Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Virtue and Paleography

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I don't have too much to write about regarding yesterday. Hopefully this picture will stand in for a few of the missing words. The grey sweater is new and yesterday was the first time I wore it. I saw it at Filene's Basement and liked it because it looks almost like a blazer but it's more casual. I think blazers actually look pretty good on me, but I rarely like to be that formal. Anyway, I took the picture because by the time I got dressed Pocket of Bolts had left for the day and couldn't give the me the thumbs up or thumbs down, so I wasn't sure whether I looked okay.

I got a good start to the day in that, while in the shower, I finally made a decision I had been wavering over for some time. I said to Pocket of Bolts, "I have decided I am going to delete the Farm Game from my computer." (This is Farm Frenzy 2, which is a time management game involving raising farm animals and selling the various products. Also, it's like crack for me. I sit down to play one game and look up four hours later.) Pocket of Bolts said, "Well, you have been living the life of a gentlewoman farmer for some time now, so perhaps it is time that you retired." Which was a gracious acknowledgment of victory, since every time I go on a farm frenzy binge PoB tells me that I should delete it. I can hardly blame him...!

So that was the day's major piece of virtue. I tried to spend some time in the morning working on the cover letter for some history jobs I'm going to apply to. It was rough getting started though. Finally, about 45 minutes before I had to walk out the door I managed to settle down and focus on the task. I did actually make some progress, though I didn't finish.

The afternoon and evening was taken up by the paleography class I am sitting in on. It has its up side and its down side. The up side is that it's in Chinese, which is great for my language. The down side is, it is completely unstructured. Explicitly: the guy is extremely brilliant and knowledgeable and he is visiting here this year. I believe he must have agreed to teach the class on the condition that he gets to teach it in a way that's easy and fun for him. This is fine for the budding paleographers, who already have a foundation and merely need to ask questions and add to their knowledge and familiarity. But I don't have much of a foundation, so a more structured approach would be slightly more appropriate for me. On the other hand, I learned the ancient Chinese character for butt, so what can be better than that!?

Yesterday's hexagram was Dun, Retreat, heaven over mountain.

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