Break a leg, as they say.

No, I didn't break my leg. But I've been contemplating today...if I DID break my leg, or some such tragedy, and were laid up in bed for a good 6 weeks of doing nothing...

What would I do with my time?

Each year when I teach Beowulf I'm reminded how much I LOVE Old English. I mean, I REALLY LOVE it. I spent all my free time at school today looking up Old English words and brute-force translating a small portion of Beowulf. Well, translating might be a bit of a stretch. It is so much fun! I could do it for hours. I honestly do think that if someone said to me, "MK, I'd like to pay for you to go back to school and get a specialized degree in literature. What would you like to study?" I'd kiss their feet and recover myself, and exclaim, "Old English!" It's one of the few bodies of literature that is really small - just a cluster of documents. It's really manageable. Wouldn't it be lovely to be able to just sit down and read something 1200 years old, in the original, and tell myself, "This is the ancestor to my language."

So, if I broke my leg, and had nothing else to do...

Okay, so not all of you feel my enthusiasm. I understand...