Over Afternoon Tea

Tea is not only a drink but a ritual over which people have been relaxing, talking, and catching up on each other's lives for centuries. This blog is intended to serve as a virtual cup of tea, helping me keep in touch with friends and family in my physical absence.

It's Always the Little Stuff

I found out a couple of weeks ago that you're never, ever, EVER supposed to brew green tea with boiling water. You're always supposed to let the water cool for a couple of minutes, or else the green tea will brew bitter. I wondered why people raved about such a nasty, bitter taste. At the moment I'm enjoying life under the influence of properly-brewed green tea.

Solvitur acris hiems...for the moment anyway

Around this time of year, my favorite 'spring poem' always makes its way back into my head:

Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni...

But my favorite line is the one about midnight dances:

Iam Cytherea choros ducit Venus imminente luna,
junctaeque Nymphis Gratiae decentes
alterno terram quatiunt pede...

Horace has a capability to evoke such a captivating picture with so few words. Translations are painfully inadequate, but would run something like, in the first case, 'Bitter winter is dissolved by the welcome change of Spring and Favonis' (the West Wind unless I've gotten mixed again) and, in the second, 'Now Cytherean Venus leads dances with the moon hanging low, and charming Graces joined with Nymphs beat the earth with alternating foot.'

But the real problem with Horace is not the inadequacy of translations, but that he doesn't seem to have given me a poem for weather that keeps going from charmingly warm to bitterly frigid. I always recite this poem with a bit of trepidation, as if winter is going to 'come back and get me' for my audacity in proclaiming its defeat by Spring. Perhaps I could do a little substitution-work and use one of his railings against unfaithful girlfriends...

You might be a nerd if...

About two weeks ago, my husband and I met my sister in downtown Boston. She attends a school about 40 minutes north of us, so despite busy schedules we generally manage to spend a day together about once a month. We had wanted to do some touring in Boston for awhile, so since the weather was warming up, we met by the T station.

We visited the site of the Boston Marathon (which she'll be running on April 19th) and toured Holy Trinity Church, then visited the Boston Public Library. The building was, as expected, gorgeous. Murals and marble everywhere, my kind of place. We got some tea in their cafe and then wandered around aimlessly. We drifted into a room advertising their manuscript collection. Various manuscripts, or copies of manuscripts, were on display in glass cases. After ogling their list of classics texts, I decided we need to get an appointment to go see them sometime.

Another case contained copies of early music manuscripts. I set about deciphering the Latin of one (the script, as usual, is more difficult to read than the Latin is to translate) and observed that it was hymns from the Western Rite Liturgy (Mass). I called my husband's attention to this interesting item and was deciphering more of it as he, with his musician's ear, began puzzling out the archaic music notation. Observing that the notes seemed to indicate an ison-like thing, I proceeded to pick it out and hold it as he chanted the melody. It was quite an attractive little tune and I was all for singing it over when I turned to find my sister laughing at me.

"What?"

"Only with you guys," she said.

Sometimes it takes an outside perspective for me to realize to what degree I inhabit the world of nerd-dom.

I Confess

Most of my life, I've attempted to avoid getting associated with the 'girly' image. The feel of nail polish on my nails bothers me and I've probably spent more than five minutes on my hair a grand total of a dozen times in my life. I've done my fair share of climbing trees, wearing jeans, and despising boys who thought I couldn't do anything just because I'm a girl. But this morning, I let out a very girly scream because I saw a bug. It was sitting on my spoonrest, where I was about to reach for the spoon I had moved earlier but forgotten about. It was large and ugly and it startled me so badly that I screamed involuntarily. I'd like to be able to say that it was more of a yell or even an 'eep' but it was definitely a very girly scream.
My husband was out of his chair and investigating in a matter of seconds (a very useful male instinct pertaining to my (very rare) screams).
"Sorry. It's just a bug," I said apologetically, trying to recover my not-a-sissy image. "It startled me or I wouldn't have screamed."
He came around the counter and looked at the large, ugly bug, which was moving very slowly forward.
"Yup, that's a big bug." He started to return to his computer.
"Would you do something about that while I go get my water?" OK, so my not-a-sissy image isn't that valuable. If there hadn't been a guy present I'd have handled it myself, but he was there and I wasn't sure what to kill it with, so...
"Oh, you want me to do something about it?" he asked, grinning.
"Yup," I said, giving him a hug. "Husbands are good for that."

OK, so I'm a girl. But hold the nail polish.