Bike Race = Working From Home

[callistotoni]

The big California bike race travels on 2 of my main daily paths today, so I'm avoiding it all and working from home. I still need to go see Brandee, but I can do that late this afternoon, after all the hoopla is over.

Since LJ is a well known procrastination tool (I *really* have got to finish a report in the next day or two), I have a few more updates:

-- J/S and I are not going to make it to Grand Thing after all. There is just no money for it, especially since I've got to shell out $1200 for a gum graft in mid-July. We are committed to going to West/An Tir War, so we'll somehow find the $$ for that, though. I'm seriously considering selling a couple more dresses, but I haven't made up my mind definitively.

-- Finished reading Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century. This is one of the books I got with my Xmas/B-day gift certificate from Amazon. It was a fun short* read, although Mortimer's overall tone is rather "life was nasty, brutish, and short, but theses were real people that had to cope with thier circumstances and thus deserve our respect". It's pop history based in scholarship, and Mortimer is pretty good at painting a picture for his reader. It is not a romantic portrait, and I'd be careful of handing it to an SCA newcomer for fear of them coming away with a "Why would anyone want to re-create that?". But if someone was interested in what life would have been like for people in 14th C England (or a taste of that, according to Mortimer's interpretation of the data) then I would hand it to them, along with Daily Life in Chaucer's England (Greenwood Press). Here's the chapter headings:
-Introduction: Welcome to Medival England
-The Landscape
-The Medieval Character
-Basic Essentials (dates, time, units of measurement, money, that sort of thing)
-What to Wear (hm, not his greatest chapter...)
-Travelling
-Where to Stay
-What to Eat and Drink
-Health and Hygiene
-The Law (for me, the most boring chapter, but it did paint a picture...)
-What to Do
-Envoi
-Notes (He's pretty good about citing his sources)
-Full Titles of Works Mentioned in the Notes
-Index


Now I'm reading the another of my gift certificate haul, Peter Brears' Cooking & Dining in Medieval England.

(*Side note: it takes me forever to finish a book these days, since my reading time is restricted to right before bed and falling asleep.)

OK, back to work for me. :-0

Comments

[falzalot.livejournal.com]

Y'know, it makes absolute perfect sense to me that a guy who does a good job on all the other stuff wouldn't be able to write about clothing to your satisfaction. :->

I forgot the bike race was today! I guess it goes through pigeon pass? I wouldn't go on the roads either!

[callistotoni.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not sure, but it's possible that Mortimer is interpreting the fur-topped sideless surcotes as short jackets. :-/

And, yes, the bike race comes over Pigeon Pass, *and* it goes over Calavaras. :-0