It will damage you

[sovay]

It is wetly snowing. derspatchel tells me it started around ten-thirty this morning and freaked the cats out. By now they are blasé and much more interested in the white pumpkin in its rustling paper bag or in general mischief. Last night Autolycus figured out how to take the top of a milk bottle.

Yesterday:

My flash "Anonymity" was positively reviewed at Apex Magazine. I'm still happy about this.

M.F. Dulock was selling loukaniko, so I bought some. I plan to make it for dinner tonight.

Rob and I double-featured the evening with el Día de los Muertos at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography (corn-husk tamales, brightly colored paper cut-out skulls fluttering whenever someone opened the door; at the altar open to visitors, I left a memorial card for Luis Yglesias, Rob for Cousin Billy) and the closing night of the Post-Meridian Radio Players' Tomes of Terror: Nevermore. plumtreeblossom's Prohibition-era "The Cask of Amontillado" was the perfect chill to end the night on.

This month J.P. Licks has more than four non-dairy flavors. I got a malt vanilla coconut-milk milkshake. It was delicious.

Hestia is upstairs in the bedroom where it's warmest; I can't blame her. Autolycus is sleeping directly under the thermostat, which means on top of a shelf of my classics books—Cyprus, Carthage, classical Greek religion, the folder of notes for the translation of Ištar's Descent to the Underworld I never published. [edit: He just jumped off the bookshelves and planted himself on my lap. I am warmer than J.G. Pedley's New Light on Ancient Carthage (1980).] Rob is working on a project. I used Daylight Savings' extra hour to write a poem. I really hope this is a pattern. My birthday month was much harder than I wanted it to be.

Comments

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

. . . okay, there's a lot of Tiny Wittgenstein tied up in that folder, isn't there?

Yup. Although I could say the same about a lot of my stuff.

Anyway, I may have to click back to your 2005 entries at some point and have a look at those! [I think that must've been *just* before I got an lj myself.]

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Just so you know, this fascinates me:

the folder of notes for the translation of Ištar's Descent to the Underworld I never published and also, my father has Akkadian, and just retired, so if you want someone to bolster your sense that the translation is worthwhile, I might be able to convince him to use that part of his brain again.

(And in the course of discussing the kind of material I wanted to include, I managed to step on the boundaries of a fellow student in a way that I feel sure they have never forgiven me for, even when in all likelihood they have either forgotten or just don't think about it anymore. It still upsets me.)

I offer many hugs and first crack at a time machine if I unearth one in my dwelling.

[sovay]

and also, my father has Akkadian, and just retired, so if you want someone to bolster your sense that the translation is worthwhile, I might be able to convince him to use that part of his brain again.

I appreciate the offer. I have friends who are Assyriologists who I could call on. I would just have to decide (a) there was a market for it (b) there was a publisher for it (c) it would be worth it for everyone, including the readers. There are a lot of bad translations in the world. I really, really don't want to add to their number.

I offer many hugs and first crack at a time machine if I unearth one in my dwelling.

Eh, I'd probably just use it to watch a lot of theater.

*hugs*