Of course one of my worst failings is that I have the attention span of a 2 year old. I can't- CANNOT- look something up in a hard copy dictionary or encyclopedia because I always get side tracked running down tangents. I discovered this again when I finally got access to JSTOR. I started at the beginning of Speculum and downloaded every article that had to do with medieval physical sciences. And Charlemagne, because I'm really fascinated by the Carolingian Renaissance. And Bede- now there was a guy who could think. And the whole Anglo-Saxon period is pretty cool. And the authors in Greek and Roman science who influenced medieval philosophers. And the writers that influenced them. Did you know Otto Neugebauer translated astronomy texts from Babylonian? And there was a bishop who started out skeptical of astrology but got into it as a forecasting tool when the world didn't end when he thought it would? And copyists ended their work with a prayer or jingle about finally being done with the book..... How can you not stop and read about all that stuff? I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for poor Faust.

On the other hand, I now have enough reading material to keep me happy for years. Unfortunately, the only time I get to read is before I go to bed at night and I like to read on my PDA- it's back lit and doesn't wake up the dag-blasted flying monkeys. I have a PDF reader on it, but it doesn't work so well on magazine articles- the print is too small to read no matter how I format it. I'm translating articles a few at a time from PDF to Word docs, but it's not something that can be automated, so I'm having to choose carefully what I want to read first. It's killing me!

I'm also having to try to narrow down my area of research to something reasonable for a persona. That's really difficult because there are fascinating things at every period. I love Carolingian, and they had more from the Romans than a lot of people realize, but they didn't have Ptolomy. I'm drawn to Elizabethan instruments, but they're past some of the truly remarkable changes in thinking that came during the 14th Century. I look best in Tudor garb, but my calligraphy and drawing abilities cry out for uneducated barbarian peasant. I think I may end up with 15 different personas, which is just another way of saying I'm too undisciplined to make a choice.

But one of the first things I'm going to do is draw up a list of instruments and manuscripts that would be reasonable in a well stocked scholar's possession in each century. I may come up with a different persona to go with each list.