After fighting off the impending crud for two weeks, I woke up this morning totally sick. My new manager, bless her heart, took one look at me and told me to go back to my room. I slept until around 4pm and now I'm watching trashy T.V. I feel like complete crap. Blah.

I just started reading Trail of Crumbs: Hunger Love, and the Search for Home and so far, it's wonderful! (Although some of the Amazon reviews make me feel trepidatious...) A memoir that has a recipe at the end of each chapter? Yes, please! I rarely feel like I could have written parts of books that I read, and it's always a strange feeling when I come across a passage and just begin to nod in agreement. "Yes!" I'll exclaim in the middle of a bus-ride, scaring everyone around me. So far, this book is definitely giving me many of these moments.

Staring out the train window, though, I'll think of all the things I have yet to learn, and I might catch a fractured glimpse of this same woman and see her for who she really is: a lonesome voyager, with uneven tan lines, knife cuts on her hands, and a heart speeding fast toward the season of fall.

I haz a conundrum. I'm supposed to go to my job's bi-yearly meetings (tomorrow through Saturday) in Salt Lake City, but I'm getting sick. At first I thought it was general jet lag, but now my throat hurts, I'm dizzy, and I have a fever, so I fear that I have caught some kind of crud. What's the appropriate thing to do? My flight leaves at the ass-crack of dawn tomorrow morning, so I don't have much time to make an executive decision. I've emailed my manager, but I don't have her mobile number, so unless she checks her email tonight, I can't reach her.

edited to add: Alrighty, I called my old boss who recommended that I go and that if it gets worse I can skip out on the 'unimportant' meetings. So let's hope I don't infect the whole airplane tomorrow morning.

Ugh. I really don't want to go to Utah tomorrow for 5 days of meetings.

K. and I are catching up on Top Chef Masters and it's awesome. The last episode featured Ludo LeFebvre, who was hilarious. He was the biggest prima donna ever and it was hilarious. Although I have to admit, I loved it when Ludo rolled his eyes at Rick Bayless' happy-go-lucky-ness.

Sigh. Today is my last day. I'm trying to remain in good spirits and finishing all the half-done catalogue entries and return books. I cannot believe I'm going to be flying home tomorrow.

Here's hoping my paper goes well today.



(I'm not even going to tell you how much I loved that song in Jr. High.)

I don't know why I'm not scared for tomorrow's conference. My paper is certainly not finished, although I have 20 slides made and 7 pages of text already completed. I'm making an attribution that a certain scribe wrote a certain thing, which--in my neck of the woods--is no small thing, but apparently I've hit the 'zen' stage of my freak-out. C, who I'm going to *really* miss once I'm back state-side, made me Sunday lunch today, which was great. Chicken thighs and roasted fennel with a sauce of crème fraîche, mustard, cumin, tumeric, and cardamom over rice. Mmmmmmm. We're both presenting at the conference and we're both just shrugging our shoulders at the situation. It was nice to fully admit that I'm stressed out but that I'm not letting it take up my head space for once in my life.

Tomorrow, bright and early, I'll be in charge of conference registration, but I don't give my paper until Tuesday afternoon. Tomorrow will be a long day though: a full day of papers *and* a conference dinner after. But all the papers will be on manuscripts, so I'm such the happy camper.

Last night was C's (owlfish's partner) birthday so a large group of people met at a Clerkenwell pub to celebrate. a_d_medievalist and I decided to meet up at the British Library and walk the mile-or-so to the pub together. I have to say, our 'mile' walk was quite an adventure. Google maps is usually pretty good in London, but the Dovetail was in a little, tiny back-street called Jerusalem Passage and the lack of street-signage in London combined with my inability to write directions down correctly, and the random thunder/hail-storm combined to make our 20 minute journey into over an hour of fun. Surprisingly, we both just laughed and kept going (I think we were both determined not to give in and take a cab, although once it started hailing, that probably would have been the smart thing to do).

Once at the pub, everyone had a great time chatting, drinking Belgian beer, and having some wonderful (if a little messy) hamburgers (make mine a beef and stilton!). It was a wonderful evening getting to know new people and reconnecting with eulistes as well.

I want to remind everyone that Michael Jackson will forever be in my memory for the amazing Captain Eo. What, you never watched it? And you call yourself a science fiction fan! I mean, c'mon, it was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and it stars Anjelica Huston!

I guess my month in London is slowly winding down. I haven't been writing here because I really don't want to accept that it's almost over. But, BUT!, I am a motivated woman. It is time to get the dissertation finished and time to put plans into action, whatever those plans may be. I've been spending some lovely time with owlfish, which she has posted about. Last weekend, we went to The Taste of London and had some amazing food; then on Tuesday we visited Greenwich and saw the National Maritime Museum's exhibit on the Northwest Passage, and ended the day with a wonderful barbecue at her new abode (which is all kinds of lovely...I totally would have bought that house!).

So yes, I love my job here and I hate to leave it. Hopefully I'll get to dance in the manuscript strong-room before I leave.

So yesterday I went with C. to the Paradise Gardens Festival at Victoria Park. It was an odd mix of hippies and hipsters, but there was yummy jerk chicken, sunshine, good bands, and a bizarre clown act. The clown act was especially strange because I was chosen as the 'guest' who went to the restaurant for dinner. Oh yay. Seriously, why am I ALWAYS chosen for this stuff? I had pizza dough thrown at me, plates broken around me, and was generally harassed for an hour. (Here's a youtube clip of their schtick). At the end of the show they awarded me with the biggest bouquet of lilies I have ever seen. I couldn't get them through my door! My room smells heavenly. So yes, it was a strange evening, to say the least.

The Festival had the most amazing amusement park rides, which were steam-powered! I couldn't stop taking photos. The colors of the rides against the blue sky were divine.

( Picspam )

Boy am I surly of late. At around 12:30am last night, after being kept awake by the people upstairs for an hour, I sent off a mean email to the administrators of the dorm. I get that I live in a dorm and that they're naturally loud places, but I am *really* tired of being kept awake by the 3rd floor, especially when I have to go to work the next morning while they can sleep in. Funny thing is, last time I stayed here, I was on the 3rd floor, so I know *exactly* who is keeping me awake. (He's an annoying know-it-all with whom I had a falling out at the end of my tenure here two years back.) It's a good thing I didn't see him this morning, because he would have gotten the glare of doom from my direction (ask Dr. Babe, it's lethal).

I usually try not to comment on this type of conflict, even if I'm really annoyed, but frankly, I'm too tired to put up with this crap for much longer.

I haven't really been cooking much in our communal kitchen. I've found the people on my floor to be a little unfriendly, so I've taken to grabbing some crackers, cheese, and an apple to eat in my room rather than compete with other people for oven and stove time.

Last night there was some kind of group dinner on my floor to which I wasn't invited. I'm sure it was an impromptu gathering that just happened, but even when I walked in to grab a yogurt, nobody did more than nod.

Today as I was cutting up my apple a girl on my floor who was present at last night's dinner came in for a cup of water and said "you don't like cooking, do you?" I almost cut myself with the overly-dull knife.

"No," I said. "Eating is social for me. I love cooking when I have people with whom I can eat food. Actually, I cook almost every night when I'm at home. I liked living on the third floor better -- we used to have group meals a lot."

This made the girl a little uncomfortable. You know what? I kinda don't care. And you know what else? It's sooo your loss, people. I am so tempted to make something involving every pan in our little kitchen and then eat it all myself, gleefully, without sharing.

Well, I catalogued my first manuscript today since I've been here. I feel like a polar bear who has been taken from the zoo and put back into her natural habitat. I just want to rub my face all over the manuscripts and tell them how much I love them. Even K. has noticed the change in my confidence. I know that a lot of people don't like doing this type of work, but I relish each and every manuscript I come across. It's so strange to have confidence again -- the manuscript that I was cataloguing turned out to be quite an interesting alchemical miscellany. Two other manuscripts copied their drawings from this one, and Elias Ashmole used the manuscript for his Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum as well. Oh, and John Dee owned the manuscript too. It was a good manuscript, and not bad for a day's cataloguing!

So the best moment of the new True Blood episode has to be
( below the cut for spoilers )

I'll report more later about my ongoing weekend in Spain, but the short recap is that I spent the entire day walking around Toledo yesterday. It was beautiful, but we were walking from around 10:30am-7pm in 105 degree heat and today my feet swollen and sore. On today's agenda: going to the Archaeological museum and maybe the Prado. Tonight we're going to a concert, and then tomorrow at 6:30am, I hop on the plane back to London.

Is brought to you by a 14th century house party from the Maastricht Hours. Raise the roof, brother!

I know I already posted a manuscript image today, but this was too good to miss. And epic battle between cat and mouse! Mice with trebuchets! (Here's the link to the manuscript with more images, including the following battle where the mice storm the castle; scroll down for images.)

I think I just found the earliest known record for Winnie the Pooh