Sorry it's been a while since I've written! Between cafe-work, dissertation-work, and (of course) a bit of travel, I've been a busy girl lately. Lots has happened since I posted last. First, work at Toby's has changed quite a lot, because Toby isn't there anymore. He's not even 40 yet, but he's been running the cafe for 22 years and decided to move on to other things. Sadly, when he left, so did his father, who called me dahling, sang songs about my name whenever I walked by him, and constantly made slightly racist jokes about my Irish last name. So, we're under new ownership now, and although the place still looks the same, both the customers and the staff who were around before the changeover feel the difference pretty acutely. Toby was a larger-than-life presence with a special knack for connecting with the customers and making the whole day fun. It's not that work isn't fun anymore; I still enjoy going in everyday and the new owner is nice as can be. But we don't have that constant banter going back and forth across the counter that we used to, and with the additional difference of most of the students having left town after exams, those of us left have a lot to adjust to. As a sort of tribute to the good ol' days (my whole three weeks of them), here are a few pics from Toby's last week. You can see more here.



Toby's from across the street, on a rare sunny day in Bristol


Toby, in his element


Me, with the proud result of a cappuccino-making practice session -- check out the height of that foam!

I've been working pretty much every day, but I had most of last week off to go to Spain and Portugal with Michelle and Chryselle, two of my chaplaincy friends. It was a glorious trip! We flew from London to Seville, and when we got there it was still light at almost 10 p.m. and we were almost immediately hit with the luscious smell of the oranges hanging on all the trees lining the streets. We spent a full day sightseeing in Seville under a cloudless sky, then took a bus to Faro, Portugal to spend a couple of days at the beach. We came back to Seville and almost a full day to continue exploring on Saturday before catching a flight back late in the evening. The whole trip exceeded our expectations by a lot (and we'd been daydreaming about it for weeks), and all of the practical matters went off without a hitch (well, with the exception of my coach journey back from London --but what can you expect of British public transportation?). Here are a few pics of the highlights, and you can see loads more here.


Michelle & I with our sangria in Seville


Chryselle & I at the beach in Faro


At the Alcazar, Seville -- this place completely blew us away!

Thanks for reading, and I promise I'll write again soon!

Can I help who's next?

I've worked food service long enough to know that, for a student working part time, the real benefit of a crummy job is not the paltry minimum-wage paychecks (although they do have to be the main motivation -- I wouldn't work these kinds of jobs for free). Speaking from the perspective of an overprivileged student, it's hard to describe the "real benefit" in a way that doesn't sound snobby -- "seeing how the other half lives", etc. -- and because it's undeniable that class differences keep the food service industry running, I don't mind admitting that there is some truth in these descriptions. Over the years, it's done me good to do simple, practical work that doesn't take much of a brain and generally has no room for people with intellectual pretensions. If that sounds bad, I should also point out that working fast food has probably caused me to question the meaning of my "full-time" occupation -- making much of literature written a couple millennia ago -- more often than it has caused me to doubt the value of my part-time work. At the end of a day in the library, I may or may not have learned anything particularly enlightening to myself, and odds are very good indeed that the day's work will never have any great meaning for the world at large. On the other hand, when I finish a day's work at a cafe, I know that I am at least part of the reason that dozens of people who came in hungry left not-hungry. That's a quantifiable, useful result. To put the case dramatically, when taken collectively, we food service workers help to keep people alive. It's a rare liberal arts student or professor who can say that.

Starting work at Toby's has brought all of that rather heavy reasoning -- applicable to menial workers the world over -- back to me. What I've especially enjoyed over the past couple of weeks, though, has been the utter Britishness of it all. To be efficient in a fast-paced English cafe, it's no good hanging on to certain American habits of speech and manner that just confuse people and throw them off (and invite constant teasing from co-workers!), so I've adapted quickly. On my first few days, for example, I got ribbed constantly for the way I pronounced tomato and basil. It's not as easy as you might think to get the vowels right, either: in tomato, the 'a' should sound like the a's in avocado, but if you use the same a in basil, you're talking like the queen: if you're not royalty, it should sound like the a in apple. Then, there are a whole class of American expressions that won't get me teased but will slow me down at work. The English will do a double-take if you ask them if their sandwich is "for here or to go." In Britain, the customary (although more long-winded) question is, "is that to have in or take away?" I've also learned to stop asking if people want butter on their sandwiches (the idea is still incomprehensible to me) because to the English, this is a given rather than a gross-out. Just slather it on, no questions asked! There are also certain words that just do not signify the same thing in American and British English (a Saussurian concept -- hm, maybe this does tie into my research after all). Salad is a good example. For an American, salad is a bowl full of lettuce and/or spinach with a variety of other vegetables, croutons, etc. mixed in and dressing on top. For a Brit, salad is a garnish of lettuce -- literally a few leaves -- and possibly a slice or two of tomato and/or cucumber depending on the situation. We're talking the amount of veg you'd automatically get on a hamburger from McDonald's. A salad, by contrast, is the full-on American deal. So if someone asks for salad with their wrap, throw a mouthful of bunny food inside the thing and roll 'er up. That simple.

Those are just the functional basics. If you want to sound like you belong, you have to be more subtle. In a casual joint like Toby's, most of the time, don't say thanks -- it's "cheers." Those from blue-collar backgrounds and through-and-through British say "ta," but you wouldn't catch a Bristol Uni student or a foreigner using that one. When it's busy, don't yell, "Next!" or "Can I take someone's order?" but, "Can I help who's next?" (don't let your intonation rise on the end of "next," as always when asking questions Britishly). Don't pronounce baguette the American way -- bag-ette, but instead, big-ETTE, quickly and with the emphasis on the last syllable. Ciabatta isn't pronounced with the Italian vowels as Americans say it, but the second a is like the one in apple. Also, refer to nearly everything sweet and containing flour as a cake (regardless of its lack of resemblance to that dessert you stick candles in and eat your birthday) -- except for chocolate croissants, one of which is a pain-au-choc (and for goodness' sake, when you do pronounce croissant, do so in a way that does justice to the French you had at school, even if your father is a bin man!).

As you can see from this sampling, I've learned a lot in the past couple weeks. Perhaps more than I've learned in my actual research (and the more I work, the more I feel that "research" deserves quotations marks around it -- or "inverted commas", as they say here). Maybe that should worry me; or maybe it just means I'm achieving some kind of useful balance in my life. I'll report back on that question in a couple of months...

The price is right.

In general, 2 pounds and 2 pence won't buy you much here in the UK. However, as I discovered during a fluke and fleeting Ryanair sale a couple of weeks ago, that was exactly the price of a round-trip flight to Dublin, all taxes included! So on Tuesday, I got up early, caught an 8 a.m. flight, and found myself in Dublin by the time the museums opened. I spent the day roaming around the centre, then headed back to the airport after dinner and was back here at my desk in Bristol by 10:45 that night.

In general, Dublin itself was less amazing than the fact that I was able to get there and back for the price of a cup of coffee. Still, it was a good day, the most pleasurable parts (as usual) being the most unexpected.

I can only give my impressions of the centre of Dublin, as I didn't have time to get farther afield, but in general I didn't find it overly charming. It looks and feels like what it is: the stag party capital of Europe, overrun with foreign tourists, including a sizable community of easily identifiable American studiers-abroad (the women are the easiest to spot: North Face fleece jackets, Ugg boots, straightened hair, designer handbags, obnoxiously loud voices, usually talking about past or future nights out). Apart from the tourists, the streets and parks were generally filled by beggars, homeless, and a lot of people generally down on their luck. It's hard to enjoy a day in a place where it's so obvious that people who spend their lives there are certainly not enjoying themselves. I don't think I expected a pristine, cheerful city -- this isn't the impression that Ulysses and Dubliners create, and Joyce is the major source of my mental picture of Dublin -- but the overall grottiness of it all (to use a favorite Anglicism) was striking nonetheless.

But, as I said, there were highlights. St. Stephen's Green was lovely in full bloom, and I enjoyed a wander through the National Gallery, which has a fine collection of 20th century Irish paintings. There was an especially good exhibit of Jack B. Yeats, whose work I'd never seen before. I got a kick out of walking through Trinity College at lunchtime and watching the students sitting out on the grass reading or chatting and generally doing their thing. Student life is pretty much the same the world over, of course, but it's fun to see in different places.

The highlight of the day also came with a reminder of a useful travel tip: follow large groups of senior citizens (except into the 4:30 dinner buffet). They usually know what's up. This is exactly what I did when I ran into a slow-moving bunch around the back of Dublin Castle, which I was wandering around because I didn't want to pay to go in. I followed the old folks through a gate and across a pretty little garden to the Chester Beatty Library, of which I hadn't heard, but admission was free, so I decided to have a look. I still don't know how this Beatty fellow made his money, but he must have had absolute boatloads, to judge from the selections from his collection that were on display. On the top floor of the building, I found an amazing exhibit of some of the oldest extant papyri of the Gospels and fragments from the first collection of Paul's letters. It was pretty thrilling to be able to make out the Greek letters and even a word here and there. There was also a huge 11th century (I think) illuminated manuscript of Augustine's City of God and several other interesting fragments of third and fourth-century Christian texts. Thanks, oldsters, for the hot tip!

Another high point came after a rather disappointing visit to the James Joyce Centre (different from the museum, and certainly not worth the price of admission). Budget traveler's trip #2: if you don't want to pay to go into a famous church, come back for Mass/Evensong etc. and see it for free. I pulled this one with Christ Church, and it turned out to be a really charming experience. I arrived pretty much right on time, and no one else was there except the guy leading the service (he was filling in for the Dean, who was absent, and the choir was also out of town). At the last minute, a couple other American tourists wandered in with bags from the Guinness Factory and sat down by me. And that was the whole crowd! The service leader read his part, and the three of us rather uncertainly read the respondents' part off the sheet we were given (it was obvious that none of us were Anglican). We may have missed a few words, but I guess we kept the service from getting canceled that night!

After Evensong, I wandered down to have a look at St. Patrick's Cathedral and then had an absurdly overpriced dinner of bangers and mash and a pint of Murphy's in the Temple Bar quarter before getting the bus back to the airport. Well, not the bus, as it happens -- the bus failed to show up three times in a row, so a few other panicked tourists and I ended up sharing a big cab. It was worth the extra fiver to make sure I got home. And that was the day! I slept like a dead person and made it through the next day at work with the help of a couple double espressos. Hooray for the perks of my new job.

Would you like butter and mayo with that?

Big news over here: I have accomplished my #1 lifetime career goal!! No, I haven't been given an honorary Ph.D. or anything, don't get too excited. But I started a job this week in a real, proper cafe, and I am a bona fide barista! Anyone who knows what it's like to work fast food for SIX YEARS will understand that I am absolutely not exaggerating my enthusiasm here. It seems almost too good to be true.

I'll back up a little bit. I'd dropped off some CV's earlier in the spring without any results, and just last week I started the process again after handing in my essays. I was beginning to despair after the little cafes and bars on Queens Road and in Clifton Village didn't seem interested. So, last Friday, I was sitting in the library reading Seneca and feeling a little depressed when my stomach started growling, and I decided to go to Somerfield and buy some Mars Planets (best candy ever, even above Sainsbury's Fizzy Fangs) to cheer myself up. On the way, I walked past Toby's Deli Cafe, and I noticed a sign in the window advertising for counter help. I went in and asked about it, and the girl at the counter told me to wait for a minute to talk to the manager. The place was really cute and funky, with the walls of the dining room covered in photographs of customers and Christmas lights hung all around. Pretty soon the manager came up, offered me a cup of tea, and sat down to chat. He looked at my CV, joked around with me about American politics, and asked me to start on Tuesday. So that was that!

In a way I regret that I find it nearly impossible to describe my new job without comparing it to Sonic, because Sonic was about as good as it could be to me, but so it goes. Anyway, instead of a dorky logo polo shirt and visor and regulation length shorts, I now get to wear any sort of black shirt I want, and that's as much as they care about. And, instead of making cherry limeades until the acid eats the skin on my fingers away, I make...real espresso coffee!!! It was surprisingly easy to learn to use the machine, froth milk, etc. I do not mind admitting that I feel extremely, smugly cool as I do so. The other, bigger part of my job is making sandwiches, which is most of our business, and a charmingly British affair. That is, mayonnaise and butter are the leading ingredients in just about everything we make. Most popular fillings: chicken mayonnaise, tuna mayonnaise, coronation chicken, chicken tikka - basically, all equal parts of meat/fish + mayo. And it goes without saying that you slather the bread with mayo or butter, and very often both. But we have plenty of yummy healthy things, too, for those who fancy them, like roasted veggies, goat's cheese, sun dried tomatoes, pesto, hummus, etc.

The best part (besides the coffee thing) is the great people I work with. Toby's is run by Toby (duh) and his father, and they're both very laid back, fun and jokey. They either call me "babes" or "gorgeous" in a completely un-creepy, almost fatherly way (Toby actually calls pretty much everyone "babes", male and female). All the other employees are great, and the customers, mostly students who are posh enough to be able to afford an $8 sandwich or a $10 baked potato for lunch, are all really friendly.

So, if you can't tell, I'm pretty stoked about my new gig. Academia, I'm warning you, you're up against some serious competition.

Get out of town.

I finally got my last two essays turned in this week, for better or worse. I get so fed up with my agonizingly slow writing process, and this usually results in the need for a sort of ritual cleansing of my writing area as soon as I turn a big paper in. As soon as I came home on Friday I fell into a cleaning frenzy, including dusting, vacuuming, organizing my papers and recycling tons of old notes, weeding out library books on topics I don't want to be reminded of for the forseeable future, taking out the trash, organizing my closet, cleaning my sink...it was pretty intense. I felt lots better afterwards.

My week wasn't completely neurotic, however! I had one of the best days since I've been here on Thursday, when I made a day trip to Oxford. The ostensible reason for the trip was to attend a lecture on "The Decline of Poetry in the Fourth Century" (which nobody really believes happened -- the decline, that is, not the lecture). The lecture was fine, but the best part was meeting up with a friend who's a postgrad at Merton College afterwards and spending the afternoon and evening with her. The weather was beautiful by the time we left the lecture, although it had been pouring when I went in -- typical England! We stopped to get ice cream at a famous place across from Christ Church, then walked through the meadow and down along the Thames, where we found lots of cute fuzzy ducklings and several teams of rowers out (including, it must be said, some very fine looking young gentlemen in flattering uniforms). We made sure to be back at Merton by 6, because it was Ascension Day, the only day of the year when the student are allowed to climb all the way up onto the roof of the chapel! They only let 100 people up, and we were numbers 99 and 100 -- whew! It was the most amazing experience -- the views from the top were stunning.



A priest performed a short service, and there was a small choir to lead several hymns. Afterwards, there was quite a swanky little champagne reception on one of the lawns, complete with people playing croquet. We had to leave in time to be at the dining hall promptly at 7 (Oxford runs with military precision) for dinner. It was just like you imagine: everyone in robes, professors at the high table, grace rattled off in Latin...and unimpressive British food. But never mind that last bit. The whole thing was so darned cool to see.



After my friend had to take off for a dance rehearsal, I had an hour or so to kill before my train, so I wandered all around town just as it was getting dark. It was really something to see into the Bodleian from the outside and to observe how the character of the town changes at night after the tourists clear out, leaving the streets to industrious looking students and chavvy teenagers just bumming around, pretty much in equal parts.

It's days out like Thursday that make me realize how lucky I am to be here. The Brits would laugh at me for saying this, because it seems so ordinary to them, but train rides in particular are a sort of spiritual experience for me. I'm not sure why, but I think Britain truly looks its best through a train window. Plus, I love the idea of communal travel: it's so much more interesting to travel among a bunch of strangers (mainly ordinary, respectable looking folks, unlike with Amtrak at home) rather than being sealed off in car all alone. I also think it's hard to underestimate the power of public transport, along with the dominant habit of walking everywhere here, for building a national identity. I see so many more people on any given day here -- just passing them on the street or sitting next to them on a bus, for example -- than I ever would at home. You get a real feeling of being a small part of something bigger. I think America (well, the non-urban parts) could use a dose of that.

My observations are running a little long tonight! I'll cut it out with the words and leave you with some pictures. Click here to see an album that includes pics from Oxford. Happy weekend to all!

I'm um, y'know, famous.

I got my 15 minutes of fame this morning on BBC Radio Bristol, talking to Trevor Fry about my impressions as a "young American in Britain" of the Pope's recent visit to the States. Luckily, I didn't say anything overly stupid, and therefore I don't mind letting you have a listen to a replay of the show if you're interested. Click here to get to the BBC Radio Faith page. Then click on the "listen again" button in the top right corner of the page. Once the broadcast opens, click ahead 15 minutes at a time until your get to the 3 hour 45 minute mark. You'll have to listen to a cheesy oldies song and directions to a garden show for a couple minutes, but then I'll come on. Try to ignore how many times I say "you know." Although I don't think I provided SW England with any particularly profound insight, it was pretty neat to get to see the inside of the BBC building and meet a local radio celeb -- especially cool because I listened to Trevor Fry's morning show all summer before moving to Bristol to get a taste of the local flava. And now I know that he is a very friendly middle-aged guy with long highlighted and straightened hair.


Girls' night out at Po Na Na

Not much else to report for the moment. I'm locked in mortal combat with an essay due Friday, and about to make my opening sallies against another one due the same day. It's a terrible time of year to have to be chained to the computer, as thing are really starting to get springy here in Bristol. I went for a run yesterday afternoon, and when I got to the Downs I found that the whole town had been out playing football, having picnics, and patronizing the ice cream man in the gorgeous 70 degree weather without me...what gives?? Anyway, after this Friday, hopefully I'll be up there right along with them.

You snooze, you lose.

I'm taking a few minutes out from research at the library to post this afternoon, hoping that it will wake me up from a literary-theory induced stupor. Although I would be more productive if I could stay awake, it's been nice to switch gears and get back into the business of essay-writing today after a week of obsessing over a presentation yesterday. All of us MA's have to make a 15-minute presentation this week on our plans for our dissertations. The scary part is that they are in front of the whole classics faculty (well, supposedly -- in practice it's really just the 6 or 8 who can be bothered to show up) and all the other postgrads, and we are, of course, subject to the dreaded Q&A period at the end. Those two aspects have been enough to get all of us suitably stressed, and I'd put everything else pretty much on hold until I got through mine. The title of my paper (and working title for my dissertation) was "Augustine against the Clock: Time, Language and the Economics of Salvation." I think it went about as well as could be expected, and people seemed positive about my ideas.

I had a good excuse to take the night off yesterday because a friend from Edinburgh is in town doing a short course at the uni. We went to a pub I like in Clifton Village and had a lovely time catching up. Not to depreciate all of his other charming personal attributes, I must note that spending a few hours listening to his Aberdeen accent was music to my ears! The posh South of England accent is fine, but it just doesn't stir the soul in the same way, evoking the sound of bagpipes in the distance...a sip of aged single-malt...the low of a hairy coo...OK, I'll cut it out.

In other news, I have another speaking engagement coming up, this one much less stressful! I'm going to be on a faith chat show on Radio 1 on Sunday morning, because they want to hear an American's impression on the Pope's visit to the States. I'm very happy to oblige, and there will be lots to say about such a successful visit and the positive benefits I think we'll see from it. More on that later, if I don't say anything stupid that makes me want to forget the experience entirely, which, knowing myself, is a very distinct possibility!

I'll take what I can get.

On the roof of the Duomo, before the weather went south.

I'm back to work in Bristol this weekend after five days in Italy that were not exactly what I had in mind -- but that wasn't a bad thing, in the end. The staples of my itinerary -- the wheres and whens -- held firm, but the whats and hows evaded my control.

I flew into Milan on Sunday night and after two bus rides and a lot of confused wandering, I eventually found my hostel in the back of an apartment block across the street from the biggest disco in the city. The weather was glorious on my first day in the city -- 60 degrees and brilliantly sunny -- and, having seen the foreboding forecast for the rest of the week, I rearranged my plans in order to make the most of it. After Mass inside the Duomo, I climbed up to the top and walked around on the roof, and got my first and only clear view of the Alps in the distance, complete with snow-capped peaks. then I walked south to Ambrose's Basilica, where in the crypt I found, to my surprise, that the remains of SS. Ambrose, Gervasius and Protasius took the rather surprising form of full skeletons dressed in bishops' robes, exposed to full view. I'd expected little boxes full of bone fragments, bits of skin, etc., as you usually find, so it was a bit of a shock. Continuing the patristic theme of the day, after lunch, I took the train to Pavia, a little town about 30 minutes SW of Milan to find the church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, which houses St. Augustine's remains (imported there from North Africa by officious bishops fleeing the barbarians). Tiny, medieval Pavia was a nice setting for an afternoon wander, and I stopped and had a rest and a gelato before heading over to the church. You would never find the church if you weren't looking for it: it's tucked away in the corner of a little square a block or so behind a main road, and I'm sure doesn't attract much accidental tourist traffic. I spent a while in the church, then wandered around town a bit more and came back for Mass later in the evening before heading back to Milan.

Unfortunately, by the next morning, I couldn't ignore that I actually was sick (it happens so rarely that I had been in denial) and the rain had started that wouldn't end for the rest of the trip. Still, neither of these factors slowed me down much, partly because I am both stubborn and cheap, and partly because really, the experience of travel is always rewarding in itself, even when the run of my days doesn't turn out to be particularly guidebook-worthy.

Accordingly, the next three days are best recollected through highlights. Such as: Roman ruins at the Museo Archeologico. A very pleasant evening with a Canadian hairstylist I met at the hostel, spent over a very fine aperitivo and an appalling Chinese-Italian dinner. The views on the train ride south to La Spezia, although I could hardly stay awake. The hike along the cliffs overlooking the Ligurian Sea from Riomaggiore to Vernazza, mostly in the rain. A solitary happy hour spent writing postcards in Vernazza. A consolation, comfort-food dinner of pesto pasta, red wine and an incredible tiramisu when sprinkles turned to a downpour in Monterosso. A long, hot shower with deliciously strong water pressure on arriving back in my very own hotel room in La Spezia. The sheer black humor of arriving in Lake Como and being unable to see the lake, much less the Alps, for the thick grey clouds enshrouding the entire region. An afternoon wander (in the rain, of course) through town and dinner at a pizzeria with an Australian meteorologist in Menaggio. Seeing Mantegna's Cristo Morto in the Pinacoteca di Brera after abandoning Como as a lost cause and heading back to Milan. Emerging from the metro and walking straight into a six-inch pool of water that left me soaked to the knees, and laughing along with the group of schoolkids who saw me do it. Another consolation meal served by a typically flirtatious young waiter the afternoon I left as the light rain became torrential yet again.


Manarola, gorgeous in any weather.

In short, it was an unexpected, exhausting, very wet, and ultimately very good few days. You can see it in pictures here. And now, I'm home for a good long while. EasyJet, don't even tempt me with your sales.

Have tickets, will travel.

Funny thing about being in possession of plane tickets: I find it extraordinarily difficult to resist the temptation to use them. I know that in my last post I was quite clear that I wanted nothing more than to stay home and become a complete bookworm for the next month or so. Nevertheless, I bought cheap EasyJet tickets to Milan last month for April 6-11, and although just a few days ago I'd resolved to cut my losses and stay home and study, I'm going to be on that plane Sunday evening.

For the record, I've definitely thought through this decision, and I've at least managed to convince myself that it won't actually be irresponsible to jet off to Italy for a week. I've only been home a few days from Liverpool, but I've gotten a lot of work done, mostly because my social life has completely evaporated. The University won't be back in session until April 21, so my coursemates and most my friends from the house are away for quite a while. There's nothing like coming home from the library every day at dinner time and then facing another six or seven hours of solitary time before bed to convince me to get the heck out of my house for a week while I have the chance! I'll be traveling solo, but I always have a big time meeting people in hostels, and I hope the situation will be the same on this trip.

Speaking of which, I have it all planned out: it's going to be a five-day, part classics field trip, part scenic hiking excursion. I'll spend the first two days in Milan, mostly looking at fourth-century goodies -- the Basilica Ambrosiana, containing both Ambrose's remains and those of SS. Gervasius and Protasius (which he placed there), other churches from the same period, and lots of mosaics and other ancient artifacts -- and then go down to the Cinque Terre for a day of hiking between the little villages hanging off the cliffs. Finally, I'll go up to Lake Como for the last couple of days and spend the night in a little town on the centre of the lake called Menaggio and spend some time hiking at the base of the Alps in that area. The pictures I've seen are stunning, and I hope they're true to life!

Although a bit lonely, life is still good in Bristol at the moment, but I'm glad to have a fun week away to look forward to. I should know by now that the travel bug doesn't go into remission for long.

Culture is as culture does.

I'm very happy to be writing from Bristol tonight after a long weekend in Liverpool for the annual Classical Association conference. The conference itself was pretty good, and it was a fun weekend, don't get me wrong; the fun just came from different places than we students had imagined. Expectations were high because Liverpool has recently been crowned European Capital of Culture for 2008, and we were looking forward to spending our free time touring the docks and browsing through galleries and museums. Through no fault of Liverpool's, the weather pretty much put the kibosh on those plans. Apart from brilliant sunshine as we arrived and left the city, the weekend was solid rain, varying from annoying sprinkles to a full-on downpour complemented by high winds that washed out our free afternoon yesterday. So, if you want an assessment of Liverpool as a cultural Mecca, I can only say that if by culture, you mean vast quantities of mediocre coffee and cheap wine, then Liverpool has a lot to offer.

The weekend did feature one genuinely impressive cultural experience. The conference dinner on Friday night was held at Liverpool Cathedral (Anglicans apparently don't mind allowing crowds of indeterminate religious persuasions to chow down in their sanctuary, apparently, if they can cough up the appropriate fee). The Cathedral is absolutely massive and looks ancient (that is, less than a millennium later than anything classicists study) although it's actually a Gothic revival, finished in the 1970s. Everyone came all fancied up for an opening wine reception, after Robert Harris (author of Pompeii, Imperium, and other historical novels) gave a very good presidential lecture, in the very back of the Cathedral. Afterwards, we proceeded to our tables in the sanctuary proper for a three course dinner with a more bizarre program of entertainment. After the main course, a hush fell over the crowd as a man and a woman in dressed in gold-and-silver ornamented robes came striding slowly and deliberately down the aisles, addressing to the audience in measured and mellifluous tones what was, by general consensus of the diners, absolute crazy talk -- distinctly creepy pronouncements about love, marriage, sex, childbearing, etc. We soon took note of little notecards on our tables that clued us in to the explanation that these were a husband-and-wife team giving a realistic performance of ancient Sumerian proverbs, shortly to be followed by a performance on the Golden Lyre of Ur. Somehow this did nothing to mitigate the creepiness of the situation which only intensified during the lyre playing and a monologue in which the woman acted out participation in a mass suicide. The conference organizer was heard to be apologizing profusely to as many tables as he could when dessert was finally, mercifully served. A fantastic demonstration of the Cathedral's organ after dessert went a long way towards taking our minds off the earlier entertainment, and we all left in good spirits. (For those of you keeping track at home, I would put the evening's programme somewhere in the top 10 on the list of Things That Would Only Happen in a Catholic Church Over the Pope's Dead Body).

In any case, the Cathedral was a pretty impressive backdrop for the conference dinner, such as it was. The weekend went downhill in the culture department from there. We students (there were four of us total, and we had a great time together) bravely ventured out into the downpour yesterday afternoon to go get a look at the Albert Dock area, but by the time we made it to the city centre, we were soaked head to toe despite umbrellas and ducked into a huge shopping mall to wait out the rain. After some dry-sock shopping and a greasy cup of coffee, we did finally make it to the waterfront and walked through the Tate Modern, but weren't overly impressed with the whole area. Luckily, though, by the time we left the museum, it was a respectable hour of day to commence what one must always turn to when weather and culture fail: eating and drinking as a form of entertainment. We knew just where to turn: a friend and I had had a delicious meal at a cute French bistro on our first night in town, so we hiked back up the hill and had a long, warm, dry, relaxing, fun meal, then continued the festivities at a pub in town with another friend. We ended the evening with spontaneous stops at a kebab shop and (enticed by free drink coupons) a dingy club populated by freshers from Liverpool University. It may not have been classy, but it was our best night in the city.

So, grateful for my first-conference experience and a taste of the Capital of Culture, I am even more thrilled to be relaxing in my own room tonight in lovely, lovely Bristol. I'm glad to be done with traveling for a while, but I have enjoyed noticing that every time I return home that I've become even more attached to the city. What's more, I'm absolutely stoked (and I am not kidding) to be able to throw myself into a straight month of uninterrupted work starting tomorrow morning after all the stressful distractions of the past six months. I've almost forgotten what it's like to work with a clear head.

Entertaining pics of Liverpool later. But now, I'm going to bed.

I'll have the fish I can't pronounce, si vous plait.

Glow-paint party!

Even though I've already told some of you about it, I want to write about an event from last weekend that I still can't quite wrap my mind around.

Living in England, I don't have many moments of profound culture shock. There are the general differences in landscape, accent, culinary tastes, etc., that I still take some notice of, but for the most part I spend my time around students and average joes, and students and average joes tend to be more or less the same all over.

But when I have, a couple of times, been thrown into the heady stratosphere of upper class British intellectual culture, I realize pretty quickly that I am out of my element, and not just because I'm American. Case in point: the occasion of the Friends of Herculaneum Society meeting in Bristol last Saturday. An email went around to the classics postgrads saying that the dean of the school, the president of the society, had invited any of us who were interested to attend as his personal guests (i.e., free). I jumped at that opportunity, enticed by a lecture on Roman public libraries and a showing of clips from a new documentary on the excavation of Herculaneum. So I showed up on Saturday, and in between the lectures, I helped two of my friends serve tea, biscuits and wine to the old rich folks in attendance. As a sort of payment for our services, the dean invited us to come out to dinner with him, the presenters, and a couple of the other members whom we vaguely understood to be Big Deals.

We went to a French restaurant (the name of which I still can't pronounce) up Whiteladies Road that I hadn't noticed before, probably because my food-and-beverage radar tends not to pick up places that far out of my price range. I was the last to hand my coat to the waitress at the door, and I watched in slow motion as everyone else seated themselves, leaving one open place exactly in the middle of the table surrounded by the dean, the presenters, and two other men who looked intimidatingly familiar with this sort of dining establishment. I gave the old social skills a quick pep talk and went into the fray.

There come certain moments in life when it is best to accept the fact that it is flatly impossible to impress one's dining companions as much more than a caveperson who drinks 2.99 wine selected by Sainsbury's and cannot read French to save her derriere. At such moments, one must suppress her suddenly overwhelming appetite for a chicken fried steak and a PBR and embrace her own boorishness. She must forge ahead in any way she can, and hope that the multiple vintages of fine wine on the table will aid her neighbors in soothing the sensibilities that she will no doubt violently offend.

So I sat down and put my napkin in my lap. I introduced myself to the silver-haired man on my left, who turned out to be a recently retired Oxford professor of archaeology who still manages the Lincoln College faculty wine cellar of 13,000 bottles and whose wife, also a connoisseur, has written dozens of entries for the Oxford Companion to Wine. He very capably advised the dean as to which wines were the most likely to be pleasing to our whole table. Red and white both, of course (a given when you begin with the fish bisque and then "go on" to the filet). Across from me was the Roman libraries lecturer, who had the best-cared-for fingernails I have ever seen on a human being. I mean smooth, rounded, with perfect cuticles merging into painstakingly moisturized skin. It was hard not to stare. He looked quite awkward, left out of conversations on either side, and I figured that then was a good a time as any to reveal my breathtaking ignorance and ask a question about his presentation. We ended up having a nice chat about Roman reading audiences and books we'd read lately, and I learned he went to the same (posh) secondary school that features in Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club, which I'm currently working on. On my right, I met an Oxford papyrologist with an American accent, with whom the indispensable line, "I must confess I know nothing about (x)..." once again came in extremely handy. We ended up having more in common than I thought, though: his first two degrees were from the University of Nebraska, one of which was in English, so I had a little something to go on.

I am proud to say that I conducted parts of these conversations while digging mussels out of their shells with a fork (it looked less feasible yet more appropriate to use the spoon provided, but the papyrologist was going at them with a fork, so I took that as permission) and intermittently washing fish juice off my hands in my own little finger bowl of tepid water. And then, when the time came, I "went on" to ox cheeks (a bargain at 18 pounds). I thought better of inquiring as to which set of cheeks I had the pleasure of sampling, but they were tasty, and the Roman librarian thought they stood up quite well to the boar's cheeks he'd eaten in South Africa recently!

I have to say that I completely enjoyed the evening, start to finish, and that everyone there was extremely nice. Still, I couldn't take a bit of it seriously, my predominant thought being, "is this really my life?" It was equally inconceivable that I had somehow landed in that situation and that everyone around me seemed to find nothing extraordinary about it. I found myself memorizing every detail so I could tell a good story in an email to Dee and on the blog. The whole experience went in the "remember-for-future-novel" file rather than the "remember-in-order-to-look-posh-at-future-dinners file." And of that, I'm not ashamed. If you ever catch me eating ox cheeks (either set) with a straight face, I would appreciate it if you could remind me to lighten up. If you're going to spend (or have someone spend on you) 40 pounds for dinner, you should at least savor the full entertainment value.

Proud to be 100% pure human.

It's been a good couple of weeks for life here in Bristol. Last Tuesday night at the Chaplaincy, a professor of neuroscience from the university came to give us a talk on stem cells, an event that's been in the works since our pro-life society got started last term. The professor presented in a very accessible manner the science behind embryonic and adult stem cell research. Encouragingly, even pro-choice scientists in this country and elsewhere are beginning to recognize that embryonic stem cell research is not nearly as promising as was thought a few years ago, and as alternative, non-life threatening methods have been developed to achieve identical ends, these same scientists have begun to class embryo destruction as unethical, independent of any particular religious ideas.

I don't think I've written specifically on the blog before about some of the scary research that will in all likelihood be authorized by Parliament not long from now. Here's one particularly upsetting proposal: legalizing the creation of embryos that would be 99% human, 1%...not human. That is, a human nucleus would be implanted in some sort of animal egg -- cow, sheep, gorilla, whatever -- and a new being would be created. What exactly this mostly-human would look like would never be known, because by law all such embryos would have to be destroyed within two weeks, in the process of being plundered for stem cells (such a strange hybrid would probably not be viable in the long-term, anyhow). Sound ethical to you?

It's amazing to me that the vast majority of the British public is content to let this sort of legislation pass into law unopposed, and that there is equally little objection to the state-funded embryonic stem cell research already ongoing. I'm relieved that things have not gotten so far in the States, and I hope encouraging even a small group of students to sit up and take notice of affronts to life in the UK will make a difference here in the future.

I've got nothing but time, Part II.

I want to revisit a topic I blogged about a couple of weeks ago. I wrote a pretty intense post about how having an unusually light schedule, and a lot of unstructured time as a result, was really freaking me out. Over the years, I have become convinced that you are what you read, and that post proves the point in my case. My thoughts about time have been heavily influenced and directed by reading a lot of St. Augustine and forming my dissertation topic around this very issue. For Augustine, the clock is always audibly ticking away the minutes and seconds of his very finite time on earth, at the same time reminding him of the hope of eternal joy and the terror of eternal suffering. The decisions we make about how we spend even the smallest portions of our days determine towards which one of these polar opposites we direct ourselves and others. In short, I'm not sure Augustine would be a fun guy to go on vacation with.

Augustine's thinking on time strikes me as both utterly terrifying and resoundingly true. Both of these reactions have led me to develop a plan for a dissertation examining the sense of urgency resulting from his conception of time that pervades his writing. I'm taking as my starting point one of his early works, On Christian Teaching, a treatise in two parts on how one should first go about learning to read and interpret the scriptures and then begin to instruct others towards understanding them. One reason I've chosen this topic is that it presents me with an unusual challenge: to become a ruthlessly efficient time manager as I research and write. Augustine's big on practicing what he preaches, and if I continue in my usual time-wasting habits I'll simply and blatantly be missing the point of my research. Staring for hours at single lines and paragraphs, taking facebook and tea breaks when I'm meant to be reading, getting sleepy at the library and coming home for a power nap -- these will all have to go. If I find myself falling into my old ways, I'll see Augustine shaking his finger down on me.

As I write this, I fully anticipate the usual comments about Catholic guilt and needing to lighten up a bit. I also see the potential pitfalls of becoming highly personally involved in a topic, to the point where academic objectivity may become difficult to maintain. These are occupational hazards of being a Catholic writing on patristic texts that have become both a challenge and a joy to grapple with on a daily basis. It is true that I am constantly overwhelmed by my own frailty, inadequacy and sinfulness as I read early Christian texts. It is also true that I have been just as overwhelmed by a sense of peace and liberation at being so frequently humbled, which I am sure has made me a much better student. Augustine reminds me every day that learning simply for the sake of becoming knowledgeable is nonsense; even more, he warns me away from the danger of becoming "puffed up" by knowledge that I obtain through God's grace alone. I am so often surrounded by academic vanity that sucks the wonderment out of learning, and I am always grateful to have my own wonderment preserved when I am reminded of my own ignorance and insignificance. It makes feeling stupid (a regular occurrence) feel less frustrating and more purposeful, and it helps me to respond with gratitude to little successes. Really, everything I know about being a happy and effective student I learned from St. Augustine.

And now I've gone and gotten all heavy on you again, and on a Friday night! Sorry if this has been a little on the intense side, but it really is a snapshot of a lot of what's been going on in my brain for the past year or so.

In a last-ditch effort to inject some fun into this post, I'll do a quick Valentine's Day report. I honestly can't remember having a more fun February 14 (and it got more fun once it turned into the 15th). Here at the chaplaincy, Laura made a fantastic dinner of paella and two different kinds of cakes. The two significant others of our coupled housemates were there, and it was an especially festive meal with 15 of us crowded around the table. Afterwards, the girls switched into party mode and mixed some pink martinis, broke out some strawberries and peaches and whipped cream, and played truth-or-dare Jenga while simultaneously having one of our patented dance parties. Then we headed out to Thekla for my favorite indie club night and danced our rear ends off 'til the wee hours. Here's a picture that pretty well sums up the night:

More pics on my photo site if you're interested, some picturing the guest of honor at our V-Day celebration, Mr. Darcy. OK, that's it for now. Thanks for reading, and happy weekend!

Please disregard the following advice.

Today, instead of our usual departmental seminar, we M.A. students had a group meeting with Bristol's Writer in Residence, who had agreed to come in to give us some tips on writing essays. I will admit my snobbishness up front: I have a firm set of ideas about essay-writing that have been working quite well for me, and I was skeptical about how useful the session was going to be.

Unfortunately, not-helpful doesn't even begin to describe the advice we got. A few of the major points Bristol University is paying this man to teach its students:

1. Don't use the passive "tense". (This is being picky -- but if the university expert on writing can't get it right, where are we?)
2. What's the best way make your writing compelling? Use more polemic. If you don't really have much ground to stand on, just be really aggressive and offensive and at least you will shock your reader. (I'm quite sure this is the only time I've ever heard the word polemic used in a positive sense.)
3. The key to writing a successful conclusion: introduce new problems. E.g., "As I have shown, Augustus was the greatest emperor in Roman history. But...what about Constantine??? The End." This is an important tip because, "if you just state your thesis and then make your argument, well, that's a little boring, isn't it?"
4. "As someone famous, whose name I forget, once said, 'Kill your babies.'" (Again, maybe a little picky: but "Kill your darlings" is one of my favorite writing mantras, and I think it's fair to expect a novelist to get it right. His version just sounds like Swift without the irony. Watching a roomful of people copy it down made me want to eat my pencil.)

I'll quit ranting now because it makes me feel like a jerk. But, I care a lot about good writing, and, seriously: it's bad enough when people are allowed to graduate from college not knowing how to express themselves in print, but when this is the sort of thing we get from the professionals hired to solve the problem, we're really in a state.

This one's for the girls.

The girls of the Chaplaincy, minus two

Living with a ton of great girls was one of the best parts of my undergrad experience, and I'm realizing more all the time that I've been incredibly lucky in the same respect this year. There were six of us up to a week ago, but now we have a seventh, an Italian girl who lived here last year and is back indefinitely while she looks for work. Getting to know these girls, hanging out with them, and simply knowing they're around all the time has been one of the best parts of my year here.

A group of girls living together, I think, is always like a little family, even when there are guys in the house, too. There will always be at least one "mom" -- for you Sellardites reading, the Maria of the group who will iron your skirt, give you hugs and backrubs, and most importantly, has an extraordinarily high tolerance for whining. There will be the party girl(s), the quiet one(s), the chatty one(s), the high maintenance one(s), the no-nonsense one(s) and the slacker(s). There will be pairs and little groups that have especially strong connections, often among personality types you would never put together. Despite these differences and various relationships, if you're lucky, there is a larger, inseparable Girl Unit. You may only really notice it every now and then, maybe when the going gets tough for a couple of its members or when the weekend rolls around, but you always have the comfort of knowing it's there.

I asked a male friend one time whether he was glad he was a guy or would rather be a girl. He shocked me by answering he'd never thought about it. Maybe it's something girls are especially given to pondering. Some days it would be a lot easier to be a guy, for all kinds of reasons that don't need enumerating. But I also think it would be lonelier, and for myself, I wouldn't trade. I've never seen a guy bring another guy a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits because he's had a bad day, and I've never seen a group of guys out having cocktails on Valentine's day to celebrate their singleness. I'm sure there's a certain satisfaction in being macho, but I think real guys' guys miss out on a lot.

So, here's to my girls, near and far. I don't know what I'd do without you.

Providence, indeed.

There have been some big updates on my calendar this week. First, I have a date in Rhode Island in mid-March, and more importantly, I'll be back in Kansas for Holy Week and Easter! How lucky can I get?

It's also been one of those weeks where a few great people have appeared to provide inspiration, encouragement, and just plain happiness exactly when I needed it. Like Monday night: I was hosting my pro-life meeting in the chaplaincy, as usual, and none of my few regulars showed up, for various reasons. I was feeling pretty down until a new friend came along, a guy who isn't quite ready to take a firm anti-abortion stance but cared enough about life to come along and talk about the issues. He turned out to be just the right person to help me set aside a lot of frustration and get re-focused, and he completely turned my day around, right out of the blue.

Yesterday, I walked down to the city centre for my appointment to apply for a National Insurance Number, which I'll need in order to get a job. It turned out to be the highlight of my day. Two people interviewed me, one woman and one older man in his first week on the job who was sitting in as part of his training. They had to take information from a whole pile of documents I'd brought in, and the process should have been dry and bureaucratic, but it turned out to be relaxing and fun. The man told me stories about his other jobs as a part-time engineering lecturer and his travels in the U.S., and when another woman came in to look over my paperwork we all got to talking about how lovely Edinburgh is and how she and I have the same name (which should always be spelled with an "e" at the end). I felt like I'd made three new friends when I left.

Tonight I cooked dinner for the house plus the younger sister of my housemate Laura, an adorable red-haired second-year named Emily who has become my adopted little sister for the year. I very courageously made beef stroganoff (a new and fairly complicated recipe for me -- I actually marinaded steak strips in white wine), which was a big hit, although I practically destroyed the kitchen. It was a fun, sociable dinner, and I got to have a nice chat with Emily as she helped me do all the masses of washing up.

So, those have been the high points of the week, and I'm happy to have a couple more to look forward to in the weeks to come. Back to the books, now, to see what further inspiration I can dig up.

Shakin' it.

As promised, I've been making the most of my cushy new schedule this teaching block and having some fun this weekend. I reached a milestone this week by doing what I always made fun of the business school kids and Greeks for doing at KU: I began the weekend on a Thursday. Shock horror. We went to a very cool indie-electro night at this club called Thekla, which is actually a ship in the floating harbour. On Friday we switched it up and went to Brazilian Beatz, a monthly event featuring a capoeira troupe, carnaval dancers, and reggae music upstairs.


Brazilian Beatz night


Girlies at Thekla

Just to keep up appearances, I guess I should write a little about non-bar-related activities which, believe it or not, are still occupying most of my time. I started the unit I've really been looking forward to, "Classics, Myth and Modernism," this week. The professor is one of the most genuinely intimidating people I've run into in a while, but she's not actually hostile (although not one of those just-a-teddy-bear-underneath types, either). That's OK -- it's always a good thing to be kept on your toes. I've been revisiting lots of the modernists, with a heavier dose of theory this time, and reading lots about myth and psychoanalysis. I'm currently failing to be convinced by Joseph Campbell's argument that all religions and mythologies are oh, all just the same thing, really, but at the same time enjoying reading lots of good stories about gods eating people, etc., in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. And, in a burst of naive optimism, I've re-begun Ulysses, which (let's be honest) will probably be flung at the wall sometime in the next 12 to 24 hours and set aside for another 2-year cooling-off period.

I don't have too much else to report on at the moment, but here are a few pics of some recent fun times. Happy weekend to all!

I've got nothing but time.

This week was the first of the new teaching block and of my unbelievably wide open new schedule. I have no class between 11 a.m. Wednesday and 4 p.m. Monday. How is that possible? Of course, that doesn't mean tons of free time as much as it means tons of time that I'm going to have to be really disciplined about using well. Still -- if anybody wants to go dancing, say, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and/or Saturday, I may very well be game.

It's both exciting and uncomfortable having so much unstructured time to deal with -- both during my weeks this term and in and the gigantic, gaping T.B.A. hole of life beyond Sept. 15. But I think it's a good exercise in figuring out how, exactly, I plan to justify my existence from here on out. Being busy can serve as a cop-out from dealing with big, scary existential questions sometimes -- if you can't afford to slow down and think about anything but work and the basics of life, you can ignore the big picture and its scary and unattractive features. Stop to catch your breath, though, and it hits you full in the face. It's all very well to fantasize during stressful times about what you would do with a big chunk of free time, but once it's handed to you, I don't think it's an unnatural impulse to want to hand it right back because it can be so intimidating. Time is a frighteningly valuable commodity, and as with all valuable commodities, it's easier to squander in little bits than in large quantities. Sitting on a larger-than-usual portion, the big question arises: what am I supposed to accomplish with my collected amount of time on earth -- the sum total of all the minutes, hours and days? And with the question comes the warning: if I haven't started yet -- if I don't start now -- I probably never will.

This is the heavy stuff that's been occupying my brain for the past week, and I've made some good resolutions as a result. I think I've been given these few months as a challenge, and I'm excited to see the outcome.

I'm getting a little queasy.

I handed in my Late Antiquity essay yesterday morning, and after a beer and a burger with some girls on my course, a long nap, and a couple hours' blissfully undisturbed reading of Middlemarch (I'm halfway through after four months -- maybe I'll finish it at about the same time as my dissertation?) I'm feeling utterly mentally stable.

I survived this week unscathed (well -- I should wait to see my essay mark before going that far), but some others I've been surrounded with haven't been so lucky. In fact, I've had more direct and indirect contact with blood and guts this month than I ever have.

First, Prudentius' martyrs. I've read some gory Latin in my day, but nothing to compare to this. It's conventional Christian wisdom that the glory of a martyr increases in direct proportion to his suffering, and in the Peristephanon, Prudentius does his best to prove the point.

Take, for example, the scalping of a little boy who precociously professes his faith in Per. 10:

comam cutemque verticis revulserat
a fronte tortor, nuda testa ut tegmine
cervicem adusque dehonestaret caput

The torturer pulled back the hair and skin from his brow,
so that the skull, laid bare without its covering
down to the neck, would dishonor the head. (Per. 10.761-3)

And then, later, his mother's reaction at his decapitation:

manusque tendebat sub ictu et sanguine,
venarum ut undam profluam manantium
et palpitantis oris exciperet globum:
excepit, et caro adplicavit pectori.

And she held out her hands under the blow and the blood,
so that she might catch the stream flowing from his dripping veins
and his head, with lips still breathing:
she caught, it, and pressed it dearly to her breast. (Per. 10.841-4)

Makes it a little hard to focus on the glory of God, doesn't it?

The gore has also been brought a little closer to home recently due to a freak accident here in Clifton. When Dee was here, he and I were walking down Park St. on the way to the train station one morning, not paying much attention to what was happening on the street, when suddenly, right in front of the post office, I stepped in a huge pool of human blood. Like, a good gallon or so of really thick, fresh stuff, of about ketchup thickness. I looked up in horror to find that we'd walked right through an accident scene, so new it hadn't been properly cordoned off, and there was a guy with his head cracked open being loaded into an ambulance right next to me.

Well, we didn't stop to rubberneck, and went on to the station. When we came back at the end of the day, you couldn't tell anything had happened. I didn't think much about the incident again until yesterday, when I picked up a copy of the student paper and found the headline Triangle Brain Damage Tragedy and a picture of a police officer standing outside the post office. The article made it clear that the accident was the one I'd walked through. Turns out stonework was being done on top of the building, and a brick fell 50 ft. and hit a chemistry Ph.D. student from Syria on the head. Someone noticed him lying there bloodied and called an ambulance, and he's been in the hospital unconscious ever since -- over two weeks now. If he ever wakes up he'll have severe brain damage, and he doesn't even have any family in the country.

Pretty intense stuff. Sorry to gross you all out. Future reports should be less gruesome. I've had enough blood and guts for a while.

Who would've thought?

I really should be studying for tomorrow's Greek exam right now, but I'm feeling the need for quick blog break. It's the little breaks that are keeping me going through Friday -- the impromptu let-off-some-steam run, the trip downstairs every few hours to refresh the caffeine supply and maybe chat with a housemate, a few snatched pages from The Best American Essays of the Century while I'm waiting for my food to cook. I've got to get some more exciting vices.

The pressure is on with my Friday Late Antiquity essay deadline looming, but the research has been great fun. And I've reached a milestone in my academic career: the point where reading Latin has actually made my life easier. I wasn't sure I'd ever see the day. It happened this weekend when I dug up some of Augustine's sermons delivered on the feast days of various martyrs, English translations of which are hard to find and aren't available in the Arts and Social Sciences (ASS) Library (shocker). I was expecting to have to fight through the Latin, but it turned out to be easy (he's trying to reach the average Roman North African Joe, after all), and more to the point, beautiful -- I felt like I was in Augustine's congregation, laughing at his jokes and getting all fired up with the Holy Spirit along with everyone. I think this Latin stuff is starting to pay off.

Even though there's not much time to socialize at the moment, it's great to have almost everyone back in the house. We got some of the last few back yesterday, and you can really feel the difference in the house. We had our first dinner together tonight (Michelle was kind enough to trade cooking shifts with me so I could spend the whole afternoon studying), and we had a good laugh as we tried to decide who would be the tastiest human, if what you eat determines your flavor. Mark Mangino came up as a possible strong contender, and then we got to thinking about how big an oven you would need to --

But it's time to get back to work. I'll leave you to work out the rest of that problem yourselves.

Makin' the rounds.

After a long holiday spent traveling here, there, and everywhere, I'm back in Bristol and back down to business. Firstly: the break has been fantastic, and there's nothing better than spending time at home with family and friends and traveling to fun and exciting places. Secondly: coming back to Bristol after a couple weeks away has really shown me how much I love love love it here. I just feel all tingly sometimes walking around the city or coming through the door at home because I'm so lucky to be here. Two big thumbs up for Bristol and its lovely inhabitants.

But, back to my whirlwind past couple of weeks. Dee has been over here with me since the 30th, and we've had an awesome time touring the UK and hanging out here at home. We have definitely made the most of every day he's been here -- I can't remember two weeks when I've walked more! We started off spending about 24 hours in London after flying to Heathrow, and jet lag didn't even cross our minds -- we were out and about as soon as we'd ditched our stuff at the hotel in Bloomsbury. We both get a big kick out of all the dandy stuff in Piccadilly, so we headed there first, then headed to Mass at Brompton Oratory and had dinner in Chinatown. The next day we walked more around the center and saw the greatest hits of the Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, and the British Museum before getting the train back to Bristol on New Years Eve. New Years was pretty chill -- we had great pizza at Pizza Express and then came back and had mulled wine and watched about numbers 40-15 of the "Top 100 Most Annoying People of 2007" on the telly. I must be getting old.

It was a good thing we got to bed not long after midnight, because we were off to Cheltenham for the New Years Day races after a run the next morning. Neither of us knew quite what we were getting into at Cheltenham, but it really blew us away. We were probably some of the only foreigners there: it's definitely an old establishment thing, with most of the men in long tweed jackets and hats with binoculars around their necks and the women all poshed up in ladies' tweed, big Russian-style full hats, and (inexplicably, considering the cold and the mud) high heels. The place was packed full of thousands of people, and we saw seven steeplechase races on a gorgeous green course under the hills of Gloucestershire. We didn't put any money on our favorites, but we cheered hard for a horse called Wichita Lineman.



The next day we went to Bath, where we of course toured the Baths, walked up to the Royal Crescent and (major highlight) popped into the gift shop of the Jane Austen Centre to check out the Mr. Darcy range. I bought a greeting card featuring a portrait of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy that is awaiting installment in a gilt frame to be featured prominently on my wall!

Dee headed off to Cardiff on Thursday while I stayed home to atone for my pretty much complete neglect of my studies over the previous week. I'm in the middle of a lot of good reading right now for an essay on Prudentius' Peristephanon, a collection of poems on the martyr cult of the late 4th century, and loads of revision for my Greek test next week. When Dee came back we had a really nice dinner, provided by one of my housemates, of food she'd smuggled back from Romania -- it is absolutely amazing what she managed to get through customs!

And then, we were off to Paris the next morning! Hooray for EasyJet -- they make it simple to leave Bristol early in the morning and be strolling down the Champs by early afternoon. Wow. It was pedal-to-the-metal sightseeing from there, for four very full days. On Saturday, we checked an item off the top of my to-see list by taking the commuter train to Versailles. We had a sort of odd snafu getting onto a guided tour of some of the various Louis' private apartments, which at one point had us chasing through the palace complex after an extremely passive-aggressive desk worker who insisted a) that we were late for our tour (we weren't), and b) that there was a tour that we could catch up with if we ran like mad people through the palace and round Louis XIV's chapel (there plainly wasn't). Anyway: the apartments were quite impressive when we got to them two hours later! Other highlights of Paris included some very nice dinners in the Latin Quarter and a visit to the Museum of the Middle Ages, part of which is housed in an old Roman bath complex -- very neat.



The past couple of days has been more or less a marathon tete-a-tete with Plato (see, I learned some French while I was away) while Dee has seen more of the southwest, including Oxford. Sadly, he's off tomorrow morning, and even more sadly, I've just realized that the essay I thought was due Friday is due in tomorrow by noon, so our time together has been even further shortened (so why am I writing this blog entry right now? That is a very good question indeed!). Anyway, I'll get back to it. Sorry for the ridiculous length of this entry! To compensate for my wordiness, here are some pictures to go along with it. Happy New Year to all!