What to do?

basal_surge is feeling under the weather and has collapsed asleep in bed.
I have manage to:
Play with new mp3 player (cnet review here). Happy so far as I got it direct from NZ distributors in ~2 days (ordered on Tues) and for $150 ($50 less than Noel Leemings and they had it in stock). Will see how it does at work tomorrow.
Buy three tickets to the Neal Gaiman talk. Unfortunately Richard Dawkins and Simon Sharma were sold out already. No assigned seats and sounds good, so I would recommend anyone else interested and in the vicinity to get tickets sooner rather than later.
Do a load of dishes (it was kinda Z's turn but...).
Thought I had shifted some money around but apparently not. Emailed the bank about that.

The next options are play with spreadsheets or vacuum (assuming the bits have dried after cleaning a couple nights ago). Retreating to a corner with a stack of Listener quiz crosswords was last nights option.

Course I could start a little pouch for the new mp3 player for safe keeping in the handbag...

Edit: vacuum cleaner filter bits still not dry, so no vacuuming and rough pouch is all done. May be a bit late at night for spreadsheets though.

Pretty stuff before I forget again

Via Medieval Silkwork post.

Silver and gold ornaments of the vikings: Posaments aka Passementerie. Original artifacts down the page and replicas in the Gallery. And eminently doable...

Pause for distraction while I check what I remember of Viking Passementerie and get distracted by Fornvannen and Borre style metalwork in the material culture of the Birka warriors (pdf) which has some passementerie images. And then go back to downloading any of the interesting articles which I can work out what they are about and/or have pretty/interesting pictures.

And while I am distracted, anyone tell if this book Viking Rus: studies on the presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe by Wladyslaw Duczko (2004). What I can see of the illustration collection looks cool (after page 258)- includes sketch of smiths tool hoard from Staraja Lagoda (after Rjabinin 1985 but bibliography not in Google Books version). Don't know what the nationalistic biases are though.

And if someone can chase up The Silk Road Textiles at Birka: An Examination of the Tabletwoven Bands By Cathy Ostrom Peters, to see if that developed past an abstract only... Ok, check out Silk Roads, Other Roads: Eighth Biennial Symposium 2002 of which that talk was one of many interesting sounding ones. Proceedings available on CD...

Time to stop being distracted and head off to bed.