Morning Medieval Miscellany

This article I'm working on is taking nearly five times the number of days I budgeted for it. Dangit. Until I get it done, here are a few things for your consideration:

• Mary Kate Hurley has a post with a few announcments, and also points us to her recent article about academic blogging, talking specifically about medievalist bloggers.
• The Medieval Historical Fiction Novel of the Week is Rachel Bard's Queen without a Country.
• Mmm ... Marginalia is about blind man's bluff.
• LLCoolCarlIII has also got a "Middle Ages in Seven Words" post with a really interesting thread. Carl, if you're summering in Atlanta, we should get together and party like it's 999!
• The Weird Medieval Animal this week is the muslim buraq.
• JJ Cohen reviews A New Midrashic Reading of Geoffrey Chaucer: His Life and Works, and calls it "the strangest Chaucer book I have ever read." Also on the Chaucer front, Cohen has some musings about Celtic nature of The Franklin's Tale.
• Speaking of Chaucer, Podictionary reminds me of something long-forgotten -- that Chaucer was the first to write equator in English, in his Treatise on the Astrolabe.
• The Medieval Garden Enclosed has a post on lavenders in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, the website is not scratch & sniff.

In case anyone cares, my chair broke in the middle of typing out this post, sending me flying backwards in a comic and undignified way. I will now begin taking up a collection for a new chair, and for my lost dignity as well.