Justifiable

Work-avoidance is at its best served warm and justifiable - and as one of those lucky people who is interested in almost anything, justification is generally close to hand. Two things keeping me from being Little Miss Efficient today (whilst simultaneously teaching me some genuinely useful things):

1) Practicing reading Early-Modern scripts and manuscripts online. This is one of the most thoughtfully and effectively presented websites I've seen - it's fantastic! The idea is that one might learn and practice reading ye olde handwritings and scribal scratchings by following an impeccably designed and managed set of 'lessons', in which texts of differing complexities are transcribed. The site is maintained by Andrew Zurcher, who knows his and everyone else's stuff - an invaluable site for all Spenser nuts is also maintained by him (without which my Renaissance reading would [have] be[en] all the more anaemic). The handwriting site is an example of how the 'net can and should be put to best effect. That and YouTube, obviously.

2) First there was Pepys, now there's Roger Morrice. Well, not so much "now" as "there was also" - he's well dead. But a compatriot diary to Pepys' is very welcome; he's cited so much that it's good to have another text to go to, similar in form but different in content. This is fairly exciting, given I can already spend hours buried in a volume of Ypesp. It's always 'relevant', because I'm always reading something from the period (or thereabouts) - perfect procrastination, and with bonus educational benefits. A bit more information: here. When Newnham Library acquires the Morrice, that much less Real Work will get done - probably ought to pre-empt that by working now. Probably...