“Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.”
~ Richard Rorty

It’s been a slow week, my doves, the most exciting thing that happened was buying armloads of Girl Scout cookies (thereby funding the downfall of Western Civilization, according to some), and spending the majority of work at a conference.  It’s lovely to get out of the office, but it would have been lovelier if we could have held the whole thing outside – the weather has been gorgeous!

The big news is that J. is coming to visit.  On Monday!  For a month!  Hurrah for term breaks before finals!

Here’s some fun stuff for the weekend for you, hope you’re looking forward to it as much as me:

Letters from Henry VIII and Jane Seymour have been found.  I’m partisan to Anne Boleyn myself, Catherine Parr’s a close second, but how nifty is it to see the letter confirming the birth of his son?  And all it took was throwing over multiple religious factions, a vicious divorce, a beheading, quelling very tiny insurrections, countless mistresses, wars with France, and dissolving and pillaging the monasteries.  All in day’s work.

If obesity rates are to be believed (and I think they are) we’re spending an awful lot of time sitting down.  But who knew chairs were so interesting?

I found this absurdly cute for some reason.

A fun tumblr for my fellow history-types.

Gah!  GAH!  They should slap this on the cartons along with health warnings, “May cause loss of historical monuments and priceless cultural treasures.  Oh and cancer…”

One of my old university mates is also living in the US.  She’s additionally, apparently, cooking up a storm.  Here’s her recipes for genuine British fish and chips (hands down J.’s favorite Britannic concoction) and French onion soup.

Nifty project!

For my fellow world travelers.  Someday I’m going to get a bunch of vintage maps of all the places J. and I have lived, set them in interesting frames, and fill a wall with them!

What have you discovered lately that should be shared with the minion coterie?

“What is a weekend?”
– Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham

That blasted cold is making a comeback.  Thank Jupiter, Odin, and Quetzalcoatl it’s Friday.  I intend to spend it looking at all the places J. and I want to live and using my Peregrine-given resume and cover letter skills to wage a campaign of job hunting.  That an a few phone calls to J. and the girls.  And perhaps chicken soup and orange juice.  Anyway, here’s your Friday fun, minions.  Aunty C. love you.

I like the Keep Calm posters as much as the next girl (although, it’s meme-like status does tend to over saturate one), so here’s the history of it.  The more you know, kids.

Here, enjoy one of the more ridiculous tales of naval warfare (warning, Cracked can be rated PG13 – though really Small Dog Syndrome is not intended for the consumption by small children, pets, sensitive maiden aunts, or faint-hearted pearl clutchers.  They can read Teletubbies Weekly.)

Words cannot express how badly I want this in my house.

In continuing women’s politics news, oh hell no.

So, I’ve mentioned that I gave up being lazy for Lent.  I have, and let me tell you, it’s invigorating!  But strangely, even though I’m wasting less time, I didn’t feel any busier and I was wondering how that worked with the space time continuum.  Normally when I take on more projects, I feel it.  And then I read this article and realized that the problem wasn’t that I was lazy, it was that I hadn’t been using my time as meaningfully and I wasn’t being honest about how much time I spent on things.  So, my goal still holds, but I’m incorporating some of Vanderkam’s language: I’m not just giving up being lazy, I’m owning up to how I spend my time.  Also, Peregrine, I’d very much appreciate it if you’d ignore that sentence of her’s in the last paragraph…you know the one I mean…

The 35 best shoes from the European fashion weeks.  You’re welcome.

Everyone knows the Brothers Grimm, right?  Well, they were not the only Germans out collecting fairy tales!  An archive of over 500 fairy tales has been found in Regensburg – somewhere Disney executive are hugging themselves and planning their next century of cinematic projects.

And here’s the late, lamented Victor Borge proving that funny is everywhere – even the noblest cultural institutions.

“Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.”
– Bill Watterson

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m ready for the weekend!  I had a bad time of it yesterday because short work weeks always throw me off and I spent all of Wednesday evening convinced it was Thursday night and saying to myself, “One more day, C., one more day.”  Reality reasserted itself around 9pm and poisoned all of Thursday for me.  But it’s alright!  This weekend I’m going on a small adventure and Sunday evening we get to pull up a seat, drink a cup of tea, and ferociously judge pretty dresses together – one of my favorite activities with you, well-beloved minions.

So, until then, let’s see what’s been going on around the world and cherry pick a few things for you, eh?

Russian scientists have apparently taken an Ice Age seed and brought it fully to flower!  Next up, reviving that mammoth they found in the tundra a couple years ago.  Wasn’t there a bad 80’s movie along these lines except with Neanderthals?  Science!

Apparently facial recognition technology has taken the inevitable leap – advertising (coupled with social activism).  Wasn’t there a bad Nought’s movie along these lines except with clones?  More science!

This explains my neighbors’ mid-night, ah, activities.

6 Reasons to Carry a Handkerchief, from The Art of Manliness.  I should really buy J. some at some point, I remember stealing my dad’s all the time as a girl.

Hands down the fanciest thing I make for semi-regular consumption.  Between this and my gourmet mac-and-cheese recipe, I can fool people into thinking I’m some sort of culinary genius.

And that, as they say, is all, folks.  Again, you are all required to report for Snarky Fashion Commentary Duties, this Sunday night.  Wear your comfiest pajamas and we’ll see you there!

“The internet is a great way to get on the net.”
– Bob Dole

Seriously.  I am baffled by how much snot the human body can produce – surely I should be comatose from dehydration by now.

Too much information?  Ah, well, we’re close.  Here: ignore my overly loud nose blowing and look at some interesting things I found for you.  (I apologize for treating you like toddlers, easily amused by shiny, noisy objects, but a week-long cold is a terrible thing.  Indulge Aunty C. and smile at the jangling keys, alright?)

Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano has a fantastic venture, the Venus Project, wherein she ruthlessly photoshops iconic images of the goddess to make them more in keeping with current beauty industry standards.  Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is one of my favorite works of all time, once while in Florence I bought a reproduction of it from a seedy street vendor and displayed it in my college flat (to the discomfort of an unbelievably prudish flatmate and her even more puritanical boyfriend – keeping them off-balance became a sport).  Seeing her reshaped really threw me.

Yo dawg, history is the shiz!  (I apologize for even attempting that…I can’t pull it off, even on the anonymous internet…  But history is.  The shiz, I mean.)

London tube humor.

You guys!  Downton Abbey stars out of costume!  The illusion is shattered.  Although seeing Ethel thus doesn’t really shock me in the slightest – that tart!  Perhaps now would be the time to brag/admit that when living in London, I got to see Michelle Dockery perform in her breakout role in Pygmalion at the Old Vic.  Believe it or not, I didn’t love her in it…  We all make mistakes, my dears, don’t hold it against me.

French parenting: superior to American or not?  Having had an overabundance of opportunity to witness American tourists growing up, I can admit that you can always pick them out in a crowd: they usually are the loud, misbehaving ones.  But my family may just be snobbish.  Weigh in and let me know which side you fall on.

Pintrest find of the week: this soup.  Ohmybleedingheavenstryitatonce.

Marie inspires me to decorate my Someday House with a gossip table.  I need a more elegant place to spend my hours long weekend calls to my girls than the corner of the couch J. and I bought on Craigslist.  This is a classy establishment.