Samhain                                                     New Moon of the Winter Solstice

Up again.  After noon.  Oh, well, sleep counts even in fragmented chunks.

On the docket today, Ovid.  Groceries.  Making more home made pot pies, perhaps an all veggie one.  Maybe some other kind, too.

A snow day.

Samhain                                        Waning Thanksgiving Moon

What are the ugliest words in current usage?  Mentee is my choice.  Seems like the person identified by this word should have a mermaid tail and a squashed pug face.  Others chose orientate.  Incent and incentivize as in, We should incent them to do this.  Emily came up with the best one though from her years at the state legislature, mute point.  She said she’d cover her ears every time she heard it.  Pretty good.

Do you have a candidate?  Send it along.

Tomorrow the final interviews and decision time.  That will take the afternoon.  Latin in the morning.  Then, a snow storm.

Samhain                                            Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Over this last week I learned that my Latin chapters now require more time than I have in one week, so I’m going to shift my tutoring sessions from once a week to every other week.  That way I’ll be able to finish my chapter and get some Ovid done, too.  It’s the journey, not a date, that matters to me.  I want to learn Latin well enough from Wheelock and Greg to continue on translating Ovid with monthly or even less frequent sessions, perhaps later this year.

Interrupted sleep patterns and the holiday did throw me off.  I’ve not been exercising, post-extraction rules said not to early and I extended it as my jaw has taken longer to heal than I imagined, but I’m going to start back this week. I miss it.  After the first of the year, I’ll move back into resistance work at least 3 times a week, plus balance training.  That will get me back to where I was before the growing season began last year.

Had a revelation.  Weight loss as a goal has always frustrated me.  By that I mean I’ve not lost any appreciable weight for any reasonable period of time.  It dawned on me this morning that I can control what goes in even if the results are mercurial.  So, I plan to eat less of everything except vegetables and fruit.  I’ll the weight fall where it will.  I know, this isn’t rocket science or anything other than a big duh, way to state the obvious, but I haven’t thought it in those terms for me.  Dad always said weight loss was easy.  Push ups.  Push ups away from the table.

Refreshing my knowledge of the Ming and Qing dynasties, especially jade and ceramics, for a corporate event tonight.  One thing I relearned concerned nephrite and jadite.  The Chinese value both equally and call them both jade.  Nephrite comes in darker colors and has a soapy or waxy finish when buffed.  Jadite comes in lighter colors and becomes shiny, brilliant when buffed.  Also buffed up my knowledge of the T’ang dynasty and especially ming ch’i, or spirit objects, objects placed in tombs.  I’ve never spent much time learning about our sarcophagus, it comes form the Northern Wei Dynasty and has a unique spot in Chinese art history.  Not much landscape painting has survived from this time period, so the engraved landscapes on the sides of the sarcophagus are a valuable art historical reflection of that era’s painting style.

Got a note from Margaret Levin, executive director of the Sierra Club.  It’s nice to be appreciated.

Samhain                                                     Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

Life has begun to pick up pace as the garden winds down, the bees go into their ball for the winter while politics lurches toward the right or the just plain crazy.  As the holiseason proceeds, more and more schools send kids to the MIA and our special exhibitions, Embarrassment of Riches and the Thaw Collection of Native American Art draw folks into the museum.  That means tour prep.

Meanwhile Orion rises higher and higher in the sky, the Leonids will come this month and Mars rides above the southwestern horizon right after twilight.

Kate took good care of herself over the weekend and kicked a cold that looked pretty bad on Friday.   No dog news means no bad news, so that’s good news.

Samhain                                          New Thanksgiving Moon

Latin today.  I spent several hours on Wednesday translating, or attempting to translate, one sentence in Ovid.  One sentence.  At this rate the world will have a long wait for the Ellis translation of the Metamorphosis.  On the other hand, I’m getting a word by word, phrase by phrase introduction to this central text for understanding mythology and its appropriation in the Western literary tradition.  Which is, after all, what I am after.

As chair of the Sierra Club’s legislative committee and in that role responsible for the Northstar chapter’s presence at the legislature, I’m still sorting through the results of Tuesday’s elections.  They changed the entire direction of our 2011 effort, no doubt, but in what way we won’t know quite yet.  A lot of thinking ahead.  On Monday I’m going to attend a meeting of environmental lobbyists who will begin group discussion of what the playing field will look like.

Next week I have my first tour of the Thaw collection with the Rochester Friends of the Institute.  My current plan is to select objects for that tour as Thaw selected his objects, i.e. by choosing the most aesthetically pleasing works.  Most pleasing to me, that is.  Here’s my current list:  Yupik masks, raven-who-owns-the-sun frontlet, fish bowl, ferns basket, the medicine bag, the boy’s shirt, ledger book, Elgin artifacts.

Samhain                              Waning Harvest Moon

Hmmm.  Vikings.  Hmmm.

Off to the grocery store this morning.  A domestic weekend.  Work outside yesterday and today, inside, storing carrots in layers of hamster bedding, getting and putting away groceries, making two more leek and vegetable chicken pot pies, getting them ready for the freezer tomorrow morning.  Kate peeled beets, cleaned carrots, leeks, and onions.  She’ll pickle the beets tomorrow.

A week less busy coming up and I’m happy about that.  Some decompression time.  Plan to make four more leek and chicken pot pies, using up the last of the leeks, get back into the translation of Ovid, prep for an Asia tour on Thursday, read.  Couple of appointments, but not much else.

I did agree to door knock on Tuesday morning for the DFL, a get out the vote effort on election day.  Most of me doesn’t want anything further to do with this election season, but the activist in me says one more push.  So, I’ll go.

Fall                                        Waning Harvest Moon

Studying the history of landscapes the last two days.  Now I have to put the tour together before the Sierra Club meeting tonight.  This has taken a lot of time because I couldn’t recall much about landscapes.  My speculation is that the more I learn the quicker tours will come in the future.  I know that’s already true in some instances.  Not on landscapes.  Not yet.