Stealing a meme – and what I’ve been reading

I saw this meme from the Bun-Toting Librarian, and thought that I would steal it for today’s blog every day in June post. You know what? Doing this is harder than it looks!

Seven things that scare me

rats

spiders

children

responsibility

aggressive people

needles

crowds

Seven things I like

my wife

gaming (boardgames, RPGs and the odd PC game)

reading

cricket & rugby

travelling

politics (of the left-wing kind) & history (of any kind, but I really, really really, really like classical Greek and Late Roman/Byzantine)

God (I go to Sunday evening service here, and our priest has a blog here)

Seven random facts about me

I’ve studied at 5 different universities (Sydney Uni, Newcastle Uni, Queensland Uni, Queensland Uni of Technology, Uni of South Australia). I only have a degree & post-grad diploma to show for it – I’ve moved around a bit….

I get up at 5.30 am most weekday mornings to go to the gym so that I can lose weight (which means that I seriously have a screw loose)

I have owned in my life 1000+ different board games (not all at the same time….)

Since I moved out of Mum’s, I’ve lived in 21 different places in 5 cities in 4 states (newcastle, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide)

My most frequently read book is The Lord of the Rings

The first movie that I remember seeing was Fantasia (still in my top 5 favourite movies)

I have size 12/13 shoes

Seven things I want to do before I die

design and publish a game (well, more than one would be nice)

write books

run a second-hand bookshop

get a Phd

feel like I’m an adult, rather than a child who’s pretending (at least for a little while)

be at the ground when the Wallabies win a rugby union Word Cup final (though at the moment, I’d settle for the Bledisloe Cup, even if I’m not at the ground…)

visit every continet

Seven things I can do well

write

tidy

cook

procrastinate (best procrastinator EVAH!)

puns

make lists and itineraries

research

Seven things I can’t do but wish that I could

sing

concentrate for long periods of time without being distracted

recite poetry like Rumpole

say ‘no’ and mean it

garden

learn languages (or at least learn them relatively easily, like my wife can)

tie up a balloon

Seven phrases I’m known to use

frickin’

bugger!

thigh-slapping hilarity

I am going to KILL my dice!

coffffeeeeeeeeee

I’m doing that right now

Oh ferfahksaik (I don’t spell it like that, but then I guess that I rarely write it…)

What I’ve been reading

I recently re-read Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian. Published in 1951, she had written it on and off since 1923. It is exquisitely written. At least, I assume that it is; the English translation certainly is. Hadrian at the end of his life reflects on his past, and his loves. It is his love for Antinous that is particularly poignant. A Greek youth, Antinous drowned in 130 AD, and Hadrian founded the city of Antinopolis in Egypt to preserve his memory.

Some of Yourcenar’s descriptions of Hadrian’s inner world come across as intellectual constructs, rather than as felt emotions. He was a great admirer of Greek philosophy,and these passages perhaps reflect this. There are the usual accounts of military campaigns, but right throughout the threads of love and death remain intertwinned. it also has an interesting sense that a person acts various roles in life, but it is this process that creates the personality. This French delicacy should be read with a little dark chocolate and and good quality red wine at hand.