Getting Off the Ground

Hello everyone, and welcome if you've stopped by! I am once again getting ready to jet-set around the world (or Europe, at least) preparing papers for conferences and taking some time out to see the sights. As many of you know, I'm not exactly the best Facebook user - for one, I'm terrible about checking in and when I do check in, I have a lot more to say than 100 characters! So I'm going to try and start blogging about my travels again, in a vain hope of sharing a more substantial accounting of where I'm off to and what I am doing, seeing, eating, or experiencing.

The Clockwork Duck comes from a couple favorite hobbies of mine. As most folks know, I do love rubber ducks - I've been collecting them off and on for the last decade or so, but pretty much every incarnation or spelling of duck (in both English and the French "canard") were already taken as blog titles. Thus, enter my other, more recent hobby - Steampunk. For those who don't know, Steampunk is a bit of a combination between science fiction and Victorian history/costuming - as Ian puts it, the future as imagined in 1900. It gives me an outlet for the historic costuming I once did through the SCA and other venues, but also allows a lot more creativity and imagination for modifications and such. Thus - the clockwork duck, duckie for the rubber ducks and clockwork for Steampunk.

In any case, feel free to poke your head in and say hello! I'm not sure if I will update this on a more regular basis, or just dust it off like a leather-bound journal when I travel to somewhere interesting and away from home. In either case - this week, I head off to Istanbul (not Constantinople) and then Madrid! So bon voyage, and I'll write more once I arrive and settle in across the Pond.

Cheers,
- Jenn