Good morning. In an effort to avoid the computer EATING my blood, sweat, and tears toiling over blog entries, I’ve decided to type them up in a Word document and then copy/paste. The real advantage of this is that I get to choose wacky, fun fonts that spark my imagination. My current choice makes me appear as a 5th grade male failing penmanship class.
Yesterday I worked on my entry off and on during the morning and then posted it shortly after lunch. Today I may not make it that long as I am out of work and only one hour has passed. Yesterday’s busyness was due to a number of student visits. Among them was my brother-in-law. He is the youngest guy in VWH’s family and, perhaps, the cleverest. His reading choices, like VWH, include nutritional choices like Ovid, Socrates, and GK Chesterton. My youngest brother’s literary sources around that age were more along the lines of “Big Noisy Truck Magazine,” “Cymbals and Other Noise-Makers of All Sizes,” and, if he was feeling especially sophisticated, “Calvin and Hobbes.” So needless to say, brother-in-law made a very good impression yesterday at his admissions interview. He really hopes to attend CS Lewis College in Massachusetts, a new institution opening in the fall of 2012. I think he and VWH have visions of symposiums in dark, wooden rooms with pints of ale, pipes, and long academic robes. They would do that now if it were the least bit socially acceptable. However, since my mother-in-law works here too and gets free tuition it will be difficult for him to afford such an establishment. If he did figure out a way to go, I’m sure all of his brothers would live vicariously through his experience.
It’s hard to feel Oxfordian when your font looks nothing of England or even adulthood.
I don’t usually feel Oxfordian anyway. While my literary choices at the age of 17 did not include comic books, they also didn’t usually include manuscripts in foreign languages. I liked to think that I read fairly advanced books for my age until I met VWH. All of the sudden, if I hadn’t read the Brothers Karamazov in elementary school I was behind the times. I thought I was a good reader when I was little—I got my name in the newspaper for being one of a very few individuals to finish the local library’s summer reading program. (Don’t even get me started about what it was like to get the stomach flu and miss the end-of-summer pizza party.) Apparently the VWH’s family had some kind of accelerated reading program in their elementary school. Each subsequent brother set the new world record for that program, blowing the previous one out of the water. This led to such accolades as designing your own school day, newspaper interviews, and visiting international dignitaries.
VWH assures me that I am smart and make him a better person. Then he sticks his nose back into the Illiad in the original Greek. (You think I’m joking.)
I take my revenge in the kitchen. VWH may be able to take his Greek Bible to church and keep up with the rest of us and our plain ol’ NIVs, but his culinary successes are minimal. Pizza dough is his downfall. VWH loves pizza. He would prefer to wearing a toga in the reclining position (again, you think I’m kidding), but he would still take pizza over the more authentic dates, honey, and pita bread.
VWH has attempted pizza dough on those days when I was either very late returning from the long day’s work (hee hee) or too tired to make something that time-consuming. The results have been mixed. To his credit, a couple of times it’s worked out just fine, but interspersed with the successes are batches of hard, clumpy mess or watery, unrisen goop. These failed attempts, combined with questions like “how do you use this can opener?” encourage me and give me hope that my contributions DO matter to our marriage. I may not know ancient languages, but I can open a can, daggone it!
Permissum nos planto pizza!
(VWH says it should be translated “pittam facemus.” So much for my translation skills.)
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