09:41 – I didn’t remember until after dinner yesterday that it was the 49th anniversary of the day that Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
We just started rewatching the HBO series Rome on Amazon streaming. It’s historically inaccurate, but what drives me really nuts is that the characters all pronounce Latin words very badly. Jool-ee-us See-zur instead of Yool-ee-us Kie-ssar. Siss-ur-oh instead of Kee-kur-oh, Kay-toe instead of Kah-toe, Tye-tus instead of Tee-tus, Loo-see-us instead of Luke-ee-us, and so on. Mrs. Shreffler, my junior high Latin teacher, would have rapped all their knuckles. They also don’t understand the most extraordinary characteristic of Caesar as a military commander: his ability to move huge numbers of men and heavy equipment large distances in incredibly short times. Historically, that’s been the notable characteristic of the best ground commanders, from Alexander to Caesar to Gustavus Adolphus to Nathan Bedford Forrest (get there first with the most…) to George S. Patton. Caesar redeployed in literally days what his opponents expected to take weeks, giving them a nasty shock by doing so. Patton did the same during the Ardennes Offensive.
Barbara is out doing yard work. She’s always wanted to get rid of the rotting pile of firewood down in the back corner of the yard. I’d told her months ago that that was fine, but I wanted to have a cord of new firewood before we did that. She thought the pickup load we got in last month fulfilled that, but I was speaking of a literal cord rather than the face cord we had brought in. That was roughly 40% of a full cord. I told Barbara yesterday to go ahead and have James haul off the old rotting stuff, but I wanted to make it a very high priority to build a couple more firewood racks and get another couple pickup loads of new firewood stacked in them.
We’re building chemistry kits this weekend. This batch will take us up to reasonably good stocking levels going into June; about three dozen finished chemistry kits, two dozen biology kits, and a dozen forensics kits. Once we get that done, it’ll be back to labeling and filling more bottles, building more subassemblies, and building more finished kits. By the beginning of August, we’ll have bunches of kits stacked up and ready to ship.
Also this weekend, weather allowing, we’re going to plant some test seeds in our garden as well as some herbs in pots on the deck.