Yule Construction

Front of House with Our New Herd

I returned home from work yesterday to find that my Favorite Panamanian had realized her long held dream of Christmas deer for the front yard. That’s kind of an inside joke. I more correctly found a large box containing the three deer that needed to be assembled and then deployed to the front yard. There were the usual less than helpful instructions which I’m sure were created by a limited English speaker working for the Chinese firm that built the things. I just love discovery learning.

She Also Was Hard at Work Inside

My wife gamely accompanied me out into the front yard to emplace the herd and a miniature sleigh full of Christmas trees. I didn’t ask.  As I’ve written before she doesn’t take kindly to winter weather and rarely ventures outside after November and until April unless she’s in Panama. She had to make multiple trips inside to add clothing to her already robust outfit. In true gringo fashion I wore a spring jacket and was fine. The final addition to her accoutrement was an ace bandage wound around her face to prevent the cold air from entering. This all took place with temperatures in the relatively mild high 30s. With the February arrival of the BRS which will require my wife’s early return from her tropical winter I can’t wait to see her on a truly cold outing. At any rate we got the damned beasts deployed and I will begrudgingly admit that I like how they look.

Meanwhile - Down in New Jersey

Decorating was also afoot down in New Jersey where the FBR showed us the Christmas tree she and my daughter were about to decorate. On the ever expanding list of reasons grandchildren are awesome is the chance to experience the wonder of the holiday season through their young eyes. I’m sure my daughter didn’t share that view last night trying to decorate her tree with her two year old’s assistance but I hope I’m wrong. Yep, Christmas spirit is definitely percolating.

I just finished a book that combined two earlier novels by SM Stirling and David Drake from the General series called Hope Reborn. I stumbled onto the books thanks to Amazon’s deadly recommendations algorithm which pinpointed me as a lover of military science fiction. I’d read and thoroughly enjoyed both authors’ work before so I was surprised I hadn’t been turned onto this earlier. One of the aspects to reading science fiction that I love is the transportation to new worlds. The world, in this case is Belleview, a colony world from an earlier galaxy spanning human civilization. That civilization fell several centuries before the events in the books and a subterranean, forgotten supercomputer implants itself into the head of a promising young army officer to assist him in upcoming military campaigns to return man to the stars. It took me  while to figure out but the authors used the reign of Justinian the Great as a model which would make the hero of the book, Raj Whitehall, General Belisarius. As a side note, Belisarius is one of the most interesting figures in military history, all but forgotten except within the military. As with earlier books form these two authors I found the battles fascinating as Whitehall forges a deadly fighting force and with the assistance of the computer in his head becomes a feared conqueror.  My only complaint with the book is the organization. The plot jumps both in distance and time right in the middle of chapters without any warning. For someone who reads as fast as I do that took a while to get used to but didn’t diminish how much I enjoyed the work. I’m already on to the next volume. Raj rules!

The Bad Cinema project count rises to #71 out of 100, with Trapped by Television a 1930s comedy when television was seen as science fiction.