Alas, no new pictures this week. I haven't really been out much, at least not to the sort of places one takes a camera. And the melting ice is not quite as picturesque as the piling snow. Times like this make me wish I had a smaller camera; but I think I made the right decision. A big, awkward camera means the pictures I get are better, and I'm less likely to turn into one of those people who do more taking of pictures that doing of, or observing of, things. Though the fear remains present, being of a sort of academic mindset, that in my mind the urge to record, or to make abstract, will win over the urge to experience.
But my Saturday's have been good. I made it out into the thick of the Reykjavik night-life last weekend, with my new sometimes-workout-partner Josefin (I seem to have became popular at the gym since Erin left. I'm training David in the basics, and Josefin pushed to me delightful levels of exertion this Friday and Saturday- we did heavy deadlift and heavy squats back-to-to! My lower back still hasn't recovered. It's wonderful-and Liv will be starting back up again next weekend. It's a little intimidating, but comforting at the same time: I need never be lonesome or un-spotted at the gym again.) and enjoyed myself as much as is possible in the crush and noise of the Reyjkavík at its most Las Vegas-like. Last night David and I went to Ölsmíthjan for a little Irish session, with his friend Ruth on whistle/guitar and a fiddler Ólafur (named for a king or a saint?) and several other whistlers/flautists and a guitarist whose names I really aught to remember. I had all the anxiety someone who knows me well would expect of that situation, but it was all kinds of fun, and it´s possible that I could have played worse than I did. I do wish I knew some of the tunes: I need to bulk up my repertoire. Jaime didn´t make it, alas: we didn´t get to enjoy any folk-clarinet. But the possibility remains that we´ll get back together again (other than the good folks going back to Scotland). Something to look forward to.
I have officially finished the Illiad and the 6th century pseudo-history Daretis Phrygii de excidio Trojae historia, both in translation. So I'm nicely onto my background reading for my thesis. Next I'm going to try my latin at a (fortunately heavily glossed) Ilias latina, a poetic shortening (it's about a thousand lines) of the Iliad, and definitely a source for some of the additions to Dares in Trójumanna saga. After that, I might skip some of the other Late Antique works, since they don't appear to have been among the source material in Scandinavia, and move on the the Aeniad and Gregory of Monmouth's Historia. Or maybe I'm just to lazy to read things that I don't have to, that aren't in translation. We shall see.
But there is a sense of deepening education there, now, which is nice. And we are moving from 50 lines of Íslensk Fornrit normalized Egils saga this week to 700 lines of normalized fornaldarsögur and 300 lines of diplomatic riddarasögur in the last week of our Old Icelandic class. So there is an equal sense of the hope for a deeper understanding, there, along with a general sort of dread. And the usual fear of incompetence. I´m not quite sure what to think about our Old Norse Religion/Belief class. I suppose it will depend on what I end up doing for my paper topic: perhaps I can find some strange, obscure was to tie it into my thesis.
And on a lighter note, there's going to be a Pathfinder game (which was explained to me as D&D 3.75) starting up in February, shortly after my 25th birthday. We're doing so oldschool-style stat rolling, so I'll be rumbling about with a Dwarven Paladin with an 11 Constitution. So there's some hope there for this being a real role-playing game, rather than just some tied-together scenes of dice-combat. That or I'm going to die very very quickly and hope I roll better for my next character.
(That's for anyone reading this who perhaps did not know exactly how much of a nerd I am. Now you know.)
Enjoying the switch from snow to rain to no end. Makes me feel alive.
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