Onwards with the progress, slow though it may be.

I don't think I could write this thing without the assistance of ibnfirnas and humanx to help me get the religious stuff right. If I get this thing done and published, you guys are so in the acknowledgements.

And thanks to today's rattling about with humanx, I have a strong suspicion that St. Jude is going to make it into the title of the thing. So perfect. Hospital workers and lost causes. My poor narrator. (Hmmm. The Otter and Saint Jude? Hmmmm.)

Argh. I have no idea how to transliterate this. The very occasional words in the narrative that are in Otter's native language definitely consistently have an aspirated T. At this point I'm writing some of it down as 'T' and some of it down as 'TH' because that's the best I can do with an English-speaking audience. But really it's a θ.

The smell of old books is very satisfying. (I believe this is one brooksmoses gave me, Egyptian art.) And I just correctly identified in said book a statue of Aset (who was wearing Het-hert's headdress) by identifying glyphs on the base. (I can't really say 'reading', as all I could identify was 'netjer Aset'.) I feel oddly accomplished.

I have had egg drop soup in quantity, and some garlic, and a few hours after that felt enough better to upgrade to pasta. Feeling worse again, but I think it'll pass. Still perplexed by the soup -- it had maize in. I think maize is about the only New World plant that really confounds me when I encounter it in non-American ethnic food. Chili peppers fine, potatoes okay, tomatoes okay, but maize throws me for a complete loop.