Serendipity

I should, of course, be grading. And you might quite reasonably expect me to be panicking over everything that has to be done all too soon: grading (piles of longish papers from undergrads; easier assignments from grads); inventing final exams (and then grading them, week after next); finishing that damned R&R that I have not been working on in sensible brief stints. Some sane portion of my brain is, in fact, in a state over all that.

However, as of this morning I know something about provenance of a medieval manuscript that nobody else knows, and the larger portion of my brain is callooh-ing and callay-ing about this lovely discovery. (Apparently I can't be left alone for ten minutes with a book containing reproductions of late-medieval marginalia without coming up with another research project, even though I can't seem to finish the last one.) The timing is perfect, because a conference abstract deadline is fast approaching, for a conference I love but thought I'd have to miss or attend purely as audience this time, because not only am I supposed to be finishing things, but I really didn't have anything up my sleeve for it.

But now I have something really cool (at least I think so) to work up and present. I am obnoxiously pleased with myself and my new shiny project. If I were capable of doing without sleep for the next two weeks, everything would be fine.

Do you think I could get the cats to handle the grading?