YELP. there are two GIANOMOUS caterpillars on my snapdragons. i wonder how long they've been there, that is, whether they were hidden in the flowers when i brought them home, or hatched over the course of the week. they are chomping most ferociously and are pale and fat. it's revolting and i've transferred my vase to the living room instead, where there is nothing of interest and i will let them have their fill and then i'll give them their marching orders.
i am not having a lot of fun in greek. some of it has to do with it being at a beastly 9 o'clock, and it's also getting colder. although more of it has to do with not learning everything well in first year greek, and most of it with not trying. for the first two weeks, i sat down with dictionary, vocabulary cards, grammar books and the text and worked through my lessons, and that was fine, but after that it became all thurber and pratchett and self-indulgence and then greek became frantic flipping through books on the bus and flagrant skipping. i think somewhere i've more or less given up on the greek and am just drifting through the rest of the semester hoping to get out with a B. the way i'm doing this i wonder why i don't just drop the darn thing. yet i know very well i'll finish the course and take 202 next semester too. some of that has to do with herodotus and euripedes being a whole lot more exciting than plato and xenophon. (xenophon isn't so bad at all, actually. i like it better than the plato, and ancient military accounts can be quite intriguing) some of it is inertia, but the thing really keeping me there the knowledge that one day, one day i will be able to read greek, and that i will never ever regret.
i do think i am finally learning to read latin. as opposed to simply translating. vocabulary and experience seem to be all that is in my way now. i can't believe we're more than half way through metamorphoses i. it's not a lot, 1/30 of the whole thing, but considering that two years ago i couldn't read any latin and now i have read nearly one book! eek! and you know, this makes reading the broken latin in pratchett very funny. like this one: cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardium et cerebellum. *howl* also like how in portrait of the artist, stephen and his friends spoke dog latin all the time. i wish my ovid class would do that, but when they do they try to quote and speak grammatical latin. aiyah. i do think kovacs encourages it. he quotes at us all the time!
i've never thought of my hair as being short, though of course i've had quite a bit lopped off this summer. it must have been pretty long before though, because when i tried to wear my hair in braids yesterday afternoon, they don't reach down my back, and they keep coming loose because of the layers. i want to wear my hair in braids because i found several coloured ribbons in my drawer and i am a sucker for ribbons. i need hair. i also need more bookshelves. if i take down some of my ring files and put them them under my bed i could clear another 24inches of shelf space, multiply that by two for double stacking - 48? 48 inches worth of books sound pathetically little. heyhey, i am getting myself a set of malory towers! and laura ingalls wilder too. of course i could just go to kino and buy a set of malory towers but i wanted to see if i can get an old set, with the same covers i had when i was seven. is upper fourth the one with the pantomine? and the audience calling "author!" and darrell taking a bow? malory towers is lovely but highly difficult to recommend to people who didn't start on them from young and nearly impossible for men to like. i remember them all though. mavis who sings, belinda who draws, and bill and the honourable clarissa carter who love horses. gwen with her scowls and her father's heart attack. amanda the swimmer who had to be rescued by june. june who was alicia's cousin, and whowrote moira so me poison pen letters? alicia and betty who were clever and malicious (and alicia got chicken pox during her exams)? the two mam'zelles, one skinny and stern, the other plump and kindly (she had her hairpins removed by the girls with a strong magnet, and there was the "ping" bubble up the chimney trick, and the pink OY, but who nonetheless got false teeth and played a trick back on the girls?) by the way is it darrell waters or rivers? i've seen both in different editions. but i think waters is correct because that's the name of the man enid blyton married, or at least he was her lover or somebody. i should know, because i did my irs on her in sec one! but i don't remember much about her biography now.
i shall go see what there is to eat.
it has turned cold! how very timely it is that i got my suitcase back from christine just monday night, so i have coats and turtlenecks and scarves again. which also means i went to class reeking of mothballs and other sorts of musty smells that come of clothes suffocating in basements for nearly 6 months. i hope they rapidly acquire the smell of my room again. i actually got up at 3 this morning to finish my prose comp and the greek and latin passages. of course, i didn't get called on for greek and in latin i only had to translate one line. ONE LINE. what is the world coming to? how much sleep could i have got if i had simply neglected my work and gone to bed last night? *wail* but really there's no good way around it. if they don't call on me i think, ye bastards, why don't you call on me, i've put 3 hours into this! on the otherhand, if they call on me i think, you jerk why must you call on me today humiliation must have some end. so you see.