went to bob reeder's twelfth night class today, because he was going over the scene where malvolio was puzzling over the letter and the notorious m.o.i.a. riddle. think i want to work that into my essay, although my 2 cents' worth on the great critical mystery is probably going to be quite unimpressive. heh. but i'm increasingly interested in twelfth night and other renaissance material for the "i am not what i am" type problem, and even more importantly, the "i am what i am not" type identity riddles. maybe i could have a section that only dealt with riddles in shakespeare. i have been thinking of sitting in on bob's classes for a long while now, and on this particular occasion, the agreement was that he would not call on me unvolunteering, (how about you, ms heng? please enlighten the class...) and i would not raise deliberately awkward questions (excuse me, mr reeder, but i really cannot agree with...). on second thoughts that might have been mildly amusing, particularly if we had staged it, but understated was good. had an exceedingly bad headache later in the afternoon, a kind of feverish giddiness from sitting in the sun (the class was held on the lawn), but mostly from being without my glasses, which had vanished in the usual turmoil in my room, leaving me half-blind and therefore in grave danger of not ducking from teachers while they are still in escaping distance. couldn't cross roads all that well either, but that is probably an advantage: if i got run over by a bus i wouldn't have to finish the thesis and my academic reputation will still be intact. reputations are underrated, you know, i told bob, who observed with some amusement that i have a talent for negative fantasies. got to see nohrnberg and go over the alcuin too, which, thanks to kindness abroad, i could make much headway with. for now, need to go over a lot of virgil for the test tomorrow, and i should get in touch with allie, the girl i usually revise latin with, to fix a study time for this afternoon. i am drooping.