PS

Yes, I even admit to enjoying, to a greater degree than was strictly necessary, sentence diagramming homework in seventh grade.

And, although I recited, along with the rest of the class--

Latin is a language,
dead as dead can be.
First it killed the Romans
and now it's killing me.

--in my heart of hearts, I was fascinated by the way Latin words could contain so much information just by changing the endings. Long live conjugation and declension. Not that, if you asked me, I could so much as translate anything beyond a Bach mass...Latin is my archaeologist-turned-political-scientist hubby's arena.

(Isn't the rhetorical turn in that rhyme great? The way Latin goes from being stone-dead to actively killing, first a whole civilization and then a scrawny, tall-for-her-age seventh grader. Inflated sense of self-importance is rampant in middle schools, I hear.)