Friday, January 6, 2012

Why I love the internet

I've had this book “Tea drinking in 18th-century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage”on my Amazon wish list of years. It's out of print. There is one copy available on AbeBooks for $144. This afternoon, I applied my best Google-fu and I managed to find a course syllabus from 2005 that had this listed as one of the readings. Lo and behold, the email for the professor was included as well. I figured what did I have to lose? So I shot a brief note asking if she knew how I could acquire a copy and she got right back to me with the name of an anthology that includes it. It's now on the way for under $15, shipped.

Why now, all of a sudden? Well, Military Through the Ages is less than 2 1/2 months away, and it's time to build up to "full panic" mode. Our cook has some rather ambitious ideas for a menu, and we're trying to find some warm bodies to play wounded soldiers.

7 comments:

  1. The book link doesn't work!
    Anyway, 3rd in the cooking category isn't too shabby; that's gotta be a difficult area to be "original" in, no? I'd think a uniform, correctly made, would score big, but how the heck do you replicate vittles, time wise?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Plenty of youngsters at the various military bases around Hampton Roads would get a kick out of helping with something like that.
    Especially if they were being asked by a pretty lady.

    ReplyDelete
  3. DT, remember we're competing against different time periods. Roughly it's pre-(American) Civil War in on group and Civil War and after in another. How to you compare the armor of the Romans to a uniform from the war of 1812?

    Food ... we look for what was issued to the troops, we look for diary entries of what they actually ate, we look at original recipes to document what ingredients we *do* use. It's a bit of a juggle.

    MSgt B: Do you think you could get Brigid to ask for us? *grin*

    ReplyDelete
  4. LOL, full panic mode :-) Hang in and hang on lady, you'll make it work as always!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Zing! I walked right into that one...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Old NFO, our group is full of Very Smart People. 92% of them are also ADD or ADHD. I have to bring a Ritalin salt lick to events. My job is to herd the squirrels, get them pointed in the right direction, wind them up and get out of the way. Organization and prior planning is not their best skill set. Talking to the public, yes. Remembering to bring the birch whisk for making the chocolate custard, no.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Bwahahahaha!

    Y'know, "Ritalin salt lick" just might be the funniest thing I've read in recent memory.

    ReplyDelete