Birthday shirt.

I really like this striped shirt that I borrowed from my mom without asking. I wore it on her birthday, which prompted her to say: "Nice shirt. Have I seen that before?" Looking through old photos a day or so later, I noticed that she had worn the same shirt on my birthday two years ago. Thus, it will now forever be known as the birthday shirt.


I like it with shorts:





My birthday is in a month and fourteen days from now, and it will be the first birthday I've ever spent away from home. It will also be the first birthday since high school to take place during the school year. I had been enjoying those summer birthdays. Oh, well. I share my birthday with William Butler Yeats, Malcolm McDowell, Whitley Strieber, Ally Sheedy, Charles the Bald, Dorothy Sayers, and ... the Olsen twins. Yeah, I know, they can't all be winners.

Teto-wash.

I don't have much to share; I'm still in the States, waiting for my flight and working on a paper on the Aegean Late Bronze Age. Thus, here are some pictures of Teto taking a bath. Teto takes what I like to call "Attack Baths." She'll be lying quietly one moment, then feel an urge to lick her paw that wrenches her out of sleep. Once she's satisfied that her paw is clean, the sleeping can resume.





Another fun fact about Teto: when her fur gets wet, it changes color, like one of those hair-color-changing Barbies. Her gray fur turns a shimmery blue.




ATTACK BATH: Mission complete.

I translate the Vulgate.

I'm not religious, but I like languages and history, and thus I like the Bible. As part of my Latin studies this semester, I'm translating parts of the Vulgate. It's fun because I know many of the stories, but not the exact words; therefore it's still a challenge to translate, but I can tell if I'm going in the right direction. I have read parts of the Bible in English, and I must say that translating it from Latin makes me appreciate the work of those fine translators, who can manage to make their translations read like, well, they aren't translations. See what you think of my attempt at Luke 23. You can find the original Latin text I used here.


And, rising, all the multitude of them led [Jesus] to Pilate. They then began to accuse him, saying, "We discovered him subverting the people, and preventing tribute from being given to Caesar, and saying that he was Christ the king."

Pilate asked him, "Do you say you are King of the Jews?" and he responded, "You say [it]."

Then Pilate said to the priests and to the crowd, "I find no cause against that man."

And they grew stronger, saying, "He provoked the people, teaching throughout the whole of Judaea and starting that all the way from Galilee."

Pilate, hearing Galilee, asked if the man was Galilean. And as he knew what the power of Herod was, he sent him to Herod who was himself of Jerusalem in these days.

Herod was greatly pleased by the sight of Jesus, and indeed he had for much time been greatly desiring to see him because he had heard much of him and hoped to see some sign made by him.

He interrogated him with many conversations and answered nothing himself. The priests and the scribes stood also, constantly accusing him. Then Herod with his followers despised him and ridiculed the white clothes he wore and sent him back to Pilate. And Herod and Pilate were made friends in their own day, for beforehand they had been mutual enemies.

Then Pilate, summoning the priests, the magistrates, and the public, said to those who were present, [I had a lot of trouble with this part; basically he says he can't find any cause against Jesus and thus sends him away.]

The same whole crowd cried out, saying, "Remove him and send to us Barabbas" - who was, on account of the same deed, sent to prison for sedition and murder.

Then Pilate spoke to those who wanted to send Jesus away, and they shouted out, saying, "Crucify, crucify him!"

Then for a third time he said to them, "Indeed I find that one [Jesus] has created no cause for death in this [Another confusing part] ... therefore I sent him away."

And they insisted with great voices, demanding that he be crucified, and their voices grew stronger. And Pilate assigned a petition to be made of them. He sent this to him who, on account of murder and sedition, had been sent to prison, whom they demanded truly surrender Jesus to their will. And when they commanded him they apprehended Simon, the same who came from Cyrene, from his house and assigned a cross to him to carry behind Jesus. He followed a great crowd of people, and women who wailed and mourned [Jesus].

Turning back to them, Jesus said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not cry for me, but cry for yourselves and your children."

[The following paragraph got really weird and confusing, so bear with me.]

Now behold, the days came in which they said the fertile and the sterile, the wombs that did not procreate and the fertile who did not lactate ... Then they began to say, "End the mountains over us and hide the hills ..."

Two worthless others were led with him in order to be killed, and after they came to the place called Calvary, there they crucified him and the one bandit on the right and the other on the left.

And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do," destroying his clothes fully, they produced his fate.

And the people stood waiting, and the priests mocked him with these, saying, "He saved others; if this is Christ chosen by God he would save himself."

Then soldiers approaching ridiculed him, offering him vinegar, saying, "If you are King of the Jews, save yourself."

There was an inscription written above him in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew: "This is the King of the Jews."

Then one of the bandits blasphemed him, saying, "If you are Christ, save yourself and us."

The other, responding, rebuked him, saying, "[Something like, You do not fear God and thus you will be damned.]"

And he said to Jesus, "Lord, remember me with kindness in your kingdom."

And Jesus said to him, "Amen, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise."

It was approximately the sixth hour, and darkness was created in the whole world all the way into the ninth hour. And the sun was hidden, and the curtain of the temple was split in the middle.

And shouting with a great voice, Jesus said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit," and saying that he died.

Then the centurion, seeing the thing that was, glorified God, saying, "Truly, this was a just man." And the same crowd of all those who approached that spectacle and saw what happened, beating their chests, were converted. Then all standing were marked from afar of him, and the women who had followed him from Galilee, seeing that.

And behold the man by the name Joseph was a decurion, a good and just man. He had not agreed with the decision and actions of those from Aramathia, the state of Judaea; he himself awaited the kingdom of God. He approached Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus, and laying it down wrapped it in muslin and placed it in a cut tomb in which no one had yet been placed.

And it was the day before the Sabbath, and the Sabbath dawned. Following, the women of Galilee who had come with him saw the tomb and in what way his body was placed. And turning back they prepared the perfumes and ointments and on the same Sabbath they kept silence, following the tradition.

Toast: Summer Favorites.

As much as I adore catalogues, it's sometimes hard to get a sense of the clothes portrayed in their pictures; it's better to look at the online store. The best thing, of course, is to be able to see the clothes in person, but I won't be back in Oxford for another week. Once I'm there, I still won't be able to afford most of the things I like, but I can stop by and look at them. The Toast store is always playing Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, and other very agreeable things.

Anyway, here are some of my favorites from the summer catalogue (and some of the spring):


Circles print nightie


Light cord peg top trousers


Wala sandal


Cassia scarf


Fine stripe singlet


Linen gingham tunic dress

Mermy's birthday.

This is Mermy with Kitty in the 1980s:


It was my Mermy's birthday yesterday. We went out to brunch, had cake, and later had dinner with friends. I knitted Mermy a hat as a present; unfortunately, it's been raining ever since Saturday night, so I haven't been able to take any decent pictures of it. Those will have to come later.

Until then, here are some pictures of cake:





Mermy crocheting:


Another picture of Mermy in the 1980s:

Toast: Summer 2010

Two drawings.

The first: this is a city I dream of quite often. It's not real, and I never heard it named in my dreams, so I just call it Abydos. It's on the coast, looking out into a corridor of islands with huge hills and mountains that get higher and colder the farther away they go. The buildings along the coast are all residential and small. Further inland, the buildings get larger and develop into a small city. Also, there are flying machines. And the flying machines double as ships.

You can click to see it larger.


The second drawing is simply a picture of my ideal house. It's somewhere in Vermont and there's a stone wall, of course. It's based on a photograph I took of a house I really liked. I imagine it would be mildly creepy for that person to find this picture here and recognize his/her own house. To that person, I would say this: I'm not creepy. I just like your house.

Sun setting.

I took a walk to take pictures of things while the sun was setting. It's amazing how everything transforms in that moment, just before all of it is whisked away into night. I'm not sure on the science behind the colors that a sunset produces; I'd guess it has something to do with the way the light refracts and bends as it teases its way over the silhouette of the Earth, and creates unique wavelengths. Also, gnomes. But it's a well-known fact that gnomes are responsible for most things.

So, here are some tulips. In response to Katie's question on my last post, yes, that tulip is real, and it's a weird one. It's the only one of its bunch that looks like that.



Here are some of the little pink flowers that grow in abundance in our rock garden:


The corner of our house. Can you spot the moon? Do you remember how weird it was, as a kid, to see the moon while the sun was still up? It seemed to defy all logic, like snow in July or snakes on a plane.


Our crab apple tree is about to bloom:


This is the oldest tree on our street. I'm guessing it was one of the first to sprout up after our neighborhood ceased to be used as farmland. Or maybe it even coexisted with the farm.


I ran into this little black cat. Surprisingly, she was not one of the billions of feral cats now living in our neighborhood; she had a collar on.


Sunset from the top of the hill:


Sunset from the bottom of the hill:

Happy Earth Day!