Lazy Sunday

I spent most of the day recovering from my ear infection and reading the latest work for my book-a-week history seminar; "Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles." I feel like my painfully ringing eardrums were limiting my ability to really digest what the authors were saying, but they were basically arguing that because of European contact, something called the "Atlantic Creole Culture" emerged in west Central Africa around 1600. In the end, it seemed like just a fancy way of saying "there was lots of European contact there." This was surprising since one of the co-authors, John K. Thornton, has done a lot of work that I've really enjoyed and respected, but this seemed quite beneath his level of scholarship. Maybe he's complacent in his relative fame so far.

I spent the other half of the day watching the upper-left half of the TV screen (where the score ticker is), watching in pain as the Bears fell to the Vikings, 34-31. This completed my depressing sports weekend (the Illini lost to hated Iowa yesterday, 10-6). Hopefully this can be rectified this weekend when Shewara and I head to Chambana for the big Illinois-Michigan match, which is still one of the biggest football games in recent Illini memory. Plus, Shewara is 2-0 all-time at Illini matches, so we gotta win.

Off to bed for more ear resting.