Little old British men freak me out.

Coming in from lunch, I stopped by the little shop downstairs (Friends of [insert hospital here]; volunteers work to sell snacks and drinks and other hospital-necessary sundries with profit going to the hospital). An old man was standing directly in the doorway, chatting with the two old ladies at the till. I picked up a can of Coke and a mint Aero bar, went to pay for them, and the following conversation took place.

(Old man taps my shoulder)
OLD MAN: How many bubbles d'you reckon are in that?
(He taps my Aero bar. I shrug.)
OLD MAN: G'wan. Count 'em.
ME: I think I have better things to do with my life.
OLD MAN: S'right.

Nothing like little old men in hospitals to put a "what the fuck?" into your day.

What's in a name?

I got bored and started thinking about days of the week and how they got their names. A lot of them I can trace to their Roman origins easily enough, but I've never been very sure about the English ones. So I did a bit of research.

Monday -- the moon, pretty obviously. I don't know if it's irony that the start of the working/school week is on a day whose name takes the same root as the word 'lunatic'.

Tuesday -- I thought the Roman root was Mars, god of war. Turns out the Saxons had a god called Tiu -- the god of custom and law. The Romans named that god Mars-Thingus (God of the Thing), so maybe what my 8th grade English teacher told me about mythology isn't all that cut and dried.

Wednesday -- Odin's Day. Odin was god of warriors and kings. He hung himself on the world tree for knowledge, and lost his eye in the same pursuit. Also has two ravens, Hugin (Thought) and Munin (Memory), who he sent out to gather information. Destined to die at Ragnarok. As for the Roman root, Mercury was god of messengers, trade and commerce, and was associated with peace and prosperity.

Thursday -- named for Thor, thunder god of the Aesir with the hammer Mjollnir. Latin root -- Jupiter, another thunder god.

Friday -- Latin root Venus, goddess of love. Saxons seem to have taken it from the goddess Fria, who has a similar deal going. She is recorded as a sensual goddess whose activities have been connected to war, wealth and a particularly feminine form of magic called seith.

Saturday -- This one's one of the only ones where the Latin root has carried over into the English. Saturn was apparently a corn-god, closer to Demeter in responsibility than to his Greek counterpart Cronos. It's also thought to be taken as Sabbath Day (Samedi) for the Jewish Sabbath.

Sunday -- for Sunna, Saxon representation of the sun (well, duh). Also "the Lord's Day" (Dies Domini, leading to Dimanche). No wonder people go to church on Sundays.

This is interesting. I've discovered that boredom sometimes leads me on a desperate quest to fill in the holes left by my total lack of further education rather than just having me sit around reading crap all day. I sat down and spent the last hour and a half researching days of the week and various Roman, Norse and Saxon gods ... just because I was bored and I felt like it. And now I want to write a term paper, only there's no one to hand it in to so what's the point?

As last week -- and I wonder why people think I'm looped.