Thessaly's Tooth

I had to chip/melt a solid sheet of ice off the car yesterday before I could go to work. Winter seems to have started early this year, and is loathe to go anywhere anytime soon.
Other people post on their blogs what books they are reading, or have book blogs, or discuss other interesting book-related topics. But not me. Now, I supposedly love to read, and spent the vast majority of my childhood either reading or wishing I were reading.
Unfortunately, in my latter years, I seem to have a hard time finishing books. If a book is more than 350 pages long or so, there is very little chance I’ll ever finish it. Usually by the middle of a long book, I’ve forgotten what happened at the beginning and who half the characters are, and am completely at sea as to what it’s all about. I could start over again, but it’s too familiar to be entertaining, and feels like a chore and a waste of time, so I just give up.
I think my years in graduate school have contributed to my inability to finish books. In graduate school one never reads a book, there just isn’t time. An article, maybe, if it’s short and seems to contain enough information to make it worth your while. Also, most of them are far too boring to actually read. Instead, one frantically skims through the assigned readings at top speed, attempting to extract all significant nouns and concepts, scribbling brief notes which you then memorize for the exam and forget immediately afterwards.
This leads to a habit of reading quickly and shallow-ly, and forgetting immediately anything that you will not later be tested on. Reading like this takes a lot of the fun out of books read for enjoyment, and perhaps accounts for much of my literary amnesia.
Anyway, here are some of the books I’ve half-read recently:
The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien. The first half was very good, even better than the movie. Though the dark cloud which blotted out the day in the book gives a rather sinister cast to the dim miasma we’ve had as weather around here recently. Someday I’ll finish this one–I’ve got to find out: is the Ring destroyed? Or does Sauron win in the end? I mean, I know what happens in the movie, but maybe the story was just happy-ed up for Hollywood like the cartoon Hunchback of Notre Dame and that one about the Romanovs.
Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray. Everybody loves Becky Sharp, it seems, but I don’t yet. Of course, I’m less than a quarter of the way through. The Victorians had plenty of time to read, apparently. Maybe I’ll just Netflix it. The title brings to mind another book I’ve never finished, The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan. I’ve read the Christian half a couple of times, but don’t think I’ve ever made it through Christiana, despite it having been intended as more accessible to weaker vessels such as myself.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling. This one doesn’t really count since I’d read it before, and started it again right after seeing the movie so I could compare. I abandoned it for Vanity Fair, which I still have not given up on by the way.
There are more, but that’s enough for now. I’ll see you…(soon? on the flip side? later, alligator?) And have a nice (day? Christmas? trip, see you next fall?)
The world may never know…

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m trying to review all the stuff I’ve ever learned about the Ancient Near East in preparation for this class next semester. In doing so, I’ve begun to wonder if there’s something essentially wrong with the way my memory works.
I’ve gone over Mesopotamian ancient history at least twice in classes. But though I remember that King Shulgi could speak five languages, I can’t remember what dynasty he was part of or what time period that dynasty might date to. (I also obviously can’t remember not to end clauses with prepositions, without excuse).
I’ve learned the Hebrew language probably four different times…and forgotten it four times. I remember the various verb forms and their meanings, but not how to conjugate specific verbs, and whatever vocabulary I’ve learned is 90% gone.
I can remember hundreds of advertising jingles from the 1980s and 90s (Big Mac, Filet o’ Fish, Quarter Pounder, French Fries. Icy Coke, Thick Shake, Sundaes, and Apple Pies), but at this moment I cannot remember what the abbreviation A.M. stands for. I know that P.M. stands for Prime Meridian, but I don’t know what that means. It seems to me it has something to do with the equator.
Is the situation hopeless? Am I never going to be able to hold enough information about my field of study in my brain simultaneously? Maybe if REM would write a really long song about the ancient near east, and if it were still the 1980s when they were still good and I was still 16 and could listen to the same album endlessly because it was the most profound thing I’d ever heard?

I have a lot of stuff to do this weekend. Here is some of the stuff I have to do:

• Watch TV. I have a lot of TV to watch this weekend. We just got the 2nd season of Arrested Development [trumpet fanfare], which is calling quietly but forcefully for me to come out to the living room and watch it. We also have had 3 Netflix items for a while: An X-Files one which is waiting for me to watch the final episode, since Andy’s already watched it; and Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot ones which are only for me. I’m a little Netflix hog.
• Knit. I have a rather large quantity of yarn waiting for me to turn it into something. There is also pressure here beyond the promptings of my rather lackadaisical conscience, as a lady at the church where I work has been helping me quite a bit and I’d like her to feel her efforts were not in vain.
• School stuff. The dissertation, obviously, and also I think I’m going to be teaching a class on Near Eastern history next semester at a local college. I suppose by this time I should be able to rattle everything off from memory, but unfortunately I have a hard time retaining anything that could be listed under the heading “specifics.” So unless they’re willing to retitle the course “Michele’s General Impressions of the Ancient Near East,” I’m going to have to do some prep work. “Guys, they built some cool pyramids and stuff in the Ancient Near East, but basically they were all nuts! Okay, so why don’t you discuss that amongst yourselves for the next 54.5 minutes.”
• Work stuff. The separate components of this Sunday’s church bulletin are sitting in a box in my living room. My mission: to stuff the bulletin inserts into the bulletin covers, and return the completed items to church by Sunday morning. Argh! Too much pressure!
• Eat chocolate. Chocolate from this Halloween still remains in this apartment. This is a situation that cannot be tolerated.

Guess I’d better get cracking.

Do I talk about the weather a lot on this blog? I should. I

Happy Halloween! I just got back from the store, where I was attempting to buy, among other things, Halloween candy. Cause, today is Halloween, you see. I was successful, but most of the Hallowwen candy had already been moved out & the Christmas stuff was coming in. There were also some pink M&Ms available, they were promoting breast cancer awareness. But for a second I got confused and thought the retail Christmas season was already over and we were into Valentine’s Day.
Creepy occurrence for the day: I was in the car and noticed that an almost-empty bottle of Gatorade had mysteriously appeared on the floor on the passenger’s side. But the creepy part was that although the label said Lemonade, the liquid inside was pink. aaaaa!
That would be the sort of dopey manifestation I would get: almost-empty Gatorade bottles.
Totally random: I recently learned that there is a purse in this world which costs–get this–$18,500. Yes, $18,500. It’s from shady-sounding outfit called Hermes. I suppose it might be a tad better-made than my purse, but to get the same cost-use ratio as mine, you would have to carry this purse for 3,080 years. Of course, one would do well to remember, when considering such a purchase, that styles can change somewhat in 3000 years.

We arrived at the train station in Rothenburg, and bearing our backpacks, went confidently striding off in what turned out to be the wrong direction (my misreading of the map). The cell phone we borrowed from Andy’s parents came in handy (which I believe is the German word for “cell phone”) for the first, but not last time. We regrouped and eventually came upon a medeival city gate with tiny cars shooting in and out and alarming rates of speed, and knew we must be there.
We stayed at Gasthaus zur Goldenen Rose, which was one of the nicest places we stayed as well as one of the cheapest. The kind proprietor, upon learning of our directional difficulties, gave me a town map, and showed us how to get in through the alley and back yard after hours, and off we went.
We had wiener schnitzel for dinner, and in the restaurant first saw a guy who we were to see at several of our destinations over the next couple of days. It was the Rick Steves effect. Anywhere we went which was recommended by Rick Steves, we saw American tourists toting around his book, and if you were following his recommendations you’d probably see the same ones more than which. We were able to break free of the Effect by going to Berchtesgaden a couple of days later, instead of into Austria like Rick wants you to.
We took the Night Watchman’s Tour of the town, which was extremely entertaining. You can see most of the info from the tour here if you want (same site I linked to at Historicity. We tripped over cobblestones on the charming streets, watched wooden figures pop out of the clock above the town square, re-enacting a fictional event in which the town’s mayor persuaded a would-be invader to go away by drinking 3 liters of wine at one gulp. Much is inexplicable about that particular story.
The next day, we figured out the particulars of the Romantic Road bus we were going to take (by asking someone in English), then walked along the town wall for a bit and took some more pictures. Then we boarded the bus for Fussen.

Well, we are back from two weeks in Germany! It was a very fun time.
Upon arriving in Germany, the first thing that I learned was that my German language skills are even worse than I thought they were. I thought I’d listened to enough tourist-based language tapes to at least get us around the transportation system. But the first challenge we met upon arriving at the airport was (1) finding a bus to our hotel and (2) buying a bus ticket. Finding the bus was pretty easy, not so buying the bus ticket. After a bit of helpless wandering around, I asked at the info desk (in English) and was directed to a machine outside.
Confident in my knowledge of the difference between einfach and hin und zuruck, I advanced upon the machine, only to find it completely and totally unintelligible. I couldn’t understand a single word. I pressed the small icon of a British flag placed tauntingly on the screen, admitting defeat and hoping for some English, but nothing happened. Finally, I went and spoke English to some guy at a ticket window. He clearly heartily disapproved of me, but sold us some bus tickets anyway.
We arrived at our hotel in Ku’damm (check out my historicity post for more info on that!), and headed out to what turned out to be our favorite restaurant we went to in Germany, called Zillemarkt or something like that. They gave us an English menu but the little jokes printed in the margins were still in German. I understood some of them, which turned out to be the rule for my German language capacity for the entire two weeks: the more trivial the item, the more likely I would be able to read it. I could read advertisements easily; placards in museums not at all.
Anyway, I had bratwurst with sauerkraut and salt-potatoes, which seemed like the right thing to do; and Andy was initiated into the popular currywurst mit pommes frites, which we kept getting at various restaurants throughout our trip for the following reasons: (1) It was cheap, (2) It was delicious, and (3) I could understand both the German and the French involved, which made me feel that my five zillion years of higher education was not entirely wasted. Currywurst, by the way, is bratwurst with a tomato-curry sauce. (Pommes frites are french fries, just like the American kind, mon ami.)
We also had the Zillemarkt local beer, which also seemd like the right thing to do. Neither of us are beer fans, but we both liked it, which says something I suppose.
The next day we wandered out toward the main train station (Berlin Zoologischer Garten Hauptbahnhof), adjacent to which was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and the Europacenter…a big ‘ol mall, at which I was able to snap a picture of Andy being menaced by a giant model of a Space Marine. The Europacenter also housed a KFC: Donnerstag ist Huhntag!
From there we successfully caught a train to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, regarding which I will write more in the next post.

No, I’m not randomly naming Glenn Miller songs, not today anyway. I’m trying to get in the mood for fall. Fall is really my favorite season, but we all know what it leads to, and the memories of last winter are still too fresh in my mind to be looking forward to the next one.
In Nebraska, where I’m from, we only really have two seasons, summer and winter, which last six months each. Spring consists of about seven days, which don’t come consecutively but are scattered throughout the months of February-May. Fall runs along similar lines. Here in Michigan, there is a distinct spring and fall, but winter still lasts for six months, which compresses summer into two or three. And that summer isn’t always hot enough to make you genuinely suffer and begin to long for the frozen wastelands of January.
This year, we had summer in July and again in September, but it just wasn’t miserable enough to make me truly appreciate the crisp fresh air and mega-blue skies that have recently made their appearance. Much as I like the colors of fall, I’m already missing the green leaves of summer, even though I can still see them right outside my window.
As usual, the retail stores aren’t helping. I should just stay out of them altogether in the months of July-October. I don’t want to think about back-to school in July, Halloween in August, and Christmas…yesterday, when I saw Christmas cards out at Schuler. Nobody does. I assume people buy all of this stuff, or the stores wouldn’t put it out, but I for one refuse to participate in all this holiday inflation.
But, it is legitimately Fall now, so I might as well try to accept it. It could be worse…it was 104 degrees in my hometown like a week ago. I’d definitely take Fall over that.

So, I have added a year to my age since my last post. How about that? I’ve worried about getting older this year less than I have for the last few birthdays. I first panicked about turning 30 when I turned 26, by the time I really turned 30 I had pretty much accepted it. This has been going on for a while; I was completely freaked out about turning 20 when I was 19, thinking it sounded entirely too grown up for me. I think that was the year that when I mentioned to my Dad my concern about getting older, his response was “19? I’m sure glad I never have to be 19 again.” I can now say I fully agree with that statement. There are some good things about being young, to be sure, though I can’t think of any right now. And, there are some bad things about being older (though I maintain 32 doesn’t qualify me yet as “older”), but for the most part things just keep getting better al the time.
I have noticed something about my method of writing blog posts. Usually I get a Great Idea (you’ve noticed those, right?) and then think it all out and write it right away. This process takes an hour or two, usually at an awkward time when I should be doing something else. But if I don’t do it right away, it’s all lost, I simply can’t come back to it. For example, I started a marvelous essay about the importance of Relationships versus society’s emphasis on Career and the Individual a week or two ago, and interrupted it to go do something else. I tried to work on it again today, but it’s useless. I can’t think of another thing to say about it, and though I remember pretty much how it was supposed to go, I can’t bring myself to finish it.
If I did finish it, it would probably be awful. I don’t know why it is, but in other writings, it must really show through whether my heart was in it or not. I’ve written things I’m really interested in and things I’m not, and even though I spend as much time and take as much trouble about both, the ones I’m really interested in always seem to do better, even though I can’t really distinguish much difference between the final results.
So now you’ll never hear my thoughts on Relationships. Aren’t you sad–no, I know you’re not. Now that I’m no longer interested in the topic, it sounds pretty awful to me too. Don’t worry though, I’ve got a new one brewing in the back of my head, so you’ll have that to look forward to. Honestly, I should write the things and then wait two days before deciding whether to post them, so I can coolly evaluate just how wretched they really are. But then nothing would every appear on my blog. And the whole point of the blog format is to post things, not to post anything good. Which is pretty awesome.

For six or seven years now, I have been dependent on Quarters to maintain my reputation as a wearer of clean clothes. Before that, when I lived in Lincoln, I used to walk to my parents’ house, borrow their car, drive back to my apt. to get my laundry, and do my laundry at their house. I’m pathetic.
Chicago is much too far away for that maneuver though, so once I moved there it was curtains–I mean quarters for me. The first year I lived there, my building had wash/dry machines in it, which was convenient although very difficult to find a time when they were not in use. When I moved, I just sort of assumed there would be machines in my new building; but I was so wrong.

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