You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'clementine' tag.
I don’t have anything specific I want to write about, so I’m just going to start typing and see where I get. I can’t promise not to edit, though.
1) I got home this evening to find that Clementine, whom I had left in the kitchen instead of in her crate because I felt sorry for her (oh, the irony), had escaped the baby gate, gotten into my bedroom, and TORN THE PLACE APART. I seriously cannot see my floor for all of the clothes, yarn, scraps of toilet paper, fabric, bobbins, socks, beads…wow, I have too many crafting materials.
2) Two things encouraged me not to kill her: she didn’t actually destroy anything–she’s not a shredder, she just likes to carry my clothes around for a while–and she didn’t pee anywhere. Hooray for that.
3) I am coming to realize that I know Hebrew significantly less well than is acceptable. I am discovering this when it comes to using the Biblical Hebrew to build other languages/dialects (Aramaic, Rabbinic Hebrew, and Modern Hebrew are what I’m working on now) and I FAIL because I don’t actually understand the rules for vowel shifts or have the paradigms for anything other than the very basic verb forms memorized. You’d think if I could recognize forms I could reproduce them, but oh you would be wrong.
4) This means that I am going to have to spend the summer going back over the introductory grammar and learn it for reals this time. I swear I am going to do this.
4a) A troubling thought: I am becoming so used to the warm fuzzy feeling of being surrounded by people who care about the same fiddly things that I do, such as the relative merits of the Lambdin and Seow grammars for embarking on said reconstructive project, that I am in danger of becoming really super boring to the 99.9% of people who are not specializing in this field because they have better things to do with their time. I shall try to avoid this. I cannot promise anything about the contents of the blog, though. Consider yourselves warned.
5) I am making a quilt! With the wonderful sewing machine I got for Christmas! It is going to be fabulous!
6) My most recent project on the sewing machine was a stuffed bird ornament from a book on quilting that I bought because I wanted to make everything in it (Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, in case you’re wondering). It looks…handmade. In the bad way.
7) Most of the time this semester I have been feeling terrific–cheerful, happy to be here, busy but not TOO busy, challenged but not stupid, feeling like I’m in exactly the right place, basically.
8 ) Today is not one of those days. I feel slow and stupid and man, is there a lot of stuff out there to learn. So much so that four years (8 semesters, 30 classes, not counting summer languages) of graduate school (assuming I get into Notre Dame for the Ph.D) feels like too short of a time to learn anywhere close to enough to actually TEACH this stuff or contribute to this field. And the assumption is not a safe one to make by any means. My goodness are there a lot of people who want fellowships. And knowing that, and knowing that my professors will judge whether they want to let me in here for the Ph.D based on whether they like what I’ve done in the MTS, is kind of freaking me out. Not most days…just the days where I feel slow and stupid and wonder why I want to work with languages when I can’t remember vocabulary words for longer than 30 seconds at a time.
9) I will stop feeling sorry for myself now. I swear.
10) Annnnnd, to end on an entirely unimportant note, Mary Frances, I stole your nail polish color and I am NOT GIVING IT BACK.
Okay, off to read about virtue ethics. Good times!
So, what have I been up to since the last time I posted, long, long ago?
Well, I’ve been reading and writing. My first-ever seminar paper is DONE and turned in. Though it didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped (the more I read on the subject, the less I liked my thesis, and organizing it was surprisingly difficult), it was, I think, good enough. I keep thinking of things I’d like to change, and then I think about the maxim of Dr. Thompson, Luke’s mentor from W+M: “Just concentrate on getting the ball over the goal line.” Not every essay has to be a work of genius. Sometimes, “done” is enough. The good news is that now I feel as though I know a great deal about the subject of purity laws, sacrifice, and homicide law in the Hebrew Bible and in Jubilees (I must have read, conservatively, 1000 pages for this essay), which is the whole point anyway.
I’ve been translating. I don’t think Greek will ever really be my language, but I’m back to about the same skill level I was at my peak in college, under the tutelage of Professor Reilly (badass extraordinaire, a woman who raised show corgis, lived and researched in Greece during the summers, and took the attitude of, “yes, Greek is just that hard. Suck it up. If the 10-year-old British boys can do it, so can you.”). I doubt I’ll earn an A in that class, but then, I’ve never ever gotten an A in Greek, so that’s okay. Hebrew continues to be more my thing–I’m looking forward to doing more in the vein of historical linguistics in the future, starting with Aramaic in the spring. I haven’t done a new language in a while…it should be fun!
I’ve been playing with the dog. Clementine is about 6 months old now, around 15 pounds, and decidedly adorable. She had her spay operation last week and has been wearing a giant conical collar to keep her from licking the stitches ever since–seriously, this thing is enormous. When you face her head-on, it hides the rest of her body. The operation slowed her down for about 12 hours, and then she was back to her usual self.
I’ve been making things. The desire to avoid real work generally kicks the creative/domestic side of me into overdrive. I’ve been baking bread, making cookies and homemade soup, knitting, and actually doing some sewing as well. I’m thinking about starting a quilt. It will probably pass.
I’ve been hanging out with actual people, something I’m not always terribly good at. I’m really enjoying the people in my program these days–they’re fun and into the same stuff I am (well, mostly) and by and large incredibly nice people, which is always a good thing.
I’m realizing that I lucked into a program that I’m very well-suited to. Honestly, I didn’t do as fantastic a job of the grad school search as I might have: wanting to be with Luke, not being in a university setting while I was applying, dissing the Ivies on principle, and deciding to apply only a couple of months before applications were due all limited or skewed my search somewhat. I applied to Notre Dame mostly because it was the only school that both of the undergrad professors I talked to recommended, and I enrolled because it was the only location where both Luke and I were accepted. I had my doubts about doing a Master’s program rather than jumping right into the Ph.D; frankly, I didn’t think I needed it, and I didn’t want to get further into student-loan debt. But this is turning out to be just about the best place I could have gone, I think. It’s not just the faculty reputations (badass though they are) or the money the school is willing to invest in their students (though that’s a nice thing too).
One of the things I really need in a graduate program is to be part of a supportive community. I don’t do well in ruthlessly competitive environments. Not that I’m not competitive, far from it, and if you all knew how much I have riding on being one of the smartest people in the room you would probably not want to be my friend any more, but I don’t like those parts of myself. I’m trying to stamp them out. I like when I’m the kind of person who rejoices in the success of others. And I firmly believe that good scholarship–and good thinking in general–involves being more invested in getting at the truth than in being right. And if I’m feeling insecure about my place in a program, if I’m worried about not getting the scholarship or not being at the top, and if I sense that kind of insecurity in others, not just my personal well-being but also my academic work suffers. So it’s nice to be in a place that feels like a community, and not just a whole bunch of people trying to score points off each other.
I finally finished translating Esther. SPOILER ALERT: the Jews win.
This has been one of my favorite bits of the Bible to read thus far. Maybe it’s just because I spent the last year reading everything with an eye to subtext (desperately trying to keep ahead of the 10th-graders), but I found it incredibly well-written. The structure is interesting–one commentator has noted that the whole thing is structured as a chiasmus (ABCBA, with each letter standing for an event). So we start with King Ahashverosh’s two feasts, and we end with two days of feasting for the Jews. After that we get Haman (the bad guy) raised to a position of power, and right before the Jews’ feast we get Mordecai (the good guy) raised to power.
There are tons of interesting parallels, too–one of the ones I haven’t seen anyone talk about yet (though I’m sure someone has) is the role of Haman’s wife paralleling that of Esther, Mordecai’s ward–Esther is obviously the more important character, but right after the scene where she agrees to plead for the lives of the Jews and takes on a position of real authority in doing so, Haman’s wife urges him to build a scaffold and hang Mordecai on it. Interesting gender/power dynamics there–as the commentator I’ve been reading notes, this is the only book of the Bible explicitly interested in sexual politics. Altogether a satisfying read, with the exception of the two words I just couldn’t find in the lexicon and am hoping I don’t get stuck translating. AND we’re spending most of the actual class time talking about the characteristics of late Biblical Hebrew, and getting into how scholars actually date texts–the nitty-gritty of the thing, rather than the vague “Oh, we know that this is from the third century at the latest” stuff you find in annotated Bibles and undergraduate textbooks.
Also, puppy!
Clementine likes to sleep in my stuff.
She’s taken to chewing on the corners of the woodwork, which is obviously very bad. So I got some of that no-chew-spray, which works okay, but not great. I found that a spray bottle of vinegar works just as well (thanks to Kat in my apartment complex!), and it’s really funny to watch her react to it–she kind of wants to play with it, but it obviously bothers her, so she jumps all around barking at it. This weekend my good friend Scottie and her good friend and roommate Jonathan have VERY kindly agreed to watch her and take her to the Blessing of the Animals service! Yay! I am a little worried that she’ll miss me a lot, or that she’ll destroy something valuable, or that I will miss HER a lot, but I am also kind of excited about being able to sleep in on Saturday morning.
Am off to make oatmeal scones. I make this recipe a lot, and would definitely recommend it. I never put the cream of tartar in, since I a) don’t have any and b) am not even sure what it does. I also don’t put raisins in, because I dislike them. Sometimes I do chocolate chips instead. If you’re looking for a way to make them lower-fat (the recipe does call for a stick of melted butter) there are lots of ideas in the comments. I just go with the butter.
Guilty pleasure #1: Taylor Swift’s new song Love Story. Whenever it comes on the radio (which is a lot, since it just came out), I turn it up really loud and sing aloud. I may have cried once. This is kind of silly, since it’s a song about Romeo and Juliet, but with a happy ending. Seriously. The dude makes everything all right with her dad and then they get married. And not content with mangling ONE work of literature, she also has a reference to The Scarlet Letter that makes it perfectly clear that she has NO IDEA what the book is about. (She calls herself his “scarlet letter”…not sure what she thinks the term means, but “emblem of adulterous shame” is probably not what she’s going for.) AND THEN the music video has these truly awful Regency costumes, like the new Pride and Prejudice movie but without any of the research.
And yet…it’s really catchy and sweet, and hey, the girl’s only 16 and writes all her own music. OF COURSE it’s going to be super cheesy and based on a poorly conceived ideal of romance. And I know all the words. And sometimes I do a little dance to it in the car. So there.
Also, puppy!
Clementine likes having her belly rubbed.
And, she returns! After a summer spent without a computer or easy internet access, I am back in the blogging world. The only constant these days is change: I have a new job–if you can count grad school as a job, which I do (even though I am not technically getting paid for it). I have a new apartment–in a new city–near my new school (Notre Dame)–in a new state (Indiana). I have a new-ish car, though that might be old news. Best of all, I have a new puppy. Her name is Clementine, she’s a tan/orange-and-white beagle, and she’s mostly wonderful and occasionally infuriating. Today, for example, she learned how to play fetch all on her own. She also climbed into my lap to snuggle when I sat on the floor. Then she peed on the carpet when I went out of the room to do laundry and bit my chin. Expect much more about her.
So what hasn’t changed? Well, I still procrastinate. I’m still messy. I’m still broke. But I’m still dating Luke!
More later–I’m hoping to become a much more regular poster than when I had a real job. Hooray for the slack life of the grad student! Now I’m off to translate a couple chapters of Esther.
Clementine.
