I'm in Ottawa, visiting M and Z, enjoying an excellent change in scenery for the weekend, and yesterday, even a day off! M and Z have been taking me to all their favorite purveyors of food and coffee as we eat our way around Hintonburg and Little Italy, and yesterday featured a nerdy trip to the Diefenbunker Museum (the cold-war era bunker built to ( Read more... )

So last... Friday, I think, Advisor R alerted me to the existence of this great article on Canadian heraldry: How Canada became home to some of the world's more visually stunning and fun heraldryApparently, until 1988, all designs for Canadian heraldry had to be approved by the British College of Arms, but in 1988 authority over heraldry was ( Read more... )

Ooh! I just found a really, really cool thing! It's a website dedicated to mapping all the First Nations languages of British Columbia! It includes their real names, their more common (or Anglicized names) where applicable, and their language families. It also has information about the number of fluent, semi-fluent, and learning speakers (among ( Read more... )

At this point, I have more or less concluded my packing for tomorrow's bus-expedition up to Quebec, where, if you remember, I'm going to help celebrate my youngest brother's graduation ( Read more... )

I just got back from a super-nerdy expedition to the Boston Museum of Science with fellow medievalist JK, who is a member, and used her membership benefits take me to see a film at the Mugar Omnimax theatre there. This film, the Rocky Mountain Express, aka a Vancouver-BC-to-Kannanaskis-Country-Alberta tour of the Canadian Pacific Railway mainline ( Read more... )

Welp, either I've come over allergic to something that put in its first appearance in the air this evening, or I'm getting sick, neither of which is optimal given what my next two weeks less one day look like (two discussions, three lectures, a review session, and a seminar paper/dissertation chapter). Augh ( Read more... )

Well, I got cheated out of a birthday snowstorm in 2010, and had to teach on my birthday after it looking like I might get a snow day, but this year appears to be making up for it with a pre-birthday snowpocalypse (my birthday is on Sunday). As of around 10:00 this evening, my current institution of higher learning and Jesuits is closed tomorrow, ( Read more... )

Hello! Hello from Vancouver, where I'm sitting in a Blenz on Granville Street, ostensibly marking papers, but in reality, mostly people-watching. Also, staying dry, because it's Vancouver in December and it's pouring - clearly all this is punishment for deciding I wouldn't need my umbrella over break, and leaving it in Boston. I didn't count on ( Read more... )

Well, it's been a while, and that's mostly down to the fact that last week turned out to be an unexpected week of doom (week of unexpected doom?). It was my final week of lectures, the first one on the Seven Years' War and the second one on the American Revolution, so I wasn't particularly worried going in. I was more or less like "an excuse to ( Read more... )

This evening, my original plan was to write ALL the midterm exam ID term marking guides for the epic exam-marking session I'm having tomorrow, and then to make ALL THE EDITS to my lecture for Friday, and to real ALL THE PAGES in Mohawk Saint: Katherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits in preparation for discussion on Monday, but that is not what I've ( Read more... )