WATER. FROM THE CEILING.

My kitchen ceiling is leaking water. I just. I quit.

Called Emergency ServiceWave, who came, looked at it, and apparently the apartment above ours had a water heater bust and leak water all over the floor, so there's nothing they can do except wait for it to exhaust itself -- it's a finite amount of water, and they'll come back in an hour to check on it. Meanwhile, there went an hour of my life I could have used to work on my paper, and now I'm worked out and need to decompress, so the paper and I, we shall convene in twenty minutes or so. There's a towel down and a tupperware container catching the water, it's in a very inconvenient location (naturally); it's actually leaking out of the corner of the kitchen light, and have I mentioned I quit? I quit.

yep. water still falling from the ceiling. paper still not finished.

For whatever reason, this is my favorite line in one of my sources, even though I probably won't use it as it's from the late Republic rather than the middle Republic:

M. Caelius Rufus politely assumed in one letter to Cicero during his stint as governor of Cilicia that that not-very-bellicose imperator might find himself in the thick of it were he forced to do battle against the strong Parthian contingent invading Syria.

Nathan Rosenstein, Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 117.

I like this author. I wonder if he's still teaching? He reads as rather young in this book, but it was written twenty years ago. *googles* He is! He's at Ohio State. Which...has a Ph.D. program in Ancient History. Which looks pretty good, actually. (Guys, they admit that although ideally applicants would have 3-4 years of Greek and Latin, realistically they expect that applicants only have 1-2! THEY ARE REALISTIC. I LIKE THEM.) Huh. On the other hand, Ohio.

decisions, decisions (water still dripping from ceiling, paper still in progress)

I have to make my airport shuttle reservation for Sunday morning, but I can't decide when to go -- my flight is at 7:20, and the two times that the shuttle leaves before then are 4:00 and 5:30. (Yes, am.) They say it's an hour to the airport -- but I've never actually had it take an hour to the airport, almost every time I've been on the shuttle Tulane's the last stop, except once. And even if I take the 5:30 and I get to the airport at 6:30, I don't have to check bags and my boarding pass will be pre-printed, so I just have to go through security and then walk in -- it's a really small terminal. But then again, security might take a while: but it's six in the freaking morning on a Sunday, y'all, how many people are traveling then? But it's new security. I talked to people who traveled over Thanksgiving break, and results are mixed on whether or not they had to go through the new security measures (unsurprisingly: the girls did, the guys did not; I know not to wear a bra with an underwire but I am still gloomy at the prospect), and MSY is supposed to be a little lax with them. Also, six in the morning: even if it's new security, how long can it take?

My travel time is already twelve hours (about six hours flying, three on various shuttles, three waiting around at airports); it would be really nice not to make it fifteen. (Factor in wait time at the airport...) It would also be really nice not to have to get up at four in the morning. Or 3:30, I guess. Oh my gods.

One of my roommates says that when she's taken the shuttle, Tulane's always been the first stop, not the last, so it does take the full hour to get there. But I've never had that happen...

Oh look. Continental's not feeding their passengers anymore.