Weekend report
Aug. 1st, 2005 12:45 pmWith the power restored to my house last Friday morning and the servers back online in my basement, we went off to the trailer in WV in good spirits, and largely remained that way through the weekend.
Our Ohio co-owners would not be at the trailer during our visit so we largely had the time entirely to ourselves and the weather was largely congenial. While I had been working on my MSc over the past two years, I had stopped reading anything which wasn't directly course-related. Most of my trade mags qualified (and short enough to not tax my nanosecond attention span) but everything else was left in a pile to be conquered later. Later had finally arrived.
Despite being surrounded by a number of very nice testosterone-based distractions --did I ever mention Roseland is clothing-optional?-- I managed to work my way through three short books (a history of zero, an analysis of the Russian revolution and the dreadfully boring piece on the Hapsburgs) and the entire stack of outstanding Harper's magazines (save one which I accidentally forgot in the trailer when we returned home).
Arthur Krystal had a delightful essay on the seven deadly sins in the January 2005 issue of Harper's, reviewing the recent project by the Oxford University Press. My favourite quote:
"Again, if God's essnce is mind --rational, perfect, perpetual, and precise-- we can realize Him only through mind; and if the mind is clouded, disturbed, or in thrall to earthly delights, we're in trouble. [...] In other words, we can enjoy ourselves so long as enjoyment doesn't blot out God-- not something most of us want to think about when spooning toward the bottom of a pint of Chunky Monkey or gleefully eyeing the contents of our blue-chip portfolio."
We returned to DC in the early evening Sunday. I spent the larger portion of the evening working on tasks delayed by last week's power outage: laundry, cleaning and posting photos of our prior weekend's tubing adventures with the DC Lambda Squares to my web site. I still managed to stay up later than I should have but that's a regret for Monday.
Our Ohio co-owners would not be at the trailer during our visit so we largely had the time entirely to ourselves and the weather was largely congenial. While I had been working on my MSc over the past two years, I had stopped reading anything which wasn't directly course-related. Most of my trade mags qualified (and short enough to not tax my nanosecond attention span) but everything else was left in a pile to be conquered later. Later had finally arrived.
Despite being surrounded by a number of very nice testosterone-based distractions --did I ever mention Roseland is clothing-optional?-- I managed to work my way through three short books (a history of zero, an analysis of the Russian revolution and the dreadfully boring piece on the Hapsburgs) and the entire stack of outstanding Harper's magazines (save one which I accidentally forgot in the trailer when we returned home).
Arthur Krystal had a delightful essay on the seven deadly sins in the January 2005 issue of Harper's, reviewing the recent project by the Oxford University Press. My favourite quote:
"Again, if God's essnce is mind --rational, perfect, perpetual, and precise-- we can realize Him only through mind; and if the mind is clouded, disturbed, or in thrall to earthly delights, we're in trouble. [...] In other words, we can enjoy ourselves so long as enjoyment doesn't blot out God-- not something most of us want to think about when spooning toward the bottom of a pint of Chunky Monkey or gleefully eyeing the contents of our blue-chip portfolio."
We returned to DC in the early evening Sunday. I spent the larger portion of the evening working on tasks delayed by last week's power outage: laundry, cleaning and posting photos of our prior weekend's tubing adventures with the DC Lambda Squares to my web site. I still managed to stay up later than I should have but that's a regret for Monday.
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Date: 2005-08-01 07:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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