Why?
Why is my sleeping schedule the most fucked up thing ever? It's usually so prisitne and happy and alcohol-assisted. No more. Now I'm tired all day and antsy at night. Although I do loads of work all day and run. Hmmm. Mystery. Maybe I'm just excited to come home!
Today is the first day of my last full month here. Yep, holy shit, it's going fast. Almost 8 months down. How does life do that?
In other news, Mike came to visit from Madrid, and it was neat. Gave me fresh eyes to view Oxford with, but with the addition of my experiences over the last bunch of months. Also an interesting preview of what it'll be like to come home. Both the jubilation of common context and a sudden realization that I'll be able to tell how I've changed. Because I think I maybe have. At least as far as perspective and what not.
The weekend was really good. I went out to the Bridge and waited for Mike on Thursday, cause he wasn't arriving until 2:00am, so I figured I'd get some posh-clubbing in. Then Friday night Edwina/Christina/Sophie threw a dinner party in Jericho. 12 guests, 30 bottles of wine. Not sure how that happened, or how anyone survived. But here we are. It was a really, really good time, and the food was the best I've had since flying over here. So congrats to the girls. Saturday night was the bop. We went out for curry before hand, I drank an entire bottle of vodka, got myself into a huff over nothing because I was wasted and passed out on poor Mike, leaving him to his own devices until 3:30, when he had to get the coach to the airport. Woke up at 10:00am. Whoops. Still feeling a bit bad about that one, but I think I'll be forgiven.........
Other than that, work is going really well. I'm lovin the Ovid. And Peta Fowler, my new tutor this term. She wears a wig and draws on her eyebrows and uses bright teal eyeliner. She's about 65, and is the sweetest thing. She's very encouraging and chatty, which is a BIG contrast from Jenkyns, although I've recently recieved confirmation that he actually liked me, despite all apprearances.
Right now I'm writing on Ovid's treatment of the Phaethon myth in comparison with that of Euripides and Nonnus, who wrote 5 cen. before and after Ovid, respectively, and of Ovid's use of the myth in the larger context of the Metamorphoses. The basic conclusion is that he owned it like no other and used it to create a scheme for the poet as great artist, through the motif of the Olympian's artistic creations (ie Vulcan's doors on Helius' temple and Minerva's tapestry, etc), which is a Hellenistic concept employed by Callimachus in the 8th cen. BC. He also managed to tie it into the programmatic theme of the entire poem, by using Helius' oath and Phaethon's mortality as a foil against the grandeur of the cosmos, thereby creating generic tension between his use of comedy and epic, which was necessary, since he was writing just after Virgil completed the Aeneid.
So that's what's on my mind at the moment. I have my tutorial with Peta tomorrow morning, which I'm actually looking forward to. Feels good.
Now to bed, and hopefully to sleep.
FORGOT TO MENTION: I SAW THOM YORKE IN FRONT OF HIS HOUSE ON ST. JOHN'S STREET. I FEEL MORE COMPLETE.
Today is the first day of my last full month here. Yep, holy shit, it's going fast. Almost 8 months down. How does life do that?
In other news, Mike came to visit from Madrid, and it was neat. Gave me fresh eyes to view Oxford with, but with the addition of my experiences over the last bunch of months. Also an interesting preview of what it'll be like to come home. Both the jubilation of common context and a sudden realization that I'll be able to tell how I've changed. Because I think I maybe have. At least as far as perspective and what not.
The weekend was really good. I went out to the Bridge and waited for Mike on Thursday, cause he wasn't arriving until 2:00am, so I figured I'd get some posh-clubbing in. Then Friday night Edwina/Christina/Sophie threw a dinner party in Jericho. 12 guests, 30 bottles of wine. Not sure how that happened, or how anyone survived. But here we are. It was a really, really good time, and the food was the best I've had since flying over here. So congrats to the girls. Saturday night was the bop. We went out for curry before hand, I drank an entire bottle of vodka, got myself into a huff over nothing because I was wasted and passed out on poor Mike, leaving him to his own devices until 3:30, when he had to get the coach to the airport. Woke up at 10:00am. Whoops. Still feeling a bit bad about that one, but I think I'll be forgiven.........
Other than that, work is going really well. I'm lovin the Ovid. And Peta Fowler, my new tutor this term. She wears a wig and draws on her eyebrows and uses bright teal eyeliner. She's about 65, and is the sweetest thing. She's very encouraging and chatty, which is a BIG contrast from Jenkyns, although I've recently recieved confirmation that he actually liked me, despite all apprearances.
Right now I'm writing on Ovid's treatment of the Phaethon myth in comparison with that of Euripides and Nonnus, who wrote 5 cen. before and after Ovid, respectively, and of Ovid's use of the myth in the larger context of the Metamorphoses. The basic conclusion is that he owned it like no other and used it to create a scheme for the poet as great artist, through the motif of the Olympian's artistic creations (ie Vulcan's doors on Helius' temple and Minerva's tapestry, etc), which is a Hellenistic concept employed by Callimachus in the 8th cen. BC. He also managed to tie it into the programmatic theme of the entire poem, by using Helius' oath and Phaethon's mortality as a foil against the grandeur of the cosmos, thereby creating generic tension between his use of comedy and epic, which was necessary, since he was writing just after Virgil completed the Aeneid.
So that's what's on my mind at the moment. I have my tutorial with Peta tomorrow morning, which I'm actually looking forward to. Feels good.
Now to bed, and hopefully to sleep.
FORGOT TO MENTION: I SAW THOM YORKE IN FRONT OF HIS HOUSE ON ST. JOHN'S STREET. I FEEL MORE COMPLETE.