The women say, "Given half a chance, Menelaus."

If you ever have a chance to attend a lecture by David Porter, Williams College classics prof and 1958 Swat alum, run, do not walk, to the auditorium. Yesterday evening he presented a rousing overview of sophia in Greek drama, slotting everything from Troy to Cloudcuckooland into a unified context in just about ninety minutes. He was dramatic, he was oratorial, he inflicted upon us a surprising number of dirty puns. He slipped into the original Greek to demonstrate the snakelike sibilance of one of Clytemnestra's lines, gnashing and hissing in a menacing, yet professorial, way.

It was an unusual way to spend my birthday, but not an unpleasant one. (adfamiliares and I will do something more traditional this weekend.) I chatted with profs and undergrads at the dinner afterward—one of whom exclaimed, "Explosive diarrhea!" during dessert, and she was quoting my girlfriend's lecture—and ate chocolate cake, which seemed appropriately celebratory. The chair announced to all assembled that it was my birthday—without actually announcing who I was or why I was there, so I think many of the attendees were puzzled, but it was a nice gesture. I got to chat with Prof. Porter about Peter Schickele (with whom he overlapped at Swat), and went home feeling pleased.

Presents have been trickling in, key acquisitions being a double CD of 80s hits featuring the long-sought Mexican Radio, Sufjan Stevens's Michigan album, and money from my mom for to buy a grill. (<temptations> Singing, "My grill, my grill, cookin' on my grill..." </temptations>)

Tall in the saddle

It cost about twice what I was expecting, but Hoss rides again. (Hoss is my bicycle.) The saddle is higher than I think I want it to be—I should not pull my groin every time I get on my bike (for one thing, I would get arrested)—but otherwise the folks at Blue Sky Bicycles did a lovely job fixing it up. If you need a laugh today, you can imagine me cruising the streets of Saratoga while perched atop a too-high bicycle seat in my round green sunglasses of coolth and my purple bicycle helmet of dorkth.

This is the next step in my plan to make myself more mobile and less homebound, which can only improve my outlook. (The big step, the scary step, is learning to drive, which I've just begun investigating.)