Some thoughts on friendship have been percolating lately. We saw friends last night for the first time in probably about a month (they tend to be quite busy, while we aren’t usually), and it was really nice to catch up. I don’t have many friends locally; some friends live elsewhere, and some friends I only know online. I’m okay with that, though. Quality over quantity any day. Reminds me of back when I was on Facebook, or Myspace, and everyone was so proud of having so many “friends” on there.

“Gladly reading,” a phrase that just popped up in my head. I’ve not been great about reading for the past few months, honestly. I’ve been playing a lot of videogames most days and/or watching TV instead. Years ago I used to read for 2-3hrs/night and just roll through books. I picked up Emily Wilson’s Iliad translation awhile back when it first came out in hardcover, and while it’s lovely, it’s daunting, and I think I’ve gotten a bit tripped up on reading and needed a break from it.

There in the title, that’s the post. Kidding. It has been an incredibly busy week, as most weeks are wont to be. It was a good one, but just a lot going on. And I barely finished what I needed to finish (and not quite everything) today, but did my best, and that is what I aim for every day. The slightly-warmer spring weather has allowed us to keep the windows open at night, and I am loving the fresh night air (I am sure the kitties are enjoying it also).

CWs: brief politics/war mention Someone on Mastodon today made a post about how even if you only sporadically post on your blog, it doesn’t mean your blog is worth any less, or any less worth reading. And that really resonated with me, especially since I’ve been very sporadic (less so lately) about writing on here. I’m slowly changing that and writing a little more often, but it was incredibly encouraging and validating to hear that.

CWs: alcohol, food So everyone predicted a ton of snow for Colorado the past couple of days – mostly the mountains, but also in northern Colorado and the foothills, and a bit even on the plains. We weren’t sure if they were going to call it and close our office for work, and I was hoping they would (they didn’t). I would have been working from home even if I’d stayed home, so oh well.

CWs: food, alcohol My spouse’s birthday is in a few days, so we’re celebrating this weekend with friends. We are doing an escape room tomorrow (dinosaur-themed) which will be very fun. We’ve done escape rooms at this place twice before, so this will be a room we haven’t done. We’re probably going to have dinner out with friends, and alcohol will be consumed, that is a given. I have some errands to do tomorrow before that, though, and at least some Latin to get done before we meet up with our friends tomorrow evening.

CWs: mention of suicide in media, mental health, physical harm, negative self-talk in media; caveat lector The title is my phrase for of “terrifying Internet videos,” using the Neo-Latin Lexicon’s coinage interretialis, -e as “(of the) Internet” (inter-, “between” + rete, “net”). I’ve spent a lot of time going down the rabbit hole with scary videos lately and thought it’d be worth sharing with y’all. The high-water mark for me is still Petscop, a highly-unsettling video series involving a “Let’s Play”-style deep dive into a seemingly-cursed, unfinished PSX game (now that is a bit of a shibboleth; I grew up referring to the original PlayStation as “PSX,” while a lot of younger people call it “PS1” to differentiate from PS2 &c.

Talia per clipeum Volcani, dona parentis, miratur rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet attollens umero famamque et fata nepotum. Vergil, Aeneid 8.729-31 “[Aeneas] marvelled at such things throughout Vulcan’s shield, And his mother’s gifts, ignorant of these matters, and rejoiced in the image, Raising up on his shoulders the reputation and fates of his descendants.” The phrase dona parentis (“gifts of his parent”), in this case, Venus, popped into my head, so I titled the entry after that, but modified the genitive to a plural, parentum, hence “gifts of the parents.

I’m making my way through the week as well as I can. I have Friday off and my parents are coming into town for a few days, which will be busyish, but it’ll be really nice to see them. My mom visited last when we moved into the house, in Oct 2022 (can’t believe it’s been almost 2 years we’ve been here!), and then my dad came out here last April to visit.

So all week, we were told that we’d be getting quite a bit of snow here, and there were a lot of winter storm advisories &c. We had plans to see a movie Friday night, which I’d gotten tickets to a week or two ago, but by the time we got to Friday, we were both too tired to go out again, and ended up staying home. The tickets weren’t too expensive (it was going to be a nice cheap date), and the venue is owned by the city, so I figure it’s keeping that space running.