Mern Þonke

The past week has not provided much opportunity for blogging -- nor, I should say much that was thought-provoking. The major exception was the California Medieval History Seminar, which occurs at the Huntington Library several times a year. A bunch of historians (and me) from various Califonia universities, and occasional scholars visiting California from elsewhere, gather to discuss works in progress for a day. Most of the papers this time around were on subjects pretty far removed from my own research, but I did come across a few references that were valuable. I'm looking forward to following up on some of these things over the summer, when I get to focus on research full time.

For now, I am still grading. Final exams ended on Thursday, and, so far, I have one class done. I have another set of exams to do, and then two sets of essays and a set of Middle translations. If I'm lucky, I'll have it all done by next Thursday, but it's going to take some pretty intense grading sessions. This morning, I did about fifteen exams before taking the possibly more daunting task of cleaning out our closet. Camille and I finished (more or less) around 4:30, and now we're exhausted. Tomorrow is Memorial Day, and I'm going to try to take some time away from work and domestic chores. We're hoping to have some folk over for drinks in the evening, and then on Tuesday it's back to the slog.

The only other news to report is that a book project I have been involved with -- a volume of essays on The Lord of the Rings -- has been given the go-ahead by the publisher Continuum. So now I've got to think about writing my chapter over the summer. It's on models of service in em>The Lord of the Rings . I'm going to be dead busy.