orichalcum

1. The dissertation stands at 110 pages, having just completed a 50 page chapter on Powerful Concubines, which is the longest single thing I've written since my infamous senior essay. (The Y. Classics dept rewrote the page limitations after receiving my senior essay.) I think it's good, and it has a story, which I was worried about, but found halfway through. I'm not yet sure of the implications of the story, which can basically be summed up in the following sentence: Under the Roman Republic, powerful concubines were viewed as inappropriate outrageous threats to respectable matrons and elite powerful men; under the Empire, powerful concubines were seen as harmless sexual outlets for Imperial widowers who didn't want to create new factions centered around a legitimate Empress. But it's an interesting story, and it has the advantage, as with my last chapter, that no one has ever written this story. People have written about these individual women before, but no one has ever gathered all their stories before and compared them with each other. It's nice to be creating something new.


2. I go to New Haven tomorrow, and write job cover letters and advisor update letters during the day, and in the evenings hang out with ladybird97, who I've been missing this last ten days, and her very cool roommate, and the Bananap(l)ants, and maybe get to know all the younger crowd better as well. It's the eighth anniversary, today, of the week when I walked up to the Tree for the first time, not knowing that five years later I'd climb into the same branches and propose marriage to someone, of the week when I met someone who was helping me carry a couch upstairs and fell in trust at first sight, of the week when I thought that julianyap was a Very Scary person, and of the week where I renewed my friendship with ladybird97 and saw her covered in green and silver glitter as Puck, and began my friendship with my roommates, as well as too many other people to name.

It was a good week, that, and it's a good time to visit New Haven, which isn't my home, anymore, and belongs to a new generation now, but was still the beginning of so many of the good things in my life.


3. I'm very much looking forward to fajitas and WisdomLikeSilence's wedding. WisdomLikeSilence was telling me about the goody bags in the hotel rooms she's planning last week, and I got hungry just imagining them. Also, I really want to find some folks to go to Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle Dollhousel at the Museum of Science and Industry with me sometime on Friday or Saturday; I've wanted to go for years and years. It's basically the coolest and most elaborate dollhouse in the world. Plus, I've arranged an appointment for a free facial on Thursday, because NYC is just that cool.

More good reasons to go:
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