Monday, September 17, 2007

Monday Stuff and Those Damn Romans.

I have a friend who's computer wasn't working so I took a drive into town today to take a look at it. I packed up the kids, a few toys and Catherine's school work. One thing I learned: School work doesn't travel well. Despite the best of intentions I couldn't manage to help her with multiplication while stripping the case off a PC. Next time I won't even bother.

On the bright side I'm 98% sure the computer problem was simply a matter of a worn out start button. Not something I'd ever repaired before and since I don't want to learn how to do it on someone else's computer AND the local repair shop quoted a very cheap price, off it went to the shop. Now of course I have to do some googling and pull an old computer out of my stash so I can learn how to do it. I suspect it's ridiculously simple.

After we got back I had a nap while the dear husband took the kids off to the local wildlife park. They came back with the neatest things.


The wildlife park is full of peacocks and they just finished molting in August so when a worker collecting tail feathers spotted the kids he gave one to each of them. The striped feather may be from a pheasant.

I should have gone. I was doing homework for my course and a little extra research by listening to a TTC lecture series on the Roman Emperors. I'm starting to think I don't much like the Romans.

I'd learned earlier that some mummies from the Old Kingdom of Egypt weren't truly preserved but rather, in effect, shellacked. They'd have an outer appearence of preservation but inside would be reduced to a pile of dust and bones. Seems to me that the Romans were often the same way. A stiff and static outer varnish of civilisation but inside a stinking, crumbling pile of ruin. Probably not fair but you spend an afternoon listening to stories of Caligula, Nero, Commodus and people getting offed by knife, poison and collapsible boats (Agrippina, Nero's mom. Didn't work and she had to be bludgeoned to death) and you come to a different conclusion.

Yes, I know the Greeks were brutal too and the Egyptians were no better but Good Lord, at least they knew how to do it with some style!

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