orichalcum

So I woke up this morning in kind of a funk, since I had spent from 4:15-5:30 AM taking care of an extremely talkative and playful Mac, and got up to still no job news, and it's really, really the end of January.

But in the Athens class, my students had a lively debate about the risks and rewards of an unprovoked imperialist war expedition which was ultimately decided by the quietest student, who sold out a deal with the Rad Democrats to vote his conscience against the war. (They've now threatened to kill him.) And then in Classics and Cinema, lecturing on Modern Epics and Spectacle Films of the 1990s and 2000s, I made a student cry by showing them the ROTK clip with Faramir's charge and Pippin's song. Then I went to the library to check out my research assignment for tonight and tomorrow: The Complete Sandman, Volume I.

Really, there's a lot to envy in my life. I'm grateful I've stumbled into something I love so much. I just hope they'll keep paying me to do it.

Also, on Gilmore Girls, Rory's making a list of things to do her last semester at Yale, and this episode she went tray sledding down Science Hill. Tray sledding down Science Hill was on _my_ last-semester to-do list! (OK, the actual execution wound up being a disaster involving too little snow and too much hurt feelings, and I've still never really actually been sledding, but that's not the point. )GG is imitating my life. And now VM has a plot about a lovestruck BSG geek who met a girl at ComicCon.

We’re conditioned, particularly as women, to be self-deprecating, to not take up space, to not revel in our bodies and ourselves. We can get 150 comments in a thread about when we realized that we were aware our bodies weren’t up to snuff; let’s see how many we can generate praising ourselves.

Your mission: list at least five things you love about your body and yourself. Five is the floor; you can always do more. And no self-deprecation! No offsetting a compliment with a dig.

1. I have really good hair. It curls naturally into boingy-boingy ringlets, like the kind that Ramona envied. And the color may not be natural, but people assume it is, and it looks darn good on me, in its various variations. It's thick and versatile; I can put my hair up into cinnamon roll buns and it will stay put, without any bobby pins, if I do it right.

2. I have long, dark eyelashes.

3. I have ocean eyes, that change according to my mood from blue to green to grey, a legacy of my Celtic ancestors.

4. I'm tall. I always wanted to grow up to be 5'7.5, the same height as a family friend, and then I wound up surpassing that to wind up 5'8.5. It's nice being tall; I get respect easily and can see through crowds and wear long gowns.

5. I have excellent physical endurance; I'm a good tortoise.