At the end of week one of Latin Boot Camp, it seems that Capitalization is enjoying a renaissance here on Misfit Island. Posting regularly, however, is not. Wireless internet, it seems, no longer streams like manna from heaven into my apartment. Instead, it has disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared, leaving me lost in the wilderness, with nary a news update to show me the way home. This has left me with little opportunity to update you on all the exciting things that have happened to me in the past week (The first conjugation! The third declension! Substantive Adjectives!) My apologies to those of you out there who wait with baited breath for my every posting. I'm afraid that you're going to have to get a whole hell of a lot better at holding your breath this summer.

On an unrelated note, I knew that I was doomed the minute I walked into the library on my lunch break Wednesday to get ahold of some "light" summer reading.
Medieval Monasticism? Check.
Holy Feast Holy Fast? Check.
Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West? Double check.
But even before finding those books, I knew that my fate as a misfit was sealed the minute I entered a library I had never been in before and my spirits acutally lifted, spontaneously and precipitously. As in rose. As in went up. When I am applying for my membership in the Sacred Brotherhood of The Cool Kids, I will have to either lie or leave this incident off of my application. When I walked past the computers blindly, thirsting for the cool silence of the stacks, I knew that I was pretty much ruined as far as the real world goes. I'm not sure what exactly to do about this, but I think it's going to have to be something drastic, like taking up smoking. Or popular music.

Also: my policy of slowly putting myself out there on the social scene that is Latin class seems to have paid dividends. You know how during the first couple days, you're never sure who's going to turn out to be nice, and who'll wind up being a complete wanker? Well, I avoided the dilemma of attaching myself to someone totally unbearable by successfully not getting to know anyone at all for 4.5 full days. Then, when the anticipation was killing everyone, when they were saying to themselves, "God, who's that guy? He's so awesome. Yet so mysterious. He's awsterious," I knew that my time to strike had come. The lay of the land had been scouted. The terrain was known, the potential pitfalls noted and avoided, the high road to complete domination of Latin class lay open and untrod at my feet.

Although I have left Indianapolis behind, it seems that the annoying graduate student has changed his name and M.O., yet still makes his presence felt from beyond the grave, this time as someone who has had significantly more Latin than everyone else in class and is constantly letting them know it by asking obnoxiously phrased questions about things we haven't talked about yet. Actual snippet of conversation from Thursday morning:

T.A. David: "Well, that just about wraps up Interrogative Pronouns. Does anyone have any questions?"
Charles (aka Mike): "So doesn't that mean that the relative pronoun and the interrogative pronoun actually have most of the same forms?"
T.A. David: "We haven't talked about relative pronouns yet. Let's stick with the lesson for today.
Charles: "But don't they?
T.A. David: "I guess they do. Let's get back to the lesson at hand."
Charles: "Just don't you forget that Charles:Latin::R.Kelly:Music in that I can pee at will on everyone in sight because I am so much better at this than everyone else."

Bill Short, a.k.a. Breuis (pronounced BRE-vis) is the head Latin honcho for the summer. He also bears an uncanny resemblance to Clark Kent. Same glasses, same hair, same craggy jaw line, same vaguely lame button-up shirts. This doesn't necessarily make him a great teacher. It does however, lend a certain amount of excitement and a muted yet threatening aura of power to his classroom.

Updated list of things enjoying a renaissance in the life of the Auctor:
Capitalization
Swearing
Annoying Grad Student
Studying
Library Skills

Progress in the war on shaving has been swift and brutal. Although rough areas seem to develop when I am in a hurry, very little bleeding has been done in several days. Expert advice from Senior Correspondant P.Beatty among others provided the critical information to create a successful and dynamic plan of attack on stubble. I don't mean to start bandying about words like "baby's bottom". But let me just put them out there and then I'll let you draw your own conclusions.