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Since I'm not working sufficiently quickly today, I think I shall procrastinate further by sharing this quotation; I read it while getting ready for a course I'm going to teach, and thought immediately of all of you.

If eyes, ears, tongue and hands are worth everything to a person, that he may be able merely to live, to say nothing of enjoying life, then friends are not less but more useful than these members. With his eyes he may barely see what lies before his feet; but through friends he may behold even that which is at the ends of the earth. With his ears he can hear nothing save that which is very near; but through those who wish him well he is uninformed of nothing of importance anywhere. With his tongue he communicates only with those who are in his presence, and with his hands, were he ever so strong, he can not do the work of more than two men; but through his friends he can hold converse with all the world and accomplish every undertaking... The most surprising thing of all, however, is that he who is rich in friends is able, although but one man, to do a multiplicity of things at the same time, to deliberate about many matters simultaneously, to hear many things, and to be in many places at once--a thing difficult even for the gods--with the result that there is nothing remaining anywhere that is bereft of his solicitude.
--Dio Chrysostom, Oration 2.104-107

I haven't bothered to clean up the archaisms and awkwardnesses of the translation, which is from the Loeb edition.

(no subject)

Look! jennyo is organizing an Alias Slashficathon! Go sign up!

(I really don't have time to do this, but guess what? I've already signed up.)