Long Friday

Is it dinner time yet?

After a solid 12 hours in the rack, I woke up to a sunny, rather cold day on Friday.

Head still felt like it was stuffed with cotton, but I wasn't going in to work. Nope, I had decided to take my next off Friday a week early. (We can do that from time to time, as long as we don't go crazy with it.)

What do to, what to do?

Let me tell you, I did very little. I did read though, quite a bit.

A week or so back (I may have written about it, I forget and am too lazy to look it up) The Missus Herself and I went to Barnes and Noble. I had some money burning a hole in my pocket and wanted to continue reading Bernard Cornwell's The Saxon Chronicles. Which has also been called The Warrior Chronicles, The Saxon Stories, and I guess now, to tie in with the BBC series, is to be known as The Last Kingdom series. I'll stick with The Saxon Chronicles.

At any rate, I have been reading these since they first came out back around 2004. As of now there are ten books in the series, as follows -

• The Last Kingdom (2004)
• The Pale Horseman (2005)
• The Lords of the North (2006)
• Sword Song (2007)
• The Burning Land (2009)
• Death of Kings (2011)
• The Pagan Lord (2013)
• The Empty Throne (2014)
• Warriors of the Storm (2015)
• The Flame Bearer (2016)

I had read up to (and including) The Pagan Lord. So I wanted the next three. Off to the store and lo and behold, they had the last two, but they didn't have The Empty Throne, which you can see in the opening picture and by now you're asking yourself, "I thought they didn't have that one in stock?" Well no, they didn't

But through the wonders of Amazon Prime I was able to order it and it came in just as I was finishing this book -

(Source)

So Saturday, after doing the rounds on the blog front (I try to keep up with all those folks on the sidebar, no easy chore), running about koobecaF, the latest thing there being to post works of art, I then found myself curled up with The Empty Throne. Sasha, senior member of the feline staff, not by age but by rank, she is the Alpha, decided that on such a chilly day, curling up next to Your Humble Scribe while he read his new book was just the thing.

First though she had to do what our Dutch veterinarian, back in Europe, like to call "putting her happy smell on it." As cats have glands for marking things all over their bodies, so it seems, rubbing the side of their mouths against stuff is one way in which they mark things as belonging to them. If it belongs to them, it makes them happy, I guess.

So after that ritual was over, I began reading. At that point Sasha decided that I was paying far too much attention to the book and not to her. (Well, she is a female...)

So after a bit of petting her and scritching her ears, she settled down and let me read. Until it was time to eat. Check that, until her sister Anya determined that it must be time to eat due to the angle of the sun's rays through the windows and the fact that the last time I had fed them was near dawn.

Normal afternoon feeding time, dinner we like to call it, is at 1700. Anya will start declaring that it's dinner time from about 1500 on. She's not that good at determining time from the angle of the sun apparently. I won't chide her for that, I'm not all that good at judging time that way either. If asked to determine the time by the sun I'd be nearly clueless. I can tell morning, noon, afternoon, and night, that's about it.

But once Anya has started demonstrating that it was time to be fed, it's tough to concentrate on anything other than telling her, "it's not time yet, hold yer water."

So on the day went, I gave up trying to read until after dinner. After the cats had been fed (and I myself had been fed) I decided to pick up the book and read some more.

But YouTube beckoned, Netflix beckoned, then, I realized, it might also be a good idea to get a post out.

And this is it, such as it is.

I still feel like death warmed over but I think I've turned the corner on this nasty cold. We shall see. If my posts seem scatterbrained and/or somewhat disjoint, well more so than normal, I blame the meds. While they clear the sinuses and make the pain go away, they're not all that conducive to rationale thought.

Not that I'm much good at that anyway. Oh, here's a hint at a coming soon to a blog near you post.

USAFE KC-135 tanker takes off from the Royal International Air Tattoo, Fairford, Gloucestershire, England.
Photographed by Adrian Pingstone in July 2005 and released to the public domain.

Seems that one of Shaun's readers likes those. As do I. A real workhorse of a jet. More, soon. I promise.