Random thing I learned today while sitting in an emergency room waiting for a friend to get checked out. Lady Macbeth's actual name was....Gruoch. Yeppers. Lady M is so much better, don't you think? The historian also thinks both the lady and her husband got a bum rap from Mr. Shakespeare. It wouldn't be the first time -- Richard III also got the rough treatment. I highly commend Josephene Tey's 'Daughter of Time' for any interested in one relatively scholarly assessment of the real Richard.

Bit of advice -- always take a book to the ER. It's a multi-functional item. It serves as something to kill the time while waiting for doctors to finish tests, conversation starters when you're getting on each other's nerves after several hours of enforced togetherness (although it is nice that you no longer have to prove blood relationships in order to go back to the treatment area) -- it's how the whole Gruoch thing was discovered -- and a nice pillow when you're just vegging waiting for anyone to get back to you with test results. Now of course, only I would think that a scholarly treatise called "Bloodfeuds" is appropriate reading material for the ER, but it's what was handy when I left.

Friend is fine, though. Just bored and cranky, rather like me, although I expect I'm even more so, as I did not get fed the lovely hospital food, and by 8:30, I was a bit faint.