Maggie Never Sleeps

Today:

* I learned about book anatomy and repair. Watched a video where a very old woman carefully tears old books apart and then magically puts them back together. And it was magic -- fast and beautiful. Books are amazing things.

* My organizing information prof thinks that my design project looks like fun. This is a good thing: since I'm doing a museum Tarot collection, I was worried there might be some kind of disapproval or backlash. Hurray. I just finished putting together ten examples from my collection; beautiful, beautiful cards. E&N let me borrow seven of their rare decks to photograph. Terribly wonderful people they are, lettng me take precious things out of their house.

* I think I need to stop caffeine intake. Drinking soda makes me feel crazy and sick, like I'm going to have a heart attack. Not as bad with just sugar sodas, although the sugar usually makes me ill too. Juice and water and alcohol from now on!

* I spent the weekend alternating between being very sad and being very angry. A lot of it had to do with the wedding, but other parts seemed to come from nowhere. Confusing and struggle-causing.

* Weekends are exhausting. They often require as much activity as the rest of the week combined. Every week feels like two weeks are being squished together a smaller space.

* I hate the College Ave computer labs. Very lame.

Here's a meme that Jeff tagged me to do a long time ago.

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I took a break from reading Quicksilver (Neal Stephenson) to read the Patrick Ford Mabinogi. I've read other versions before and heard all the stories before, but this was the first time for this particular translation. I liked the additional tales at the end, particularly "Culhwch and Olwen" -- there's just so much havoc going on in that story (and because its a really early "Arthur" story and I love those). The translation itself was pretty good (much better than the Guest version), but sometimes I found myself disagreeing with his introductory material -- and yet I really wanted more of it. Some things were just barely hinted at and then seemed to drop. I'm tempted to read the intro again to see what I think of it after reading all the tales.

Reading the Mabinogi made me want to hunt down all my other myth and lore books. I've made a stack of Norse stuff over by the fireplace. Still looking for all the Irish stuff (and the Greek stuff and the Arthur stuff for that matter). I do this all the time -- taking books out and making stacks of them around the house, then re-arranging the stacks into new sets as I get new ideas. I need to finish reading all the Norse stuff -- there's a lot in there that I haven't read yet.

This reminds me: I have a huge binder of folklore packets at my mom's house -- put together from when I took my folklore class. There's some really really really wonderful stuff in there. I need to remember to grab it next time I'm there. That'll take up some space in a suitcase.