Journal of a Sabbatical

August 9, 1999

the miracle of the boiled eggs

Last night I dreamed I had found a map in the rare book room showing the location of every Serbian spruce tree along the Bosnia/Serbia border. I was looking at each one in turn. They were marked with red pine tree logos.

Every day they feed us either fried eggs or scrambled eggs here at the wild boar lodge. This morning Carol and Mary carefully composed a note using the rudimentary English-Hungarian dictionary asking if we could please have boiled eggs for breakfast today or tomorrow. They showed it to the kid. She smiled. Seconds later - under a minute - she appeared with a plate of hard-boiled eggs. Must be some kind of witchcraft going on in the kitchen!

Putting the Taiwan specimens in numerical order is harder than it seems. There isn't enough space to lay it all out in kind of a bucket sort. We're using the floor in the Chile room and the hallway and we still end up shuffling specimens a little too much.

It was way too hot in the Taiwan room. I was soaked within 15 minutes of starting work and continued that way for 10 hours with a break for lunch.

Today's surprise from the Japan boxes (besides another bag of garbage): the mother lode of chopsticks. They were still in the manufacturer's box, all neatly packed. When István came back from getting the mirror fixed on Keith's car (I forgot to note in Friday's entry that an irate bus passenger ripped the mirror off the gold Opel when we parked briefly in a bus stop), Carol showed him the chopsticks. He said he'd give half of them to anybody who could name the species of wood. Carol immediately replied Cypressus obtusa. István looked like his eyes would pop out of his head until several of us chorused: "she read it off the box!" and burst out laughing. I guess he hadn't realized he'd labeled the chopstick specimen. It's Hinoki cypress and there's some part of Japan where chopsticks made from it are a specialty. The dendrologists had visited the factory and been given a box of 'em. Once we stopped laughing, István gave us each a set of chopsticks.

Marti cooked yet another Hungarian specialty for dinner - she's competing well with the witch place - a kind of potatoes paprikash thing.

After dinner István showed the slides of the Chile expedition. Apparently Keith has not changed his shirt since Chile. Either that or his entire wardrobe consists of identical green shirts.