orichalcum

Well, at least this one can.

it gets really hard to argue lines of sentience when you see things like this....

So, I'm writing an article/paper/part of the book currently on female-authored Pompeian graffiti. This means that I have to do a lot of interpretation and inference from very little data.

So, gentle reader, tell me a story - who do _you_ think the protagonists and hidden narrative are behind each of these graffiti?


1. "I would not sell my man/husband for any price."

2. Valens [the master of the house], 'Lady.' Would that I were a Lady. We ask for health.

3. Livia greets Alexander. If you are well, I don't care much; if you are dying, I'll come running.

First of all, a minor bit of reassurance and end to paranoia; I took Mac to the audiologist for his hearing exam today, and he hears, in fact, slightly better than normal. He just chooses not to pay attention some of the time and gets very focused at other moments. He loved the drumming elephant and dancing bear that pop up out of dark boxes and make noise. The only point when he got confused and a little upset was when he could see the operator talking to him through the soundproof window, but her voice was coming from the speakers behind him.

I have 4 days, none with babysitting, and 62 exams to grade. Each exam takes me about 15 minutes, more or less, so that's about 16 hours solid of grading. That's very doable, but I need to space it out and give myself regular small rewards or I'll go crazy.

So, for today, I need to try and grade 8 exams before having a nice treat-full lunch, and then another eight before, if I do them in time, going to the gym for yoga or swimming (the gym has daycare). If I don't get enough work done, I'll have to skip the gym today, which would be Sad.

In personally affirming news, a student came up to me after the Roman Civ final and said that he was a junior, and that this had been by far his favorite class at college. Another wrote me an email to tell me that she had always dreaded history classes, and took this only because it was a distributional requirement originally, but she had loved it, and I had made the history come alive for her and related it to the "real world" much more than most humanities professors ever did. Apparently the lecture on the dangers of income inequality wasn't such a bad idea.

In random news, Stephen Colbert is such a geek. He was ranting last night about the danger of octopi learning to open bottles, because next they'll " use their tentacles to suck out your brains and slurp them down," and all I could think was *cough* illithid *cough.*