"Be on the Alert For New Oppourtunities"

Today is the second day of the Paganalia. Don't forget to pray to Ceres/Demeter, goddess of harvest, and Tellus/Gaia, goddess of the earth, that the birds don't eat your seeds. Or something.

It's also a Feast of Bacchus, which means you have justification for getting drunk. Have fun.

-------------------

So there are 2,191 people with my first and last name together. My first name is the 36th most popular name, and my last name ranks #25.

There's 1,048 people named James Bond and 113 Harry Potters; 503 George Bushes and 31 Emily Dickinsons. Absolutely no one in the US today is named Hermione.

Mistake's name is really uncommon. She's one of the only people with it, though both her first and last name is common. My sister shares her name with 769 people, and Closer's one of 305. Only 49 KTMacks, though. I totally win for the most boring name.

There are seven Clark Kents and nineteen Charles Xaviers. Yes, I looked it up...

How many people share your name?

-------------------

It seems that my plans to become an RA are already helping me socially. At least, they're offering me a bit of practice. First my RA and the 2nd floor female RA (it took me WAY too long to figure out that they've set it up so there's one girl and one guy per floor) talked to me and Loquatia about it, and then tonight the 2nd floor male RA stopped by on his rounds. I was sort of impressed that he not only remembered that I was at the RA meeting, but that I seemed apprehensive about it and that I used to read poetry at the coffeehouses (he mentioned this because he thought I was an English major).

It's nice that they're so interested (though none of them are continuing as RAs so I guess it's entirely possible that I would wind up as one of their RAs, therefore making it in their best interest to get people who aren't crazy or power-hungry... little do they know), but at the same time, you can only say "I'm going to apply and hopefully things work out" so many times.

-------------------

I was translating from English to Latin as a part of a grammar exercise, and may I say, grammar exercises always have the weirdest sentences to translate. Honestly, "Incenderunt pontem in quo pugnamus"? "Agricola cui dedi pecuniam factus est socium meum?" "Sagittae delectaverunt Marcum?"* I don't know who Marcus is, but he needs to stop playing with his arrows, and I have never paid a farmer to be my friend. I have nothing against farmers. I have lots of stuff against paying people to be my friends. They charge too much.

And this Marcus, through the course of the assignment, was established to be a foot soldier, got paid, saw a girl, got a gift from the king, and was delighted by his arrows. An excellent day for him. I wish these people would remember that Caius and Cassius and Brutus are also excellent names and Marcus doesn't have to do everything, and they should stop before they have to pay him overtime.

You can tell I'm sick of translating when the grammar exercises get personalities.

-------------------

I finally got the rug vacuumed today. It looked very nice until about five seconds afterwards when I walked on it. Oh well. Nice while it lasted.

Today was better.


*"They have set fire to the bridge on which we are fighting," "The farmer to whom I gave the money became my friend," and "The arrows delighted Marcus," respectively.