half-discovered wings

So, I am tired of stealing rides from people at inopportune moments. Therefore, I have a question!

Neve gets a Zipcar membership: good idea/bad idea?

fuzzycoatimundi: What I need you to do here is -
iterininfinitum: Take it up an octave so it can be heard?
fuzzycoatimundi: No.
A person not on LJ: I'll take your face up an octave.
lauzeta: I'll take your mom up an octave.
Everyone else: ....
lauzeta: What?

Anyone out there have a bodhran I can use? Necessity calls.

OMG

So. Excited!

Dear life,

Stop messing with me. If you're going to stick your little monkey wrenches into the inner workings of my life, could you please arrange to make only adjustments that are either good or bad? It would be much appreciated.

Yours sincerely,
lauzeta

After repeated prodding from my teacher, the other day I finally bought a manuscript edition of the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin (for the non-musicians: Bach's handwriting is astonishing, but not that bad once you get used to it; go here for an example). Once I started poking around in it I was delighted to discover that some of the bowings that I've always thought were a complete crock and that show up in every bloody edition of the things ever printed - including the one attached to the facsimile I bought which purports to accurately transcribe what J.S. wrote, hello, do you have eyes? I thought not - are in fact not Bach.

VINDICATION!

OMG, so much pregnancy! What is going ON?

( Book meme! )

I deduce from this that I am either (a)staggeringly well-read, (b)a person who spends far too much time in school, or (c)significantly more stubborn than most LibraryThing users. OR ALL OF THE ABOVE.

So. The other day I saw a review of Ursula K. Le Guin's Lavinia somewhere online. I think it was Bookslut. Anyhow, I immediately knew I had to go and buy it even though I had no money, if only because I could chalk it up to a professional expense (which happens less often in Classics than it could. All that focus on old stuff). Admittedly, no one who's heard me talk about the Aeneid at any point would expect me to dash out and buy this book, but... professional interest is professional interest. An added impetus was the fact that the review was pretty much hyper-positive.

If you didn't follow the link, Lavinia is Le Guin's take on the Aeneid from the point of view of a notoriously underwritten character - Aeneas' eventual wife, Lavinia, who says nothing in the poem, IIRC, and is only focused on at one point, really, and all she does is blush. Maidenly virtue FTW! ( Read more... )

The "Roman" writing on the dust jacket looks like second-century epigraphy to me, though, which is so wrong that it makes me want to froth at the mouth, but pfft. Book designers. What do they know? :D**

Wow, there's an epigraphy blog. That's amazing. *subscribes to feed out of sheer amusement*

In other news, improv is hard. (But it keeps getting easier.)

*I'm only a master's student and therefore cannot yet be construed as an expert. Dammit.

** The first footnote still applies.

1. Katari Taiko workshop = win. And also, exertion.

2. Summer employment = not yet forthcoming, but I have high hopes.

3. Pear rooibos tea = deliciousness.

4. I seem to be finally capable of feeling like I've had enough sleep in a night. Obviously I have now jinxed myself beyond all hope of repair, but the feeling remains a nice one.

5. I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, but I seem to be enjoying it for the moment. Win!

6. Muahaha, piercings! Soon, I hope.

EDIT: I have no words to describe how awful this is. It just keeps getting worse.

I just made a bunch of masala sauce as an experiment. It smells pretty good, although I could be deluding myself here. But. Cooking with chiles, onions, and lime juice when you have eczema all over your hands?

OW OW OW OW OW.

The things I do for my culinary art. :P

Another tuition increase?

BITE ME, UBC.

I just made homemade pita bread. I rule.

Also, what insane language should I take next year? You may choose from the following:

Arabic
Sanskrit
Hebrew
Korean
Mandarin

Or submit your own choices in comments!

I am procrastinating studying for my Greek final tomorrow; can you tell?

see more crazy cat pics

HAHAHAHA.

I just went to retrieve one of the (many) loads of laundry I've done today, and my landlords were shouting at each other upstairs. In Italian. I love living here!

Talking to a fellow classics grad student today:

HIM: Yeah, a grow-op caught fire and killed three people last night.
ME: Are you serious?! Where?
HIM: New West? Or maybe Burnaby, I don't remember.
ME: Oh, so somewhere out in the sticks, anyhow.
HIM: The... sticks?
ME: Not the River Styx.
HIM: Oh!

I... wow.

I think I have a thesis topic. And it came out of nowhere.

Ow, my head.

Okay, that does it. I want my brain back, dammit.

The fact that I've been doing Greek for so short a time means that I'm still getting used to being able to translate things like significant names in Homer for myself, and every time I get reminded (by, say, marking papers argh) I get all surprised and excited, which is fun.

Unfortunately it also translates (heh) into things like a terrifying urge to name my first child Astyanax.

*runs*

EDIT: Canada's oldest bookstore shut down

Canada's oldest bookstore, located in Halifax, has come to the end of its final chapter and closed its doors on Saturday.

The 169-year-old Book Room survived wars and the Great Depression, but couldn't outlast the vagaries of today's retail and economic realities.

"The market reality is really changing," said owner Charles Burchell, who described how a book was delivered to his store by mistake around Christmas time. The Book Room sits on the bottom of an apartment building; an online order was made by a tenant upstairs.

"The book was on our shelf, so they could have come down in two minutes and picked the book up, but they chose to order by computer and wait five [to] seven days for it to come in," Burchell told CBC Radio.

What is this, let's do away with all of Canada's cultural organizations month or something?

I think this is the first time in my life that I've heard someone being explicitly, unabashedly racist.

URGE TO KILL, RISING.

The fact that it was the 60-year-old man who had just invited me to sit on his lap probably shouldn't be surprising.

In other news, students in third-year literature courses cannot use apostrophes or write complete sentences. Why? Why?