Sententiae Draconis

From my Rome class notes while discussing the Column of Marcus Aurelius (which is after Trajan's and pretty damn similar except for the fact that nobody cares about the Column of MA because T did it first - and, incidentally, better):

• two later columns in the same type and category from Istanbul - one of Theodosius and the other of Arcadius- to show that Constantinople had just as big a column - as it were

I'm glad I write these things in my notes. It makes it less boring to study. (Penis!)


Comp re-write is tomorrow.

DO NOT WANT.

My brain is filled with weird numbers and bits of information and buzz-words for the concepts in Art History that I don't really get and probably never will.

I feel like the penguin on top of your television set. (ie about to explode.)

Did you know that there was a timber amphitheatre in Silchester, England before they built the Colosseum in Rome?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!


Wish me luck.

My Roman Archaeology Comps are today.

Wish me Luck.



(Yes that's a Greek Hoplite in my icon. Honey Badger don't care!)

Today was a long day.

I had my Sanctuaries final this morning which is almost four hours of my life I'll never get back. It was pretty much exactly what I was expecting it to be, which doesn't mean that it was good. But it is was it is, and most importantly it's over.

So after that I rewarded myself with McDonalds for lunch and then headed to the bar with the crew to watch the Canucks-Hurricanes game, although I had to leave early to go and play my own hockey game.

Today was the last game before Christmas break for me (there's one next week too which I'll be missing), and it was a lot of fun. I ended up getting about 24 shots on net according to our score-keeper. Which is probably not counting all of them. For context this is on par with the number of shots which NHL goaltenders see in a typical game. Except that NHL games last much longer than ours do. The final score was 2-1 for them in the end (and the score-keeper said that we got 6 shots), but it was a good game. Needless to say I'm feeling tired. Also I got the Ice Bird which we hand out for player of the game every week!

Now I'm eating a whole box of Kraft Dinner from the pot with ketchup and hot dogs, because I'm classy like that. ;) And also watching the original Tron which is loads of fun. And soon there will be sleep.

And that is totally the best I have felt about a Greek exam all year! There were definitely some pieces where I didn't know for sure what was going on, but I knew exactly where each passage came from and what it was supposed to say, even if I wasn't sure about exact vocabulary or grammar. And this is the first Greek exam in a while where I haven't felt ignorant and overwhelmed while writing it.

I think this means I finally figured out how to study for this class! and of course it was for the last exam - *headdesk*. But I guess it's better late than never.

And now you won't have to hear me complain about Greek for at least another few years - if not ever again!

YAY!

1 class down, 3 to go!

Now that the day is (sort of) done, I've handed in two papers, and did my Translation assignment/presentation thing for Latin. I'm now done two of my five classes.

YAY!!!!

All that I have left for this term is my Greek exam (death), my paper and presentation (on the same subject) for Latin, and my Roman History Exam (I could write this in my sleep... and will still get a decent mark if I don't show up).

And to celebrate the last day of classes I am not going to do any schoolwork tonight!

I got smacked up-side the head with a cold sometime in the recent past.

I am not amused.

I'm stuffed up in the extreme and my throat is sore (although guzzling tea and grapefruit juice seems to help that at least). As a result I am not looking forward to my Roman History exam tomorrow. And I'm actively avoiding picking up my paper for that class or checking the mark online because I know that I did terribly and it was for my favourite Prof too...

Anyway, I'm not too worried about the exam because I am quite good at history and interested in the Romans.

But in any case what I would much rather be doing is planning my trip to Italy followed by a whirlwind tour of Europe before heading back here.

I have to be in Gravina on July 5th for the dig, and I think I might go a bit early and spend a few days in Rome beforehand. We finish up at the dig site around the 2nd of August (I think). And from there I think I'll head north, take in a few days in Paris and then head through the Chunnel to England. I have a few friends in London right now (and hopefully at least one of them will still be there in August and willing to let me sleep on their floor) and I want to check out London sights like the British Museum etc. Also I REALLY want to see the RSC's production of Hamlet with David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius.

So what I'd like to know from all of you well-traveled people is this: What do I absolutely have to see? What was the best piece of advice/thing that you learned from your traveling experiences? What am I missing? Also my itinerary is by no means set, so if think I absolutely MUST go to Germany (or you know, Switzerland, which is pretty much directly between Italy and France) please tell me why you think so! I just might end up doing something exciting. :)

And in other good news: I bought a new pair of Converse today! Which was necessary because my old pair has a hole in them and I want to be able to keep them around for longer without aggravating the hole by wearing them everyday. I was thinking about getting some low-tops, but they had purple high-tops in my size. The answer was clearly obvious. So now I have some Purple Converse High-tops with toes that are far too white, although I'm sure I'll change that soon enough.

So it turns out that I actually have five weeks of Midterms rather than four. I was supposed to have my Greek midterm on Wednesday, but Prof M forgot to tell the rest of the class after I talked to him about it and he figured out a date (right in front of me I might add). I asked today if we were still having the midterm on Wednesday because he hadn't mentioned it in a long time, and S made an exclamation of shock and worry. Prof M ended up holding his book over his face in shame. It was cute. He's wonderfully absent-minded-professorish. I like it best when he wears bow-ties. (Last Monday he'd gotten a haircut, so I mentioned it and we ended up starting off the class with him muttering about how there aren't any good barbers in town!)

I'd actually been hoping to get these things over with sooner rather than later, since the middle of term is actually long gone. But this is how things go. Le sigh.

At least he didn't forget to tell the rest of my Greek History class about the Midterm we're having tomorrow, so that's still a go. And I should go back to studying that.

ETA: Best typo from my Greek History Notes - "Sappho is participating in the conversation about Zeus as a comic, rational force in the world." I really meant "cosmic" but I kinda like the it the other way around...

Exams are done!!! I finished my Greek exam last night in the last time slot of the last day of exams. (creul) And I think that it went fairly well. As usual I suck at vocabulary, but I did do a bunch of studying for it with D before the exam and I think that helped. In any caseI didn't feel nearly as bad coming out of this one as I did for the final at the end of last term (and I got 77% on that one) so I'll be fine.

After the exam I went home and watched the Canucks-Dallas game. It was game 7 in their series (meaning that whoever won the game got the series too) and what a game. The First period wasn't so great, but we really got our wind in the 2nd and 3rd and then we just played really well. It was great to watch with excellent saves by both Marty Turco and my Hockey boyfriend Roberto Luongo. And we won! We got two powerplay goals after they scored the first goal of the game and then at the end of the 3rd we scored twice into their empty net when they pulled their goalie. It was so good!!

And now we're off to series 2 against the Anaheim Ducks, which makes me nervous, but I think we can do it!

Excitement!!!!!

In un-related news I start my job tomorrow. Getting awake and to campus for 8am is going to be exciting. Or something.

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I became the responsible one in my classes to whom people go when they need notes, or the page numbers for readings, or assignments, or ... you get the idea. Anyway, one of the guys who asks me for the homework on a fairly regular basis is P. P is kinda weird in that he went to the same high school as me (his twin brother was actually in my grade 11 French class) and this year he's come to the same university as me (half-way across the continent) and is in three of my five classes. I enjoy making fun of him for not getting as good marks as me, because we both know that he could be getting the same marks if he only did more work. I don't really feel too badly about giving him notes or homework, because I do see him on a regular basis and he knows that I'm doing him a big favour. Also I'm making him buy me a bottle of wine, since he offered to buy me one the last time I gave him a large chunk of our homework. I've also given notes and questions to another friend in my Classical Mythology class who got mono in the last month of classes.

On the other hand though is A. A is also in my Classical Mythology Class but I haven't actually seen her since the first day of classes all the way back in September. I know her from last year because we lived on the same floor o residence, and she was pretty cool but we were never really close friends. She, like me, also has a learning disability and since I type my notes we'd agreed that I would e-mail her my notes and she said she'd get me the forms so that Student Services would pay me for the service. However, as I said I haven't seen her for a long time, either in class or out, so I didn't send her my notes and she didn't ask me too either. Around December she sent me an e-mail asking for notes and information on the class assignments because apparently she's really sick and our Prof wasn't answering her e-mails (I'm not surprised about this, he didn't answer most of mine either). So I sent her the information, got an e-mailed thanks and didn't hear from her again until recently when she asked for the assignments for this term, again citing this unspecified sickness as the reason why she hasn't been in class. It's not that I don't think that she's sick, it's not that she doesn't think that this is a big favour (she's offered to take me out to coffee, but I don't think that I really want to go anyway). I just don't know if I think that I should give her the info. Part of me thinks that if she knew that she was too sick to go to class it probably would've been a better idea to take the year off. I mean she wasn't at any of the classes as far as I could tell. Admittedly I didn't go to all of them, nor did I scan everyone in the lecture hall to see if she was there, but she's a red-head and the hall wasn't that full, so I'm pretty sure I would've noticed her had she been there. Right now I'm just ignoring her e-mail and choosing to decide later, but what do you think I should do? I know that our Prof is terrible with communicating (except when he's lecturing, goo lecturer), I've experienced it first hand, but that doesn't mean that I'm responsible for helping A out when he's not doing his job.

So what should I do?

< / procrastinating from working on my Classical Mythology take-home exam>

And in one fell swoop three of my five classes this term are done.

Today I woke up early and studied for about an hour before my latin final, did the final (At least the sight passage will save me), went to lunch and finished my Greek Tragedies Paper (probably crap but still done! Ha!) then spent about half an hour memorizing my dialogue for my German Oral exam before doing said final, and then immediately going late to my last Classical Mythology class.

But now I have a beer and everything is done! Yeay!

(except I still have another final (but not until the 23rd) and a paper to do)