maybe I wouldn't have my evenings free. Maybe I wouldn't have started blogging. Maybe you would have no idea who the fuck I was. You'd walk down the street and think "Was that Tom Green? He's put on some weight."

If all of that had happened, I wouldn't have met my wife three months later. I wouldn't have gotten married. I wouldn't have moved to North By God Carolina and I wouldn't have worked for that biotech wherein I started my blogging career. By telling me that I should have called Margaret back up and asked her out again, you would be denying yourselves this little slice o' the internet and all the shit good times we've had together.

If I had done all those things, I wouldn't be married to the woman I am now, with the two wonderful kids that we've had together and the happy, if humble, abode in which we dwell. Besides, if I had called her back and we had dated, fallen in love, and married, I wouldn't get to have the sex with a redhead with fabulously large breasts.

Unless, of course, she dyed her hair and got implants.

Crush with Eyeliner: Possibly the most amusing footnote to that whole story about me nearly puking on Margaret was that, I'm certain, my students would have gotten back to campus and asked her how things went. And, I'm certain, that Margaret told them that I puked and probably the other gory details. So, they would have heard about everything that happened that night.

Despite all this, Sheridan, the girl who lured me into tutoring her and her room mates, wanted to set me up with another one of her room mates. This girl's name was Kristine (if I remember correctly). She was tall, had red hair, and had a decent rack. Problem was, she wore a lot of eyeliner, so I wasn't really all that interested.

In a bit of an ironic twist, the night I met my wife, Kristine was there, too. They were working together on something for a campus charity. Apparently, Kristine was kind of interested in me (despite my pukiness on my date with Margaret), because she recognized me at the event and told her room mates that I was there. Much later, after I had married my wife, she saw me again and reported back to Sheridan et. al. that I was now wearing a ring, and what was up with that?

My question: you know I almost puked in your friend's face and still you wanted to date me? What was up with that?

What if We Give It Away?: My wife has found this site called Zazzle.com, and she fucking loves it.

The Lord of the Rings movies came out while we were still at Notre Dame, and we, of course, went to go and see all three of them in the theatres because we love us some Lord of the Rings. We also both love us some Notre Dame.

What do these two things have in common? Sean Astin. In case you need your memory jogged, Sean Astin was the titular Rudy in the movie of the same name. Naturally, this is a must watch for anyone who went to or is a fan of Notre Dame. In fact, in the old bookstore on campus, Rudy was on a continual 24-hour loop. That's a lot of Sean Astin and the dude who played Roc from the ill-fated Fox show from the early 90s (Charles S. Dutton, in case you care).

Astin, of course, also played Samwise Gamgee, Frodo's love interest friend and moral support as he carried the Ring to the fires of Mount Doom. Whenever the camera focused on Sam, especially during The Fellowship of the Ring and his little soliloquy at the end of The Two Towers, I would giggle and then say to my wife "I want to play football at Notre Dame, Mr. Frodo!"

Well, my wife took this happy little sentence and made herself a button over at Zazzle.com. It is, appropriately, cheesy. It is, also, a must-have for the mixed Notre Dame/LotR fan on your Christmas list.

Let Me In: When I was a freshman in college, I lived alone my first semester. There's a back story there that I don't want to get into (it involved me dressing like a garden gnome because ours was stolen...like I said, I don't want to get into it).

My friend, the Brewing Optometrist, decided to come and visit me once when he was home on break and I was still slogging away doing that learning bullshit. The joy of the Brewing Optometrist was that his dad worked for a beer distributorship, so he brought some booze for us to enjoy while watching Bevis and Butthead. He decided we needed some 40s, and what better drink to enjoy in a 40 ounce bottle than malt liquor?

Really, this story has no point. I just wanted to repost the picture of the OE Girl. If it helps, the Brewing Optometrist brought me a 40 of Olde English 800.

Yeah, that totally justifies it.

Children of the Gods

So, I've told you I've been doing some research for this new story I'm working on. Well, I was looking last night at the main Olympian gods, the twelve that were the major players in the Greek pantheon. Now, I knew that Zeus got around. I mean, Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo and Artemis, Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Perseus, the Fates, the Muses, and Hermes are just a small sampling of Zeus' many offspring.

However, Poseidon was just as willing--and culpable--when it came to littering the Greek countryside with bastards. Some of his more famous offspring were Theseus, Triton, Polyphemus (the cyclops slain by Odysseus), Pegasus, Orion, and Arion, a horse he fathered with Demeter that could talk to humans. No mention of how he came to be in Wilbur's barn.

You know who didn't have a lot of bastards running around doing heroic deeds--or any deeds for that matter? Hades. Poor guy. He loses a bet with his brothers and gets stuck in the underground, where for centuries to come people will associate him with the devil and his kingdom with hell. And then when the poor bastard gets horny, he finds himself a luscious young bride and then gets in trouble for kidnapping her and dragging her down to his realm. Okay, so maybe Demeter's anger was justified, but still. Poor bastard just sits there for all eternity with dead souls wandering around lost and moaning and all that, and he only gets to bang Persephone during the winter months. And then everyone thinks he's a bad guy.

And then, to top it off, as if we haven't kicked him in the godly nuts enough already, Persephone has a couple of kids--with Hades' brother Zeus!

No wonder he liked it so much when Orpheus played his harp for him. And no wonder he was kind of a dick with the whole Eurydice thing. The guy was constantly having his cheerios pissed in. Or, his ambrosia-o's.

Anyway, this past week kind of sucked. Nothing I tried to do in the lab worked, and even when I went looking for a simple reagent yesterday, I couldn't find it. All I was looking for was a bottle of aniline, and no one had one. How the hell did all the aniline disappear? This spate of bad luck didn't lead me to want to write very much, so I did a lot of reading up on other various aspects of the story. I want to be entertaining, yet accurate--or as accurate as one can be when he's dealing with a fantasy story based in mythology.

So, it seemed like I spent more time this week doing research than I did writing, but I did at least get the first chapter finished. It'll probably need a re-write and a bit of smoothing over, but it's done. That's out of the way; the female character has been raped and the foundation for the story has been set. Now we can get into the meat of the operation.

I ended up just over 3000 words, which is pretty good. The chapter is only 8 pages long, which is a nice intro into what's happening. As for my magnum opus I'm reading over and smoothing out...yeah...not much there. Maybe once I get into the swing of things with the writing, I'll be able to switch it up some and do some smoothing over.

Oh, and remember last week when I said that the ancient Greeks dressed pretty sluttily, according to the costume pictures I've found. Well, I've also suddenly discovered just how often the women were naked. I mean, how long did Calypso "force" Odysseus to fuck her? Seven years? I can guarantee she was probably without proper attire for, oh, all of those seven years.

Perhaps I was born at the wrong time. Of course, at the ripe old age of 33, I'd be well into my dotage in ancient Greece. I think I'll stay here and now, thank you very much.

3216 / 100000 words. 3% done!

Asses are Made to Bear...

...quoth the Bard. It's true. In Taming of the Shrew, upon the initial meeting of Petruchio and Katharina (Kate), Petruchio invites Kate to come sit upon his lap. The Bard was such a dirty old man. Anyway, Kate responds to Petruchio's request with "Asses are made to bear, and so are you." I'm sure there was a little of that famous Shakespearean double-speak going on here, where Kate was not only pointing out that Petruchio was an ass, but he was also telling us how we should see more shapely buttocks flaunted in the open.

This all brings us to today's word. It's one of my favorites. I'm sure you've heard it before, maybe even used it. I know I've written it here. I must thank my friend, Asian Jim, for teaching me this word. This one is for you, Asian Jim (if you still read this).

callipygian: "kal-uh-pidge-ee-uhn" adjective pertaining to or having beautiful buttocks.

This word comes from Greek, kalli meaning "beautiful" and puge meaning buttocks. It shows up in the middle of the seventeenth century (so, well after Shakespeare tells us that asses should be bared) and originally was used in reference of a statue of Aphrodite, the Ancient Greek goddess of love, beauty and desire. In Rome, they called her Venus.

You can probably see why this is one of my favorite words in the English language, and why I thank Asian Jim so much for teaching it to me. Thanks, buddy.

Anyway, I know exactly where this is going. There's a certain young princess that will have her "callipygian curves" described, most likely in reference to the spray of sea water on her garments, causing them to cling tenaciously to her skin. That is, if she's wearing clothes at all at that point. I haven't decided yet. We'll see.

So, the next time you see some attractive young woman walking down the street with "Juicy" written across her ass, now you know how to describe it--providing she's over 18, that is. Pervert.

But wait...there's more!

In the course of looking up the etymology of the word, I stumbled across a few others, and I just have to share them with you. Mostly because I'm twisted like that.

The opposite of callipygian is cacopygian, meaning "having an ugly buttocks", coming from kakos meaning "bad, evil" and the aforementioned puge.

A related form is steatopygous, meaning "having a prominent or fat buttocks", this time coming from stear or steat, meaning "tallow, fat" and puge.

And then there is possibly my new favorite word that I've learned in the past ten minutes, dasypygal, meaning "having a hairy buttocks", coming from Greek dasus with the meaning of "hair, dense" and puge. Awesome.

So, there you go. Four words for the price of one, all of them related to your sweet ass. Wait a second. I'm not sure if this word exists or not, but I'm going to try and take credit for coining glycopygian, meaning "having a sweet ass" (glycys being Greek for "sweet").

Words are awesome.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Clean Burning, Even Heating Propane

One of my guilty pleasures is being totally fucking lazy and not posting nearly often enough to satisfy the hordes of ravenous readers I have show up here every day King of the Hill. I'm not sure if it's Hank's no-nonsense approach to the world or his love of propane (I worked on cyclopropane in grad school) or just the fact that I pretty much look like him (though I don't need butt implants), but I'm a big fan of Hank Hill.

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, I was sure that I'd get a little Bobby Hill, which was really quite a terrifying thought. I should also add to the story here that my wife is WAY better looking than Peggy Hill. Also, she doesn't get upset when I dream about grilling naked with the neighbors.

And...my urethra is not narrow, thank you very much.

Why am I bringing all this Hank Hill goodliness up now? It's all a lead in for this week's edition of Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays. And, well, I've already talked about how much I enjoy watching Brainiac, and I don't need to be reminded--again--of how they will sometimes augment their explosions for better television viewing.

In case you're not overly familiar with the Brainiac series, they featured a whole host of episodes in which they pitted everyday things against the awesome power of thermite. That's how I first heard of the ice explosion thing that I trotted out last week. They've done other things, but now matter how much stuff they vaporize/burn through/detonate, I'm still impressed with the fiery curtain of destruction that is the thermite reaction. Chemistry is fucking awesome.

Wait? What? Blowing my own horn? No. Never. Just reaffirming why I got into this business in the first place.

Back to the topic at hand. As I mentioned previously, last week I showed you what happens when you mix ice and thermite. I'll bet you were like, "Yeah, that's pretty impressive, there, indefatigable one, but what happens when you mix thermite and, say, a cylinder of propane?"

Well, wonder no more:

Explosions are full-frontal awesome.

Not much sciencey going on here. Actually, there is. The thermite, which, after it starts the reaction, is basically a cascade of molten iron, burning at a balmy 2500 degrees Celsius. This is hot enough to melt through the steel cylinder holding the propane. And, with propane having a flash point -104 degrees Celsius, thermite is also hot enough to ignite the liquified gas housed within.

Sorry that I made you do math, even if it was just "less than, greater than, or equal to".

The fun part here, of course, is that the gas ignites first, which acts as a wick for the liquid fuel lying within the cylinder. It explodes because the thermite only punches a thin hole in the tank, trapping most of the vapor and liquid inside. Once the fire hits the fuel, it's Kaboom time, and I'm not talking about a deliciously over-sugared breakfast cereal (though that would kick ass, too).

Mmmmmm...sugary bits of what used to be edible grains mixed with food coloring and marshmallows....

Hey, I wonder if that shit would blow up, too...

Well, This Stinks

I don't really believe in luck. I don't believe that every step of our lives is determined by destiny, either. I think we make our own luck, and that we have to pay for bad decisions and whatnot.

However...I'm beginning to rethink my ideas about what shirts I wear on the days Notre Dame plays. In 2006, I wore a t-shirt with a skunk on it the day Notre Dame played Michigan, because a nickname for the wolverine is the Skunk Bear. See? Much like our fat coach, I was trying to be too cute and clever. Anyway, we know what happened that day...and in case you've forgotten, Notre Dame got beat by Michigan. Badly. Kind of derailed all shots at a National Championship and a Heisman for Brady Quinn. I attributed the loss to the shirt I wore, jokingly.

A few weeks later, I wore a t-shirt with a bear on it for the day Notre Dame played UCLA (the Bruins), and, well UCLA was leading late. Disgusted, I went upstairs and changed into a different shirt. I come back downstairs, Notre Dame scores late and wins. Coincidence? Most likely, but now suddenly I'm having second thoughts.

Then, in 2007, I decided I'd wear green shirts instead of Notre Dame shirts, just to see what would happen on game days. Well, I wore green shirts for the first 9 weeks of the season, and it was a disaster. So, I scrapped the green shirts. I scrapped them last year, too, and we struggled to mediocrity.

I say all of this because last week, I wore a green shirt. Notre Dame lost. Today, I wore my favorite shirt--a gray shirt with dark green sleeves. And, well, Notre Dame struggled mightily to pull out a victory. The defense--or the lack thereof--stunk the joint up.

This whole thing is not only a cathartic working out of the pain and suffering of yet another nail-biter of a game that Irish fans had chalked up as a win, but it's also the lead in to a fabulously awesome word I stumbled across last week while putting together the Latin lesson: mephitis.

And Notre Dame's defense has been rather mephitic these past two weeks.

Mephitis (meh-fight-is): n. 1.) a foul smell or stench, 2.) a foul-odor or poisonous gas emitted from the Earth, such as in a swamp or bog.

Mephitis is also the name of several genera of Skunks, because of the whole stink thing. Adjectival forms are mephitic or mephitical.

Mephitis is Latin in origin. Mefitis was a Roman goddess that was the personification of the noxious odors emitting from the ground, specifically from swamps and volcanic systems. The closest thing she had to a temple was at a place called Mefite (May-fee-tay), which was a part of the Vesuvian volcanic system. While marching along the Appian Way (via appia)--the most famous Roman road, stretching from Rome (around the knee of the boot) to Brundisium (on the heel of the boot)--Roman soldiers would rest at Mefite. There, they sacrificed animals to Mefitis, apparently by holding them in the areas where the poisonous gases were most concentrated so that they succumbed to Mefitis' natural aromas.

I haven't really thought of how to use this particular word, yet. However, I'm guessing that I'll be more able to use the first definition rather than the second. Hell, I'm guessing I'll be able to work mephitis into a TMI Thursday story, given the joyous fun that my bowel system, minus the gall bladder, tends to provide.

Oh, and by the way...I'm wearing a red shirt next weekend.

Pop the Champagne! It's Celebration Time!

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Yet Another Interesting Word Find

So, in the past few months I've been reading a lot of things that deal with the history of the English language, etymology, the influence of Latin, and even a fair bit of that whole "how to learn Latin without taking any real classes because you're a cheap bastard" thing. Well, having a bunch of books around the house helps with that last one.

Anyway, while reading something about the name Peter and its influence on the Christian church and all (remember, the "rock on which I will build my church" and all), I came across another word that wasn't just cool and interesting, but also very useful for my work on the magnum opus. The word is "saxicolous".

Saxicoulous/saxicoline: adjective Living on or growing among rocks. It comes from the Latin (surprise!) saxum meaning rock and the verb colere, to dwell. Both forms are acceptable, though I think "saxicolous" is more the botanical term.

So, the main noble house in the story is called Montgomery. Montgomery, itself, is French and means "Gomeric's hill", and Gomeric is German and means "power of man". So, it makes sense then that House Montgomery lives on a hill. And they do. They live on the side of a mountain, which was land given to them by their liege lords, House Hall. The bestowal of the land was supposed to be a gift for services rendered and the undying loyalty of the Montgomerys to their lord, however, the land was at the end a low mountain chain and was not exactly lush. The rocky soil was not good for growing crops, and so others joked about how the only things that would grow on that mountain were thistles. While the Montgomerys discovered that the ground wasn't good for growing crops, they did find that it was good for providing mineral wealth, specifically gold. The Montgomerys then adopt the Thistle as their symbol (it has previously been a Hound, symbolizing their servitude and faithfulness), to mock those who had mocked them previously. It's kind of an acceptable form of "neener neener neener!"

As you can see, working the word "saxicolous" or "saxicoline" into that little narrative shouldn't be difficult (I'm kind of leaning toward the latter...sounds a little more keen). I'll bring it up from time to time while people are discussing the Montgomerys and their home on the side of the mountain.

In case you were dying to know, "saxatile" is the term used in describing a saxicolous plant via its species name. For example, the Heath Bedstraw found in the UK is called Galium saxatile.

Now hopefully Jeopardy will ask a question about this and once again make me look like a fucking genius (though I doubt it since they're mired in the College Championship reruns right now).

It Feels Like...Another Weird Word Day

So, yeah. It's been awhile since I posted one of these. Sunday being a day of rest and all, where you don't work and you don't play and--above all else!--you don't blog. I'm pretty sure that's in the Book of Leviticus somewhere. Right by the rule about not eating camels.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a bookcase to put together.

Ha, I'm kidding. Well, not about the bookcase. I have to do that, which is why I'm here, avoiding any semblance of real work. So long as my fingers are dancing over the keys, then they don't have to be tapping fasteners into the panels of the bookcase.

Do yourself a favor and re-read that last sentence. That, my friends, is what I call fine writing. It's like a spectacle crafted out of words. What? A train wreck is a spectacle, too. So, it's not like I was lying to you about it.

This week's weird word is one you've all seen way too often, especially around here. And yet, I loves it like the Precious. The word is "indefatigable".

Indefatigable means "tireless, inexhaustible" or "unable or seemingly unable to be fatigued". It comes from the prefix in-, which in this case means "not", and a second prefix de-, which is used to intensify the root word -fatig-, itself coming from the Latin fatigare, "to weary" (check it out, a first conjugation verb!). Hang the suffix -able on there for good measure in order to add the "capable of" meaning, and you've got yourself a mouthful of wordy goodness.

There's the origin of the word, but how did I come about using it as my own epithet? Originally, my "screen name" had been my real name, and then for "anonymity's sake" I decided to go with the rather blase and bland mjenks. After a few months of being utterly and completely bored with my own name (I've only been seeing it for the 33 and a half years), I thought I'd toss in something new. Since I'm a bit of an egomaniac, I added "the incomparable" at the beginning of my name and went around commenting in people's blogs as such for about a month. I then opted to change it to "the incorrigible", because, well, that's a pretty apt descriptor, too. Along about the time I changed it to "the incorrigible", one of my first loyal readers, Chemgeek, posted an entry to his blog about the "Word of the Day" and the word was "indefatigable."

Being the clever wordophile smartass that I am, I dashed off three different definitions for the word, none of which were "tireless". A few days later, I quietly changed the epithet from "the incorrigible" to "the indefatigable". About a week later, college football season kicked off, and since I'm an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, I thought it would be clever to capitalize only the ND and of "indefatigable". That is how the screen name has evolved into what you see before you.

Using it in a book won't be too difficult, especially since I've got armies marching to and fro. They'll seem "indefatigable" in their efforts to get from one place to another, or to scale the walls of a besieged city. Also, the lead female protagonist will be "indefatigable" in her efforts to protect her home and her family, all the while she tries to raise the status of her husband's home city to what she thinks it should become. Oh, yeah, and then there's the whole main plot of the story in which she is integral. So, yes, Lillian will be quite indefatigable as she tries desperately to bring about the conclusion of the tale.