From time to time, events in what’s laughingly known as my working life mean I have to alter my habits on this blog.

Or, to put it less pompously, I’ve got work (some of it even for money) that may – occasionally – keep me from posting here, without notice, for a while.

This Thursday, at 7:00 p.m., for instance, I’ll be speaking on Viking Legacy to Sagatun Lodge of the Sons of Norway, Brainerd, Minnesota. I think they meet at Trinity Lutheran Church, though such information is surprisingly difficult to learn from online sources. (The reason I don’t have the address myself is because someone’s generously taking me to dinner beforehand, and we’ll drive from there. But I think it’s Trinity Lutheran.)

I expect that if you’re in the area you’ll be welcome, even if you’re not a member of the lodge. Or Norwegian. Or all that good-looking.

What else am I doing? Oh yes, I have an agreement to write an article on the new Norwegian Nobel Laureate for Literature, Jon Fosse. It’s for a periodical which I will not name at this point, in case they don’t want to be publicly associated with me. But I have to read Fosse’s Septology, which is a very long book. I have no idea what I’ll blog about while I’m working my way through that unusual (but fascinating) work. We’ll see.

Also, I have to learn how to use Adobe Live Desk so I can produce a newsletter for the Valdres Samband’s (an organization of descendants of immigrants from the Norwegian region of Valdres) newsletter. Also a paying job.

And I have some translation to do for the Georg Sverdrup Society. They don’t pay money, but I think I go to Hell if I don’t deliver.

I’ve been loafing all summer, trying to drum up work, and now the stuff is falling on my head in the manner of Burt Bacharach’s raindrops. I just translated 11 pages of Norwegian for an author on a two-day deadline, and I got paid for that too.

And someday, like King Arthur, the script translation work may return from Avalon.