General

I just discovered the most wonderful resource…if you have an i-pod or access to the online apple store. You can learn all sorts of things under Itunes-U. I just spent the last half hour or so listening to pod casts on Medieval English by Dr S.D. Lee of Oxford University. He reads various Anglo Saxon texts, but there’s also four hour long lectures on various aspects of Anglo Saxon literature, history and society that he gave to students studying at Oxford. Can’t go to Oxford? Listen to a podcast and learn something without paying a penny! It’s all free! You can even down load it to listen to as you exercise or drive or bake cakes.

I’ll be listening…later…I have to go to bed now, but I’m so excited I’ll probably have a hard time falling asleep. There’s tons of stuff one can listen to in lots of different subjects. All sorts of great institutions of higher education are taking part. This is democracy in action…the sharing of knowledge! Look it up! Learn something new…widen your horizon…widen your perspective on who you are…you never know where the journey will take you!

Bon Voyage!

If you’ve never read The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (a medieval Italian author), Dante is literally guided through a Catholic vision of hell (all nine levels) and then through purgatory and into heaven. I enjoyed Hell; it was packed with vignettes of real people and their stories, but Dante forgot one of the most excruciating levels; the Shopping Mall!

The Goblin is having a short holiday break so of course, being a Goblin, he decided yesterday that he needed to go to a shopping mall to see a particular store to handle a particular item to see if he wished to buy it. After an hour in the car we arrived with minimal difficulty. I told the Goblin before we left home that I was tired (very tired) and didn’t want to go. I reminded him that I hate shopping malls, that they never have anything I want or need in a size or colour that I require, but he gave me that cute (I don’t want to go on my own) Goblin look so I gave in and believed his irritatingly cheerful assertions that we’d find something for me too and went along with hope blooming like a weed by the side of a motorway. [Read more…] about A Shopping Mall – the lowest level of hell…

I need to go back to bed and get some more sleep, but I just wanted to note that I haven’t forgotten I have a blog. I have about 4 posts filed behind my eyes, all waiting to be typed out. Some need photos. Most need me to be awake. I’ve had a lovely week…well lovely in that it passed in a sleepy haze and nothing really bad happened (and the bin men took the rubbish on Wednesday). I’ve been staying up too late and then getting up too early and staying up which sends productivity down the plug-hole. I have managed to do some work on Dancing the Maypole. I finally accepted, after banging my head on the desk for weeks, that I had to erase part of the last chapter and rework it. [Read more…] about Backlog…

I love the weird and the bizarre…and tonight I saw both in garden. First of all you need to know that our back garden is quite small. Most of it is paved, but we have these two little wildernesses; one to the side and one behind us. Our small green patch of grass links the two now that part of the fence refuses to stay upright. The lawn is about nine foot by twelve ft.

I was in the kitchen finishing the paper after eating blueberry pancakes for dinner when the Goblin quietly called from the living room for me to come quick. He was peering out the side window. It was dusk, but there was just enough light to see. We peered out over the back end of the car to the patch of grass. [Read more…] about Strange goings-on in the garden…