It's beginning to look a lot like...

The tree is decorated. We had to start from scratch since we've never had a tree before (yay for first Christmas in new house!). Thanks to our mutual dislike of excessive glitter, and hunting through craft store and Pottery Barn clearance racks, we've ended up with quite a nice nature theme. Check out the owl and the cloisonne turtle...



Shopping is almost done, but cooking has barely started. A batch of granola for weekday breakfasts. Beautiful gluten-free rolls for Christmas dinner (promptly stashed in the freezer to stay fresh and uneaten until then).



Still to come: rosemary roasted pecans, chocolate chip cookies, gluten-free lemon olive oil cookies and chocolate mint bars.

The house is cozy (complete with a cute boy and a fire in the fireplace)!



And for Saturday dinner, a venture into vegan sushi:




(Yes, this is how I amuse myself when school's out.)

Now it's Monday, and I've finished my coffee, so it's time to start cleaning for the company which arrives tonight, and to make the big shopping run for Thursday's feast. Does anyone else want to come?

The office chalkboard says...

...the semester is over! I love making lists (and re-writing them to reflect reality after the fact) so much that I needed a chalkboard so as to do it more conveniently. I included Brooks' deadlines (which I crossed off for him) because, after all, no man is an island and all that, so his progress is my progress too. This was particularly important when he was finished last Tuesday and I had to keep working until Saturday.

Now I can make a new list of Christmas projects.

Self-portrait from mid-July

traces remain to this day...

Better?

The new house

Today is our first post-renovation inspection of the house that we are so-grownup-ly buying. Last time we saw it, the kitchen looked like this:



They are still finishing up odds and ends, but great improvement is eagerly anticipated by us. (Sorry... Brooks has been working on active/passive handouts for his English 101 class and I couldn't resist.)

We go to closing next week. Moving during the first month of the semester is not quite as hectic as getting married during the second week of one's graduate-school career, but it runs a close second.

Still Here...

The constantly over-committed perfectionist known as Dana finally overdid it for real. After writing the last post, she decided that she REALLY HAD TO take FOUR classes, because they were so interesting and would never be offered again. Along with teaching four days a week and making the significant (and time-consuming) life decision to join the Orthodox church (see here). Her sanity survived (probably thanks to all the church-going) but her grades (sometimes even more important than her sanity, in her skewed priority structure) did not do so well. Now she says she really will follow her husband's advice in future. He's still skeptical.

Once upon a time...

there was a girl with a blog who ran out of time and ideas so abruptly that she couldn't recover the habit even when the time returned (if not the ideas).

Whenever I was too much of a perfectionist to correspond with family, my grandmother would tell me, "It doesn't have to be long; you just have to write something." I haven't really learned that lesson yet; I'm more like Elizabeth Bennet, disinclined to speak unless I can say something that will astonish the whole room. I may blather inconsequentially for a few weeks and see if I can write myself back into a more or less interesting and expressive frame of mind.

On the schedule for this semester: I am teaching Greek 102, with the same 8 students as last semester in 101. I am taking two Latin classes, one a survey of Roman literature, one on Horace. Both of them are a trifle intimidating at the moment because they are my first Latin reading courses beyond the intermediate level.

I am also taking a history of the Christian Near East, from the third century until just before the Arab conquest. Since Greek is going to be my primary research language for the PhD in Early Christian Studies, thus giving me more of an eastern focus, I need some historical context. I also need my secondary research language to be eastern, rather than Latin, so I'm hoping to get ideas about whether to learn Syriac or Coptic next year. The Latin will then probably slip down to tertiary status once I finish the MA in classics.

But yet! My goal in life is to be someone who can make interesting and non-geeky conversation at parties. I'm not sure how Syriac helps that.