I realized as I looked at the site that I have managed little with the content over the past year, a pretty long time. I found something I had started working on and quickly realized that the new editor used by wordpress is inscrutable to me. In short order, I was frozen out of a page I had been typing and, on shifting to the code editor, managed without even trying to delete several paragraphs.

I do not know if this is a sign of advanced age or a non-intuitive interface but I will have to go with age related at the moment and hope that I can overcome this. What I dread is fighting my way through documentation that spends considerable time telling me that the unpleasant editor I am working with is a heavenly gift to mortal men. It has been my experience that when programmers strive to make things easier they become thoroughly unpleasant.

Anyway, tomorrow I take what is left of what I wrote and start typing again. Who knows? The second time may be an improvement.

The summer was far from tranquil. I had hoped to avoid travel but wound up in Liverpool and London. If you take a train out of Euston station, do not take the cheapest seat. Reserve a seat. You will have a nicer trip. And ignore Rick Steves’ remarks about cabbies. Not all are genial tour guides.

Returning home, I received a call to jury duty for a fairly lurid murder case. This is my third jury and I have yet to find one with Henry Fonda. We might have well been a family reunion at Thanksgiving. Still, it was a difficult experience. There is always a sense that you are not being told the most important facts and this invariably turns out to be true.

so, I am back home and painting mostly 3mm and 10mm stuff. I am amazed at the variations in size and girth for different manufacturers. I have not recovered most of my rule books after the move. Very painful to lose them. At least, it focuses me on the rules I have available. It has become painfully apparent that it is going to be a race between losing my eyesight or dying, and finishing painting everything. I will likely end up like my father, lying in a hospice bed ordering miniatures even then.

To anyone curious, that is a photo of the British Library and just beyond, St. Pancras Station.

It is almost July and I have not written a thing since winter. I attribute it to age. I now have a tendency like some shelless tortoise to stop where I am and brood. Little gets accomplished.

Utah has escaped the heat dome enveloping the country to the east. It is cooler than normal. No sense of living in the desert except for a distinct lack of rain. In the south, fires are raging. Here, life has taken on a placid warm weather emptiness.

i have come to the conclusion that the movers did not move most of the rulesets. I had stored them in an archival storage box which i found was stuffed with old plastic hangers and various things from the bathrooms. Moving was mysteriously hit and miss.

A trip to England comes up shortly. I have yet to find a store there to visit though I am certain one will come up. All in all, a low key summer ahead.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day fittingly marks a return to sanity. The holiday season is finally over, the traveling is done, and I did not pet the capybara.

I have finally pulled out every last box of figures that I have. I have found stuff I had completely forgotten. I am glad I wrote out a list of the various things I expect to find. One thing I have not done is approach the plastic stuff with the same concern. There is stuff from Hat Industries that has never been removed from the box.

Still missing are the rules. Originally stored in one box, the movers decided to move them to a series of boxes while filling the original box with bathroom materials.

On the painting side, I continue to paint 3mm Napoleonics, Austrian and French. The two pieces above contain 60 individual figures, plenty to drive someone up the wall.

Today is tree removal day here so I have a lot to pay attention to. Still, I am glad the holidays are over.

Halloween is some great boundary marker into the insanity that slashes its way through to the day after New Years. It is a marker of years flowing by far worse than birthday since death and taxes are on the way. I cannot think of a bright side.

This week offers a rich variety of reality clawing its way into my life. I must get papers notarized. I must transport my daughter to her various engagements. I must review my expenses. On the up side, I did complete my annual medicare exam. Yes, I am still alive and moving of my own volition, my mental facilities debatable but still existent.

All this follows an effort to sort through the smaller things that had migrated to bookshelves. I rediscovered some very old catalogs including a charming but brief one from McEwan Miniatures. I had been looking for the Jack Scruby catalog but, seeing it again, I realize that he offers neither drawings or photos of his figures. The variety is fascinating. He seemed to want to cover as much as he could.

Beyond that, I finally listed all the metal stuff that i had by scale. It is helpful to me if no one else. There was an odd moment several years ago where it seemed to me I had crossed into that mythic region where I own enough lead to make a move challenging. I hate the idea of another move but I find it hard to believe we are here to stay