Studying for my test tomorrow:

From there [another marriage] through the immense sky, Hymen [god of love], wrapped in a saffron cloth, departed and headed for the lands of the Cicones [people of Thrace] and was called by the voice of Orpheus for nothing. He indeed was present, but not solemn words, nor joyful expressions, nor auspicious omen did he bring. The [marriage] torch too, which he held, was continuously hissing with tearful smoke and no fires were produced when it was shaken. The result was even graver than this omen: for while the new bride wanders through the grass accompanied by a crowd of naiads, she falls down, having received a bite in her ankle from a trod-upon snake. When the Rhodopeian poet (Orpheus) had mourned her sufficiently to the upper sky, lest he leave even the shades untried, he dared to descend to the Styx through the Taenarian gate and through the insubstantial populace and the ghosts from the grave he approached Persephone and the lord of the shades who holds sway over the unpleasant kingdom and strumming his strings with his song says this:

"O deities of the land placed below the earth, to which we all sink, any who are created mortal; if it is permitted and with the windings of false mouths put aside you allow truth to be spoken: not to here, that I might see shady Tartarus, have I descended, nor that I might bind the three throats, hairy with snakes, of the Medusa-like monster: the reason for my journey is my wife, into whom a stepped-on viper injected his venom and took away her budding years. I wanted to be able to endure, and I will not deny that I tried: Amor defeated me. This god is well-known in the upper world; whether he is so here, I am unsure: but even here I guess that he is, and if the story of the ancient abduction [of Persephone] is not made up, Amor joined you also. Through this place full of fear, through the huge Abyss and the silences of the enormous realms, I myself beg you, reveal the speedy fate of Euridice. All of us are indebted to you, and having delayed a little later or sooner we are sped to one final seat. We all head to here, this is our final home, and you hold the longest reign over the human race. When, mature, she too will have completed her just years, she will be in your power: we ask for use rather than a gift; but if the fates deny this favor for my wife, I am decided to refuse to return: rejoice in the death of both of us."

I've been using bread flour instead of all-purpose flour in my bread recently, just to see if it makes a difference. (Of course, I still use about 25% whole wheat flour, which adds flavor and nutrition.) I've been really happy with the results both times I've done this, though I may have to try once more with a-p flour just to make sure it's not just that I'm doing everything else right, especially since bread flour is a fair bit more expensive...
Anyway, having bread flour around made me think of this bagel recipe, which I'd found long ago and decided to make at some point in the future. Well, yesterday I had some time, so I went for it. It turns out bagels are really easy to make! (At least if you're used to making bread.) I would highly recommend this recipe to anyone wanting to have fun and make tasty bagels, with two quick modifications: first, some of my bagels seemed a bit on the big side, so I might squeeze a good 18 out of the recipe instead of just 15; and second, I wouldn't let the formed bagels rise quite 10 minutes before boiling, because if the first ones rise for ten minutes, then because only a few can be boiled at a time the last ones sit around for a long time (this, I'm sure, contributed to the size problem). Actually, there was one other problem: the bagels got marked up, first from my picking them up off the counter, then from the spoon I used to turn them over in the pot and take them out (I also tried a spatula and a pair of tongs, with similar results), and then possibly from my boiling water (it's supposed to be hardly moving, but it's hard to keep a constant temperature when you keep putting things in and taking things out). But the marks are mostly superficial: except for the bagels I somehow accidentally flattened, they turned out great. Anyway, just for fun, I photo-documented the whole process.


Bagels Rising. Obviously, the ones in front were formed first. At this point, they look perfect: round and pleasantly, rustically lumpy. I knew they'd rise a lot, so I made the holes really big; but to no avail, as they closed up anyway. As you can see, I was also making yoghurt (in the Salton, much easier to make...).


This picture was going to be labelled, "Holy Bagels, Batman!" But they don't look as humongous in the picture as they did in person. These first two, especially, were too big, and squeezed each other a little bit into oblong shapes.


Okay, so I didn't document the whole process: they were too ugly to photograph before putting them in the oven. But here's the first batch cooling afterwards. I'll just pretend the obvious spoon marks are a new style... maybe this'll catch on? I'll charge extra for those ones. The two middle ones in the top row are bottom-up from when they were rising, as you can tell from the lumps: those are where I pried them off the counter. (Maybe I'll grease the rising surface next time...) Note Cicero's Somnium Scipionis (Dream of Scipio) and a Latin dictionary in the background. Those, of course, are integral to the cooling process.


The first one to be disposed of. For the True Bagel Test, I had to do half just normally with cream cheese, and half toasted with tons of butter. Both were delicious.


And finally, the Leaning Towers of... Bagels. As you can see, some are unfortunately flat (though they're actually not too overly dense... definitely still edible). Nate, the whole purpose of this post is of course to get you to visit earlier: you never know, I'm already down to twelve, and those could disappear in a week and a half...

I'm not reading the newest Harry Potter book (don't worry, I intend to, possibly on our family vacation), but it seems like everyone I know is. Seems that's also true for someone at a blog I've started reading and enjoy a lot called Language Log, as this person posted here. The neatest part of the post for me was the link to the "notae variorum" ("notes of variations"--I translated that without a dictionary! from "nota, notae" and "vari-us, -a, -um"--there's a bit of a problem, though, in that "notae" and "variorum" are both plural, but the former, like most first declension nouns, is feminine, but "orum" is the masculine plural genitive ending: perhaps it's really "notae variarum?" Or maybe they don't have to agree, since variorum is a substantive genitive, not used to modify "notae." Actually, that's probably it. But why should variations be masculine? I like them better agreeing).

There are some really interesting differences between the British and American editions of various Harry Potter books. From the strange, perhaps attempting-to-be-PC additions:

(from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone)
British: "...three people left to be sorted. 'Turpin, Lisa' became..."
American: "...three people left to be sorted. "Thomas, Dean," a Black boy even taller than Ron, joined Harry at the Gryffindor table. "Turpin, Lisa" became..."

to the strange complete rewritings:

(from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
British: "...A second later, Harry spotted something that made him hit Ron over the hand with his pruning shears... Harry was pointing at the ground a few feet away. Several large spiders were scurrying across the earth.... Harry watched the spiders running away."
American: "...A second later, Harry spotted something.Several large spiders were scuttling over the ground on the other side of the glass, moving in an unnatuarally straight line as though taking the shortest route to a prearranged meeting. Harry hit Ron over the hand with his pruning shears... Harry pointed out the spiders, following their progress with his eyes screwed up against the sun... Harry's eyes narrowed as he focused on the spiders. If they pursued their fixed course, there could be no doubt about where they would end up."

(was that one just rewritten to put in more of a "Western" feel with the Clint Eastwood-style "...with his eyes screwed up against the sun... Harry's eyes narrowed?")

and the sections that would have been disastrous without "translation":

(from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)
British: "...I got off with McLaggen..."
American: "...I hooked up with McLaggen..."

There are a lot of interesting things: "forwards" turning into "forward," "the" dropping all over the place, "which" becoming "that," "a team of healers... is" becoming "a team of healers... are," etc., in addition to all the obvious colloquialisms getting smoothed over.

Had a nice vacation #2 this past weekend. I'd been noticing recently that the water levels in the rivers of southern Indiana had been high for this part of the season, and the weather looked to be terrific, and I felt it'd be a shame to just sit around in a hot apartment in Bloomington. So Sara and I went camping in Southern Indiana, in the Hoosier National Forest. Our site was nice and private for the first night, as our only fellow-campers were over a hill, but there were farms around, and we were awoken by roosters. In addition, something was sniffing around our tent as we went to sleep, and then along with a few friends joined us for breakfast:



They also decided to follow me up the hill to the bathroom before bothering the other campers for a while:



The next morning, we drove to Milltown to go canoeing on the Blue River. Turned out the canoe rental place was a huge operation, but as we opted for a longer trip than most, we had a few miles of solitude, during which we came across a stream that led a few hundred yards to a beautiful (and cold!) spring:



The river was beautiful, and would clearly have been really exciting at Spring water levels. As it was late in the season, we had to get out a few times to let the canoe drift over some rocks, but surprisingly little for mid-July. The only really unfortunate aspect was the popularity of the river on a beautiful day in midsummer. Once we passed the put-in point for the shorter trip, five miles in, we probably passed more than fifty other canoers or kayakers. There was a total of about 30 seconds from that point on when other canoes weren't visible. But it was still pretty, and nice to be out in such beautiful weather.



Next on the agenda was Marengo Cave. Like the canoeing, a bit pricey, but it really impressed me. I expected it to be touristy, but it was really beautiful.



This was pretty cool. If you just looked down, the quality and stillness of the reflection in the water meant you saw what looked like another, extremely deep room through a hole.



After the cave we headed back to our campsite and worked on a crossword, made a nice dinner, and built a great fire to roast marshmallows upon.
This morning we headed out for a bit of a hike. Unfortunately, the heat and especially the humidity really kicked in today, so we cut it a bit short (also, the stream we hiked to was entirely dry...), but we saw a huge number of these beautiful butterflies all over:



I'd really been hoping for some beautiful views over endless forests on our hike, but that didn't happen. Still, the drive, on both the way there and the way back, gave us the views I was looking for if not at the time I wanted them, and I snapped a shot of one vista (missing, of course, many much better ones). Southern Indiana sure can be beautiful.

Bike number 1 (not ever, but for this story) was, I think, a Giant Boulder. I took it with me to college 6 years ago, and it served me well. I didn't use it that much, though, and a friend sometimes borrowed it. (That is, he borrowed it once with my permission, and I told him the lock combination, and then he'd borrow it at will.) Once I was in a hurry to get somewhere and saw him walking the bike: I was surprised, but with his permission reborrowed my own bike and rode to where I needed to get. There I realized I'd left the lock with my friend. So I left it unlocked, because it was Kenyon. Then I forgot about it for two days, and it was gone forever.
Since then I've gone through numbers 2 (didn't work well), 3 (unreliable, got tons of flats), 4 (worked okay, but I didn't work with it well), 5 (stolen), and two belonging to Grandpa Chenette (he's repaired them both, fortunately); I'm now on to no. 6 in as many years, and it had better work well. For what it's worth, I'm back to the Giant Boulder. It's a cheap bike, as bike-shop bikes go, but it should be reliable and good in the snow, and I bought a nice lock.

To continue the Twin Peaks hike pictures, here's an abandoned mine we found. Click to enlarge and see the fun promised by the sign! You'll also get some idea of the steepness of the trail from the sweat pouring off our faces--and this was a shaded trail at 8:30 in the morning!:



Here's Sister Peak, looking back towards Ouray's valley:



And finally from Twin Peaks, here's Courthouse Mountain, a good 1500 feet higher and a destination of one of our most beautiful group hikes ever, 7(?) years ago:



Here are Dad and Nate at the top (Nate got a good group picture with his camera, but I haven't gotten his pictures yet):





And here's the other direction, towards Mt. Sneffels (we think), one of the area's over-14,000-foot mountains (the famed "14ers," which are spread across only four US states--none of us Chenettes have ever climbed this high, but I think it would be exciting, and I know Dad's talked about wanting to):



Finally, the morning of my departure, the 4th, the celebrations included the "Ourayce," a 10k. Nate pulled in an impressive 8th out of about 160, right after the first woman, who happened to hold the two top women's times for that race. Not bad for one of the few people who usually lives well below Ouray's almost-8,000-feet elevation (Nate, not the woman: he currently resides in Atlanta). Here he is after crossing the finish line:



Since getting back, things have been less good: I left my half-working iPod in Colorado, got dramatically sick last night, and when I went to ride to an appointment with my Latin instructor on Thursday my bike (about a year old) had disappeared. But it's okay: I've got good memories behind me! And honestly, the only really horrible thing in that list is the loss of the bike (which I'm aggressively following up, needless to say: I'm borrowing Sara's bike for the time being, since it beats walking for 20 minutes to get anywhere and she doesn't use it on a regular basis, but there are no gears, and it uses inefficient backpedal brakes, and--well, let's just say I'm anxious to get the old one back or buy a new one!). Just when I thought my horrible luck with bikes was changing...!

I had an absolutely *terrific* stay in Colorado. I left on Saturday, bright and early, and miraculously met Nate and Mom and Dad in Denver in time to drive the four hours to Aspen and see both Claire's chamber music intermission performance and orchestra concert (first chair!). We had a nice picnic outside of her dorm:



The next day, the four unAspened Chenettes went on a somewhat anticlimactic hike while Claire did her practicing and stuff, then we headed to Ouray in the San Juan range, where we saw lots of Kerns (Mom's side of the family). As always, it was wonderful to see them. On Monday, many of us went on a hike up to Chief Ouray Mine, a hike which started about a block from our relatives' house. Lots of highlights on this hike, including a nice waterfall:



It was a pretty nice view from the top, though I didn't get a good one of the mine itself:



Here are the select few who made it to the mine, minus Annje who must have been taking the picture--the Chenettes (minus Mom), Jeffrey, and Kerry--in front of what was presumably the miners' housing:



And another view of the same building, with more mountains in the background:



Tuesday was my last day, and I asked to do a really neat hike. So Nate, Dad, and I decided to head out early and aim for Twin Peaks (Sister Peak is the prominent peak that's not part of the twins):



This hike started farther away--we had to walk about four blocks to get there (terrible, I know). Obviously, these peaks were not the highest destination in the area, but the trail we headed up was probably the steepest I've ever been on. Dad estimated it was about an average 20% grade. That's including the places where it leveled out slightly. At one of those places, we saw this bird, sitting oddly not ten yards away, in the middle of the path:



After snapping the picture, we headed forwards (the slope was too steep and wooded to get around). The bird finally scampered a little ways up the slope, clucking at us and offering us a view of the treasure she was guarding:



Pretty cute! We stepped over them, and they scampered, but not too far, and we don't think we disrupted them too much. (And considering there had only been one other group on that trail in the entire previous 24 hours or more, they probably had time to regroup.)

The trail also wound through beautiful Aspen forests before climbing steeply again to the top. The views were spectacular, but I'll save those pictures for another post.