Yay!

Guess where the Spouse has headed off to this morning?

His first day of his new job. At Skywalker Sound in Marin. This is going to be fun for him (he's sort of giddy with joy) and an interesting test of our ability to strategize, since we only have one car. We're hoping, with use of City Car Share and a little judicious planning, to avoid having to get a second car, both for ecological and economic reasons. But mostly, it's a job he wanted and is perfect for, working with people who are ecstatic to have him on board, and he so deserves it. (And we can stop living on savings. Yeah, that's good too.)

I've got some pretty steady part time tech-writing work happening (learning FrameMaker, which is sort of like PageMaker, without the elegance and ease-of-use).

Of course, Avocado is heading deep into "I am an adolescent and my job is to make your life hell" territory, so there'll still be enough drama to handle our MDR of angst. No new angst need apply, please.

your maiesties ma[n]y kindes to a sistar

This is cool. It's a website that will, among other things, give you tuition in how to read the handwriting found in manuscripts from the Tudor-late Georgian era. English manuscripts, at least. I just worked my way through a letter from Princess Elizabeth to Queen Mary ("I'm not a traitor, I'm not I'm not, and if I could just see you in person we could work all this out!"). There are ten different documents in ten different styles, and each one has characteristics of its time and place. If no one sees me for a couple of days, I'll be decoding other people's correspondence.

There's also a tutorial, elsewhere on the National Archives site, that will teach you Latin enough to read public documents from roughly 1066 until they stopped using Latin for public documents. Seriously, you guys may never hear from me again.