The End of All Things
Or the semester, at least.
Once again, I apologize for the alarming amount of time I have allowed to elapse between posts. What can I say about this, other than to point to it as a clear and continuing example of man’s depravity?
Or mine, at least.
I am currently sitting at a desk in the laundry room at Kailoni’s parents’ house in California. My tinny speakers are pounding out music from Ireland’s second best rock band, all of it in near-perfect time with the aggressive rumble of the washing machine directly behind me.
This little room has become my dwelling of choice as I try to preserve my Greek studies and myriad other projects against all the happy interruptions of my two darling children. They are cute as crustaceans, but boy, are they good at derailing me.
Yet I get ahead of myself.
We had a great couple months finishing out the semester at DTS. My class grades are slowly trickling in, proving that I had my act together, more or less. It’s hard to believe that our first semester is done; somehow we know that after a few blinks of the eye we’ll be packing up and headed off to the next big thing.
Kailoni and the kids flew off to CA a week before I did, leaving me seven whole days to finish my assignments and reflect on the blessings of marriage. As pleasant as it was to have the children’s toys remain where I put them for more than a minute and a half, I quickly realized that a well-ordered house is no comparison to the joys of having them around–even when they’re shrieking like cheerleaders on the other side of a locked laundry-room door.
Additionally, during my recent spat of bachelorhood, I quickly re-learned how incapable I really am at putting myself to bed. First: “Well, I need to read some of this book before I go to bed.” Then: “I might as well start watching a movie on Netflicks, after all, it’s free.” Then: “I should really go to bed, and frankly this movie is terrible, but I’m already half done watching it, so I might as well just finish.” …and so on.
But now we are all united together in CA for a month of vising Kailoni’s family. They live up the mountains of San Bernardino, so it is a very beautiful place to be. So why do I find myself spending such a large proportion of my day in the laundry room, being lulled into a stupor by the drone of the washing machine?
Well, I have declared this the Summer of Greek. See, I took two years of it at Moody, and I have to take all of it all over again at DTS–unless I re-learn some of what has turned to rust inside my great red melon. So I bought the textbooks DTS uses, and I’m studying like a mad Jeopardy contestant in order to pass an advanced standing test when I return to campus in August. This feat of linguistic audacity would allow me to test out of two whole semesters of Greek (or three, depending on how much self-loathing I want to put myself through over the next 12 weeks). All of this, of course, rides on the level of my own personal discipline, a prospect that has me a little nervous. But so far so good–I have been at it for three days, and have blown through 9 of the 35 chapters I have to cover. But don’t get to excited, the first five are just a glorified introduction, and the next four are easy. Yes sir, it’s chapter 10 that separates the men from the boys–or the Hellenists from the Barbarians, in this case.
Just call me Conan.
later,
Greg
PS We’ll be coming back to Michigan on or around June 15, for just about two months. We look forward to seeing many of you then!
