Ramblings from the 'goblinn

First, the irony. Many people said nice stuff about my new chapter of In Loco Parentis, particularly the handling of Harry's illness and transformation. Thanks for that, everybody. I'm up over 100 reviews! Pretty exciting. Perhaps too much so.

Well, I didn't have the transformation, but I did get some completely unnecessary firsthand experience with some of the other aspects of that scene. And I have a headache and fever this morning, so I am staying home to work today. My boss is happy I am keeping my germs to myself. I'm wondering if in addition to the other problems, I might not have some problem with my esophagus. Acid reflux I had while I was pregnant. But this was like something seeping back up and getting breathed into my bronchial tubes. Like a valve that is not always staying closed. Not the most fun way to wake up I can think of. Luckily the new insurance kicks in today and I can go get a real physical and find out just how much my body is falling apart. Can't wait.

Enough of the TMI. I was much cheered to see chaucerhathblog pop up on my f-list this morning. I put it on a RSS feed, and you should, too, if you like words and geeky Medievalist/ Academic jokes and finding out Middle English is not nearly as hard to read as it first appears. And really, really funny parodies. I am indebted to the Great Lady gillo for turning me on to this blog. And today, on this first day of Aprille, good Galfridus Chaucer asks us to "reden of my werkes" and "declayman (read out loud) my tales." He even has a suggestion for an audience:

For charitees sake, ye coulde declaymen them to beggares, leperes, or humorlesse rogues who studien engineerynge. Wherever ye proclaymen them thogh, do yt so in loude voyse and cleere, for yt is only fooles who think a poeme lith on the page aloone.

"Humorless rogues who study engineering"-- that would pretty much be my coworkers. Except, they are pretty humorous, and studied no harder than I did.

Finally, thanks to juno_magic for the icon, which looks like it captures Chaucer's "and the yonge sonne/ Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne" lines. The image comes from another one of my favorite Medieval books, the Book of Hours of the Duc de Berry. Here's a link to her blog, which gives some fascinating information about the book, some links to where it lives on the web, and a bunch more icons.