Greeko, Greekeis, Greekei

It's happened again...I'm almost to the 200 mark in my email "in" box. And that's just on my personal (not my work) account.

Anybody expecting to hear from me may have a bit of a wait. See, I'm gearing up to take the Greek entrance exam in my PhD program this Friday. I say "entrance" loosely, as it's closer to an exit exam than any entrance since I'm actually pretty much finished with my in-class work at UT Dallas. But I still have hanging over me the language exam that I should have taken a few years ago.

Those who've been reading my blog for more than 14 months know I've had a couple of hip/shoulder surgeries after a failure to fly. (I fell down the steps at home, head-first, which meant months of meds that made it impossible to recall vocab words.)

The first exam is this Friday. I say "first" because I probably won't pass it. (Low expectations here.) I have no idea what it'll be like, so it's tough to study very effectively. The good counsel I received from the "powers that be" was to schedule it and flunk it and take it again every 90 days until I pass it.

So...Anabaino ton karpon ton kakon en ek ton oikon. What does this mean? Up + I throw + the fruit + the bad + in + out + the house. That's my way of saying I throw up bad fruit in the outhouse. Okay, so "out" + "house" does not equal "outhouse" in the mind of the common first-century Hellenist, but whatever it takes to remember the vocab, right? Let's just hope that when it comes time to translate, I remember that mnemonic devices have their limitations and write, "The disciples went out to the house," instead of "the disciples went to the outhouse."