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Location: Home.
Channeling: "Keep Your Hands To Yourself" by The Georgia Satellites.

Peter snuck up on me while I was doing dishes and started singing this song. It's now stuck in my head.

The past week has been pleasant and peaceful. I went back to work the day after Christmas. Thankfully, things have been quiet on that front, and I was able to spend the bulk of my time researching grad schools and reading up on Egyptology. I bought The Keys Of Egypt at South Coast while Christmas shopping and have been absorbed in ancient languages ever since. The book--the biography of Jean-Francois Champollion, the first man to decipher hieroglyphs--is a bit dry in parts, but interesting overall. The enthusiasm for Egyptology that I've had ever since I was a child (I kept every book on Egypt in my elementary school library checked out for so long in my third and fourth grade years that the librarian demanded I return them and wait a specified period of time before checking them out again) has been rekindled. One of the results of this has been my discovery that I remember very little of what I learned in those years. I used to be able to recite the succession order of almost every pharoah on command and could detail the differences between Akhenaton and Ramses III fairly easily. No longer, but I'm starting to regain some ground. I've also rekindled my interest in hieroglyphs and Coptic (the language spoken by Christian-era Egyptians) and have hence used my brother's Borders gift certificate to buy two books--one, an illustrated dictionary of hieroglyphs and their meanings, and the other a linguistic analysis of Coptic by the head of the Egyptology branch of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at UCLA. The last is fairly important as I've decided that I want to concentrate my graduate studies on library science (with an emphasis on Preservation and Special Collections) and book history (specifically, the history of ancient libraries such as the one at Alexandria and of papyri). I've contacted the few stateside universities that offer Egyptology specializations about possiblities for graduate work and have a feeling that having read one of the directors' publications will help me out significantly. The best places to study Egyptology and papyrology in the US seem to be UCLA and Michigan, while the University of London is at the top of my list for foreign schools. UL has a definite advantage over the US schools in its proximity to the British Museum, but the technicalities associated with foreign study are pretty daunting. I might have to wait until I'm in the middle of a US program to arrange a summer internship of some sort (I've decided to become a museum librarian, if you hadn't guessed, and a spot at the British Museum would really be the ultimate goal *sigh*). We'll have to wait and see.

Of course, none of this means that I've abandoned my study of Swahili--I've just been incredibly lazy--or of French, which I will likely be taking courses in at Santa Monica College to prepare for graduate school. I studied Latin, French, and Spanish in high school and tested out of my foreign language requirement at USC, but grad departments in Art History and Egyptology require at least one year of undergraduate-level language study for admission. So I'm returning to French, which seems more practical for my purposes than German, given the French research in Egypt under Napoleon. It's also fortunate, as I apparently need only a reading knowledge of the chosen language and, although my spoken French is mediocre at best, I still read it with relative ease. French 1 in a classroom will still be quite an experience. I will also likely have to study not only French, but likely Greek and Coptic and possibly something like Akkadian as well for papyrology. Again, we'll see.

It's dawned on me that I'm going to need to construct some kind of schedule to keep up with all of this study. I'm now contemplating getting up an hour early, reading Coptic, going to work, coming home, working on French on odd days and Swahili on even days--finding time somewhere in there to write and take judo with Peter. Oy. However, Champollion was fluent in about six ancient languages through independent study by the age of sixteen and a university professor of Ancient History by eighteen, so he's my current inspiration. I'm also contemplating my poem cycle (the Persephone project) that is still floating around in my mind, a magic realism-fantasy piece set in the US and North Africa that I'm putting together, and some sort of independent research project on the library at Alexandria if I can get access to adequate resources for even a rudimentary paper. I'd like to apply to programs with some work already completed, largely to prove my sincerity about study. I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do.

In the meantime, I price cookware sets (I'm going to use my parents' Christmas money for clothes and really nice set of stainless) and take Peter on in NHL Hockey on the PS2. So far, my Pittsburgh Penguins (with Jagr, Slegr, and Hatcher) have done very well--however, he has switched from the Atlanta Thrashers to the New York Rangers and has been teaching me respect lately. Can't be having that, so some more rink-time may be in order. I also want to sit down with my lovely Underwood and set about finding a ribbon for it and actually putting it to use. Oh, and then there's getting more Ilford film for my camera...looks like it'll be a busy New Year.

Peter and I are also looking to get tattoos sometime in the New Year--his first and my fourth. I have some ideas, but they haven't yet come together as I would like them to. Right now, I'm considering the mizu symbol--clean and simple--but there are so many people running around with Asian characters on their bodies that it feels unoriginal. My other tattoos have all been, typically, symbols that were very relevant at the time I selected them--making them a sort of timeline of the last six years. This one should follow suit and mizu seems the best choice currently. This will likely be my last, and a very important one, as it'll be marking an experience shared with Peter. As with everything else, time will tell.

Plans for tomorrow night (which I realized today will be New Year's Eve) are coming together and we'll likely be dividing our time between two parties in LA. I'll be working tomorrow, so it'll likely be a more subdued New Year's Eve than in times past, but I'm still looking forward to it.