One of the things I’ve always wanted to do is learn Latin. Yes, I know: Linguistics degree from Stanford and I’ve never studied Latin. What are universities coming to these days?

If, like me, you don’t have the time to take a Latin class at a nearby university (UCLA Extension, I miss you), you can join me in the online Group Latin Study, which is starting a newbie Latin group in January. You’ll need Wheelock’s Latin and 38 Latin Stories. Join the mailing list and then ignore all the groups that aren’t 2004-Lilac. (All the Latin groups use one channel, but thankfully it seems most people are good about having the appropriate headers on their messages!)

Ave, Caesar. Et cetera.

Well, kinda.

Mostly I’m visiting with a lot of people (and when it comes to the Thanksgiving bunch, a lot a LOT of people), eating, and sleeping. Usually the eating leads to the sleeping. The vast quantities of people generally facilitate one activity and interfere with the other, and I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to which is which.

The big news around these parts is that something about the social aspects of this giant gathering is really facilitating Simon’s speech. (The same thing happened with Sophia two years ago: before Thanksgiving, not much talking; after Thanksgiving, hasn’t stopped talking since.) Uncle Scott was playing with Simon and holding him upside-down. Eventually Simon started saying, “Upside-down!” Today at the end of breakfast he said, “I done!” and he ran away from his Cheerios.

I’ve been trying to tidy up my office, get everything arranged into its proper place or a proper place (after all the stuff that doesn’t belong has been removed, then we’ll find proper places). I hit the motherlode of my paper journals and arranged them on a shelf:

Now, to be truthful, the last 6 or 7 books on the shelf are blank—in unpacking these boxes I have come to terms with my rather extreme case of notebookmania (anybody got a Latin term for that?)—but holy God I’ve written a lot of pages since 1986, which is when that spiral notebook to the far left is from.

I reread some of it last night. I haven’t reread my journals much over the years, mostly out of fear that I’m going to find out I was complaining about the same stuff in 1990 that I am now. But I was actually far more entertained by them than I thought I’d be.

I need to rearrange some more stuff in my office though, because right now these books are one shelf off the ground, which means they are in easy access for Simon, who’s been enjoying ripping books, and Sophia, who’s always looking for paper to draw on. I’m going to put them on a high shelf so when they’re older they can hunt for them like sneaky children should.