Safe Moorage

It has been A Week, that’s for sure. Just a lot going on at work (the norm, but it hit especially hard this week), and Thursday was an especially rough day at work for various reasons. I had some phone calls that went south and left me very frazzled and burnt out. Trying not to linger or dwell upon it, since it’s over and I’m OK and life goes on, but sometimes these things stick with you. I’m writing this after playing some Final Fantasy V; I’ve maxed out my characters’ jobs and might have to level up some more, I dunno. FFV seems especially inscrutable for one of the older RPGs I’ve played, and I honestly think this will be my last playthrough in a long time. It’s very fun and has been enjoyable, but grinding towards the end of the game has been an absolute slog, more so than for any other game I’ve played. Who knows, though, I might put FFV aside for a bit and return to Stardew Valley vel sim. I am still waiting for the Final Fantasy VII (“Reunion”) retranslation to be completed, though; the retranslation for PC is nearly complete and needs to be ported to the PSX original. I can’t wait. All the buzz around the “Rebirth” (part 2 of the Remake) has got me excited about the original!

Anyways, we are supposed to have a winter storm this weekend, Fri-Sun. Supposed to start snowing tonight but I haven’t seen anything quite yet. We were going to go out tonight for a movie downtown, but we were both too tired and stayed home. Hoping to meet up for coffee with friends downtown tomorrow, so that will be nice, depending on the weather (we’d like to walk if possible). Don’t have too many plans otherwise. My parents are coming to visit next week, so we need to clean the house and get things ready for their visit. Needs to be cleaned anyway, so this is just a good excuse for it. Need to catproof my office as much as I can, since my dad will likely be staying in here, and I don’t want him to have to keep the door shut all the time. Besides, I want to be able to let the cats in anyway, since I’ve been shutting my office door whenever I’m in here ever since we got Lyra last May, and that’s not been super sustainable. So that’s a work in progress.

I’m listening to music now and it reminds me I need to tag my Bandcamp haul from last Friday. Soon. I also got some more Latin to work on, so I need to do that this weekend. It’s been nice having a little break from it for the last week or so, but I do enjoy working on it and keeping my Latin skills up. I think I mentioned before that I’ve been reading the Iliad in translation, and thinking of Latin is making me want to reread the Aeneid. I haven’t read the whole thing (well, most of it, anyway) since sometime during my master’s degree (we read Aeneid 7 and 8, often-underappreciated books!). I know it’s cliched, since everyone reads it, but I really love the epic; it was my first introduction to Latin poetry (in spring semester of my sophomore year in undergrad), and it will always have a special place in my heart. I remember we used the Clyde Pharr “Purple Vergil,” which is a nice text/commentary on Aeneid 1-6, and I never knew until later that there are books 7-12! I remember the text talking about those books, but I was surprised they weren’t part of the text itself! Personally I prefer the blue Duckworth R.D. Williams commentaries (2 vols.) on the whole epic, and of course R. A. B. Mynors’ OCT of the whole thing. I don’t know many other texts, honestly, but I am sure there are plenty.

That reminds me, I wish I had the Cyril Bailey 3 vol. Lucretius De rerum natura set. I think it’s 3 volumes? Can’t remember. It’s a very nice text and commentary on Lucretius, and right now I only have the OCT and a nice translation by Anthony Esolen. Oh well, I have the Otto Skutsch edition of Ennius’ Annales, which was a bucket list item for a long time (I got it deeply discounted, and, while still expensive, it was totally worth it!).

But I complain. I have a Classics shelf packed with texts that I am not reading and I need to remedy that and read more. I’d really like to read all of Quintus Smyrnaeus in Greek at some point. I spent a lot of time with Posthomerica 1-5 for my master’s thesis, but haven’t delved into the other books, in Greek at least. Alan James’ translation is fabulous and a must-read if you’d like to check out the epic. I love Quintus since he fills in the gaps of the mostly-lost “Epic Cycle” and tells us about the events between the Iliad and Odyssey, just a super rich body of myth. And I got a fabulous translation of Nonnos’ Dionysiaka (Tales of Dionysus, eds. Levitan & Lombardo) which I am very excited to read. Different translators took chunks of the 48-book work dedicated to the fantastic story of Dionysus, composed likely sometime in the 5th century CE. It’s a massive book, and I have the 3-vol. Loeb set for the Greek, too, so that will be a joy to read.

Didn’t mean to ramble about Classics in all of this, but it came to the fore of my mind. I gotta go shortly and feed the girls (9pm is their feeding time each night, just the way it goes!). but I thought I’d write about how I’m happy it’s Friday after the end of a long week. a safe harbor, safe anchorage, a calm place to shelter against the storm. thanks for reading, friends!