my fingers are blue.

After about a week of gloriously sunny and honest-to-goodness warm weather, Scotland has suddenly decided become Scotland again (by which I mean cold, windy, and in a constant state of drizzle). And I'm so unprepared! Mentally, that is. I keep going out in little jackets and thinking I'll be fine...which is actually ridiculous, because even as I'm writing this, my fingertips are blue, and the wind is literally shaking my windows. Now that's the Scotland I know.

Anyway, a few things. Firstly, weekend: boyfriend's first visit! The best. Highlights include: walking along the Fife Coastal Trail (you know my affinity for it by now, I'm sure), eating a fried Mars Bar for the first time (heart attack?), introducing him to my coursemates and my buddies from study-abroad-time, meeting his buddies from when he studied abroad here, being generally gross and affectionate in public places all weekend, and discovering our total inability to decide on what what want to eat for any meal, ever. It was so, so good :)

As for my every day life, I think the best update is a nice little things-I-did-today list. Why not, right?

1. Decided that it was just too cold to manage standing in my bathroom and waiting for the bath to fill.
2. Only got 2 sips of coffee before I had to go to class.
3. Was therefore not caffeinated enough for #4.
4. Translated some Latin. (more priceless things from Dr. P M-S to follow. Yes, those are actually his initials, as it turns out.)
3. Drank coffee. Felt better.
3. Read some Boece. Felt good about my productive streak.
4. Finished up my CV and cover letter.
5. Turned 'em in to a boutique just around the corner from me.
6. Felt REALLY good about my productive streak.
7. Started perusing things like Glamour and E4 (online TV).
8. Said goodbye to that productive streak.

Eh, whatevah. I went to a class that I'm not getting credit for this morning, and tomorrow I'm dropping into the undergraduate lecture on Beowulf at 9 am. On my day off! I deserve at least a couple hours of bad tv and trashy magazines, right?

Oh, and as promised, the gems from Latin, courtesy of Dr. P M-S. (I'm never going to call him anything else, because apparently I have the intellect of a 12-year-old girl, and still makes me giggle.)

- Last week, we went over a handout sort of about the medieval concept of the heavens. He concluded: "So that's the universe," and promptly moved on to something else. Only this man could have such a tone of authority when presenting what's generally been regarded as a huge, mind bending matter (the universe) and still have other things to teach.

-Today--and this is not so much funny as it is beautiful-- he was discussing the word "saecularis" (most nearly "secular," referring to the present time/the world), and trying to explain its inherent connection to the word "aeternus" (the eternal), and he just lays this one out there (and you have to imagine the Scottish accent, because the rolling r's make it that much better):

"Every time you write down the word [saecularis] there is something whispering in your ear, "aeternus, aeternus."

And now that I've written that down, I feel I can't even follow it up with something clever. Until next time!