If at 5:30-ish p.m. on Friday, 7 January 2005, you are at the AHA convention, standing near the registration desk in the lobby of the Sheraton Seattle Hotel, in Seattle, Washington, and you

a) have extravagant academic hair;
b) are wearing a mouse pad instead of a name tag;
c) appear to be chanting"Sharon Howard is a goddess";
d) have a cup of coffee in one hand and a little stack of cookies in the other; or
e) are wearing pajamas instead of your usual conventioneering get-up,

we will assume that you intend to join us for a history blogfest at a nearby establishment. Bloggers, blog readers, and their guests are invited. Drinks and intelligent chatter are the order of the hour. Those who wish to may continue on to dinner. The only requirement is that you agree to honor the anonymity of pseudonymous bloggers. Another Damned Medievalist is calling the shots on this one. Oh, and if all of the above are true of you, I'm calling House Security.

Last time I looked, it appeared that Sepoy at Chapati Mystery has won the Asia Blog Award 2004 for best Pakistani blog (scroll down). Congratulations!

Finally, C. A. Tripp's much anticipated book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, has just been published by the Free Press. It surveys the evidence and makes the case that Lincoln had considerable homosexual experience. As I've said before, I am a skeptic about this one. Yet, so reputable a historian as Goucher's Jean H. Baker has done the introduction to the book, which will cause some of us to take notice. At Vanity Fair.com, Gore Vidal has a fascinating web-only essay about it,"Was Lincoln Bi-sexual."