From Richard III:

Woe to that land that’s govern’d by a child!

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

HC: Donald got a tenth bad TV reality show.

I’m some notes played in jazz; I’m a taste of a sweet;
I’m the crackle of flames; I’m to savagely beat;
An ephemeral stream; to completely defeat;
And a small block of salt that your cattle might eat.

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Asher. See comments for answer.

The final stop on the cruise was Amsterdam, and we decided to spend an extra night in the city.

The Van Gogh Museum was crowded and the Anne Frank House was booked, but I did get to spend some quality time at the Rijksmuseum which was amazing. I also spent a lot of time walking around. The city is beautiful, steeped in history, packed in architecture, and very welcoming. It is also filled with restaurants, bakeries, and store windows advertising things that are not legal in the United States.

I came home on Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning, I was back at work.

It turns out that when you come back from Europe, jet lag actually works in your favor, as “early to bed and early to rise” becomes an inevitability. I think I’m finally back on a reasonable schedule now. But the real adjustment has been transitioning back to regular life from fantasy world.

When you study something like Shakespeare in school, you never expect that one day there will be some SHAKESPEARE EMERGENCY that you have to fly out and be on call, but that’s what happened, and it was the experience of a lifetime. This was a 400th anniversary celebration, so I have no reason to think Celebrity will do this again, but it was great while it lasted and I have wonderful memories of the trip.

And maybe I picked up an extra reader or two for the website. Sounds like that’s my cue to start writing again.

If you are one of the passengers from the Celebrity Shakespeare & Scandinavia Cruise, welcome! As promised, I am posting digital copies of the handouts from my talks, so if you missed one or didn’t get a handout, you can find everything here.

My first talk was on Hamlet. You can download the handout here. You can also read more of my posts about Hamlet at the category link here.

My second talk was on Shakespeare’s Use of Language. You can download the handout here. You can also read more of my posts about poetry at the category link here.

My third talk was on Shakespeare’s History. During the talk, I referred to a series of eight family trees that I compiled to go along with Shakespeare’s history plays. I used the first and the eighth of these as a handout for the talk. You can find all eight family trees here.

My talk today will be on Shakespeare’s Science. You can download the handout here. You can also read more of my posts following up on references from Shakespeare’s plays at the category link for the Shakespeare Follow-Up here.

Enjoy!