The wedding is just over a month away, and things have continued to go smoothly. With a few minor exceptions, all of the invitations have been stuffed and sealed. I picked up my ring on Saturday; it seems to fit well enough, and people are doing their best to assure me it doesn’t look too feminine on my delicate hands. This has been a long-held phobia of mine, but I think it will pass. Moving on, Melanie and I have even found what we hope will soon be our apartment. Despite its tiny kitchen, we both felt charmed by it. And it’s got a gas fireplace, which I’ve never seen in an apartment before—at least not in an apartment of the caliber for which our income will allow. With winter just around the corner, what could be more romantically perfect for a pair of newlyweds?
Despite nearing completion, there are some wedding-preparation technicalities that must be overcome. We’ll have to acquire a marriage license, which seems nothing more than a way for the government to gouge an already-financially-strapped couple out of fifty bucks. And we also need to finalize our wedding registry, which should be finished but could probably use a once-over to be safe. Aside from that, the only semi-major thing to do is get me a tuxedo. As of yet, I have no idea what style I will be going for, but it will presumably bear some purple in it somewhere. I also need to decide whether or not I should shave any of my facial hair. As an aspiring professor, I don a full (though hopefully not sloppy) beard. Though no one, including my lovely fiancée, is asking me to shave, I wonder if the clean-cut look isn’t more appropriate for a wedding. Then again, as it’s been a number of years since I’ve gone without a beard, such a move runs the risk of making me look goofy. And that would just be a distraction. A goatee is probably a fair compromise, but I haven’t decided.
In my academic life, I have two tests this week. I’m not looking forward to either, but Latin should be a lot worse than Greek. For anyone who knows these languages, or who knows my usual gripes about them, this may come as a surprise. But it’s all about the teacher, and my Latin professor is incredibly more demanding. My Greek teacher, on the other hand, is planning to give us most of the vocabulary we’ll need for the test. While translating is much more than an act of matching Greek words to English words, this should, as far as tests go, make it incredibly easy. I’d be feeling pretty good about getting these tests behind me if it weren’t for the 20-page paper that’s yet to come. If I don’t get started on that soon, I’ll be hating life. That’s not how a boy in love should feel when he’s about to get married. And so we must move on. Until then…
Good luck with the exams. Latin can be such a horrible nemesis sometimes.
ReplyDeletehic, haec, hoc and all that stuff.
hi ben. it's exciting to read about your wedding plans. who do you have for Latin by the way?
ReplyDeleteSvendsen is my Latin teacher. I must say, he's been much more tolerable as a Latin teacher than as a Greek teacher. I think this (at least partially) has to do with the fact that I'm in a second-year-only class. So we actually go over our translations as opposed to Greek, where he wanted to talk about the storyline and literary themes more than language, but then tested us mostly on the language. He just moves very quickly, and thus it becomes nearly impossible to adequately study all of the material that is considered "fair game" for the test. But you probably know all this, as I'm sure you had him at least once. (?)
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