This week I’m jetting out to Victoria, BC, for the Making Early Middle English conference (http://hcmc.uvic.ca/makingEME/program.html), which promises to be an excellent gathering. I’ll be presenting “Chess and Fablis: Cursor Mundi and the Book of the Duchess”, a paper that looks at how idleness is presented in both texts and its relationship with gaming and tale-telling. This conference paper is the first airing of the work I’ve been doing for a chapter-length study on the same subject. I’m very much looking forward to talking about these two texts, both of which are understudied (the former more than the latter, of course), and I’m sure I’ll leave with plenty of insights, suggestions, and improvements courtesy of the excellent colleagues gathering in Victoria.