Now Playing: Loreena McKennitt, "An Ancient Muse". Track 4, "The English Ladye And The Knight".

One wonders why, if she insisted on using the "authentic" spelling, the artist did not also use the authentic pronunciation. I'd like to hear anyone sing the Old English/Middle English "gh" gracefully--it is, to borrow an exceedingly cliched example, "loch" or "Bach", or, if you prefer something more original, "shough", as Heather M. would say it. Oh, yes, and when I asked Heather how to spell aforesaid word, she stared at me and said, "I don't think it's ever been written down," though I'd heard an elderly man from Trinity RPC use it, so it's been around for quite awhile. So I apologize for misspelling it, if such an apology can exist for such a word.

I believe the events of the day merit a blog post.

Not, of course, that it started out particularly auspiciously. Monday morning, as most Monday mornings. Rachel left for her eight o'clock class. I drank my mug of Tetley with a scone, read The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, and went to the gym to run.

Then I bolted out the door to practice my flute before my lesson. It turned out that I didn't have a lesson at half eleven after all. I rapped on the professor's door and wasn't answered, so I trudged over to ACAC, where I checked my e-mail, and of course found a polite request from him to do lessons on Friday.

I ate lunch in ACAC by myself. Didn't have much of an appetite, though. Bad Tex-Mex. Not too appealing. Philip was working at Carrello's and Alex was hanging out with him, so I said hello to the two of them on my way to HIST at one o'clock. In HIST today, we discussed Octavian or Augustus or whatever you want to call him--the emperor with the poky-out ears is how I remember him--and had a whirlwind lecture through all twelve Roman emperors for twenty minutes before class let out.

It was upon getting out of class that the real fun started. During class, a mist had started to fall from the north. The sky was thickly overcast. Already a strange gelatinous coating was forming on the grass and sidewalks, not quite ice, simultaneously slippery and sticky. I cautiously climbed the stairs to our apartment.

This afternoon I listened to a CD Catherine had concocted for me for my birthday. Oh, good times. Half the songs I recognized, though I hadn't known their names the first time I'd heard them. Songs from the radio in Renwick, from the barn party, from riding around with Catherine and Emmaline. I was attempting to read Troilus and Criseyde, but I spent most of the time chuckling to myself. An appearance by the High School Musical soundtrack made me laugh and laugh, remembering Deborah, Rachel, Daphne, Emmaline, and co. singing at the tops of their lungs down Stranmillis Road.

I got on Facebook to thank Catherine, and my brief appearance resulted in two hour-long conversations, one with Catherine herself, and one with Missy, who's laid up with strep throat.

At half four I exercised my remaining scrap of self-discipline and signed off. I finished Book IV of Troilus and wrote a "note" (one page paper) about it. Then I started to work on revising the articles I'd written last week for the study abroad newsletter, all of which were, of course, too long. (Judging by how much I trimmed out of them, these poor blog posts would be about a third shorter if I actually edited them that much before I posted them. Alas, my laziness foists their bloated beings upon the cyber world and all you unfortunate readers.)

At six o'clock, I skidded to the caf to eat tea with Amy. Penguin weather. The afternoon had deposited a pleasantly slippery (*ahem*!) coat of ice on everything, in places an eighth of an inch thick. The street lamps have icicles at least eight inches long dangling from them with a slight southerly slant. All the trees and shrubs are cased in ice, and unfortunately as I write this, the wind is picking up, which means that the likelihood of branches breaking is getting higher every minute.

The caf was packed with people. Amy and I finally found a quiet booth where we could eat and talk. Then we slid back to Mayo together. Said good-night. Rachel and I have spent all evening studying in our apartment, drinking endless cups of tea. We've listened to the entirety of Handel's Messiah and excerpts from various Loreena McKennitt albums, as well as a LOTR spoof that Rachel's sister Christiana sent her. Commiserated over her work: her computer is too slow to process all the data she's throwing at it. Laughed over my work: I was reading Roman history, and the absolutely ridiculous accounts of Nero, Caligula, Claudius, and co., who seem to have enacted a perpetual Bizarro strip throughout their reigns.

Outside, the cold is growing sharper. The slush in the car park is freezing into nasty sharp gledes. An opaque sheath of ice covers all the cars, the roofs, the footpaths, and sparkles on the branches of the young trees. Uni has been cancelled for tomorrow, and there's talk of the university being shut down on Wednesday, too. As long as the power doesn't go out and we still have heating....