(no subject)

Today I was a responsible adult and bought responsible adult things, like bread and chicken and gardening sheers and a rake and chair cushions. (These very cheap Ikea chairs have stood up well over the years, but comfortable to one sitting on them for hours at a time doing homework they are not.) I walked the dog. I virtuously avoided buying that used Vita that the game store finally got in, or that really awesome discounted Skylanders bundle at Best Buy, or any number of other frivolous things.

I did buy two solar-powered garden stakes in the shape of a sun and moon (with color-changing LEDs!) because as frivolity goes, that is minor and still rather adult frivolity.

And now I'm working on homework again, which lies in some nebulous area between Child and Adult. It's hard to feel that homework is a very adult thing to do, given it dates back to first grade. (But so does drying dishes. Hm. And chores are very adult.) Nonetheless, as it's third-year ancient Greek, and rich with responsibility vibes, it's certainly not a childish act either.

Sadly, it's kinda dull at the moment. I'm all out of Plutarch, my Casina paper's bones are down (so it's just making it be Tidy and Thorough and Sensible from this point out), and Plutarch has gotten less interesting as he wanders through the Persian war.

And once again reading the blogs of real proper academics and graduate students has made me feel... a little dim. Inadequate. I can never remember names or dates or the exact sequence of events, which means it's good I'm not a history major, but also means that when people say something clever about history that's contemporaneous to the texts I'm studying, I feel that I have somehow failed to live up to basic standards, since I certainly never noticed that. I want to be the sort of person who can write witty, clever, insightful, incisive blog entries about my area of study.

But mostly I talk about the dog, or how hard it is to translate all of these things, or what I had for dinner lately. (Corned beef brisket and cabbage. It was delicious.)

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On a very tangentially related note, I want to get better at reviewing books; I feel that I'm no good at actually articulating my thoughts on a book once I've read it, good or bad, and come back to the same stock phrases and vague expressions of preference over and over again. So I was thinking--somewhat derivatively--of doing a series of reviews here on DW/LJ over the summer, as a way of practicing. And because it's just no fun to do a Series without there being a Theme, I was contemplating taking requests.

Nothing too far ahead or restrictive: if I hate all my reading, I'll just stop doing it, which defeats the purpose. But something like "Comment here with a suggestion for what I should review next," and then I pick one of the suggestions based on my own interests and what the library has available. Because that way I could try something new, and get a little practice with reading and reviewing things that I might not pick out of my own accord; that seems a useful thing, in reviews and reviewers.

Or I could just write reviews--very short ones if necessary--of everything I read over the summer. That'd be more thorough, but maybe less interesting. Mm. I shall think about it. Right now, I need to stop procrastinating, and get back to working on Greek until dinner's done.

(Yucatan spiced chicken thighs over white rice, with steamed carrots on the side. And I might make an Old Fashioned for each of us to go with it, because really, why not? Making cocktails is totally an adult thing.)