I spent the last few days leisurely reading The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger. It was a somewhat indulgent easy popular history about what it sounds like–a day in the life of someone in 1000 a.d. What it really served as was a good survey for me to make some notes about things I want to know more about that happened back then: the four humors (blood, phlegm, red choler and black bile) that were purported to make up the human body; Alefric, the monk-teacher who lived in the shadow of the titillating Cerne Abbas giant (snicker); the Cerna Abbas giant itself, for godsake!; The Norman Invasion).

I suffered (if you will) a series of “oh, jeez, duh” moments that were fun if humbling.

Like this, which I had, um, never put together before: Norsemen -> Normans -> Normandy.

Less “duh” and more “oh, huh”: the word sheriff comes from a contraction of “shire reeve”–that man (presumably male) in charge of the shire in Medieval England.

Oh, those wily and intriguing Anglo-Saxons.

Next: Either dabbling in Greek history or poetry, or something just for fun.