Thursday, July 7, 2005 7:40 pm

Yesterday I sort of wandered and dawdled. I traded John Grisham books with Charlie Joe, who is looking for someone to cut his hair. Class went on FOREVER. Lunch in the stolovaya gets grosser every day.

I waited for Abby to get done and read The Secret Garden. Then we went to the internet cafe, where we discussed topics for teh lecture we're giving tomorrow, but didn't get anything done. Then we and Chad, Erin, McKenna, and Kelly walked in the Alexander Gardens and ate hot dogs and ice cream. Then I went home and read the John Grishman book: The Summons. I hated the ending and it creeped me out so much that I couldn't go to bed without reading something else.

I chose to begin Francis Turner Palgrave's Golden Treasury (groan), a collection of "good" English poetry selected by Mr. Palgrave with help from Lord Tennyson (groan). It is vomitously Victorian, sickeningly sentimental, insidiously insipid. So far, the worst poet is one T. Lodge, but if Sir P. Sidney doesn't shut up about Stella (whoever that is), he will be in the running. I am only on page 25, and it is arranged more or less chronologically, so the worst is yet to come. (Keats? Byron?) Until today, I have never understood the devotion of some people to Shakespeare. However, next to all these other idiots, he's like Apollo or something. At least he can count sylllables and has a concept of stress. Also, he never tries to rhyme "kisses" with "sweet is" (like T. Campion) or "fast" and "waste" (like "Anon.") or "amiss" and "is" (Sir T. Wyat.) Sir T. also makes up words, such as "whan", which, although it does rhyme with "began" and "tan", is pretty much not a word.

Laughing at bad poetry cheered me up enough to go to sleep at about 12:30.

This morning, my body refused to sleep any later than 9:!%. This was good, because the morning was unhurried...