Birthday weekend

My youngest sister amused me this weekend by buying a copy of ‘Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis’ (the first Harry Potter book, translated into Latin) for my birthday. She’s a big Harry Potter fan and is always trying to get me to read the books, although I don’t think my Latin is quite up to translating the book back into English! I suspect I’ll probably get the Ancient Greek translation for Christmas as well, as I’m apparently very difficult to buy presents for so any potential idea is likely to be seized with some sort of exceptional vigour.

Speaking of Greek, I’ve decided to stop auditing the Fast Track Greek course. I’m not finding the course material too difficult in itself—in fact I’m really enjoying the module—but I just don’t have enough spare time to prepare for the reading sessions, go over the notes and do all the exercises, at least not without diverting effort away from courses that I actually get credits for. I feel a bit bad about giving it up, but as I’m the only person doing both Latin and Greek anyway I don’t think anyone can accuse me of wanting an easy ride. Besides, I have all the required books and reading material already, so I can still carry on learning the language at my own pace whenever I have some spare time and have finished all my other work.

Other things seem to be trundling along as usual, I hurt my wrist and knee really badly in aikido but other than that the weekend has been fairly uneventful. I’ve started to free up a bit more time by not committing myself to many things at MFoE, which means I can go back to working on my various writing projects as well as catching up on the long list of books that I want to read.

Finally, a reminder to anyone in Manchester to anyone in Manchester that today (and possibly the next couple of days) is Eid, and therefore Rusholme will be gridlocked for cars/buses and I wouldn’t recommend walking through it either, at least not in the evening.