Vacation's End
Jan. 6th, 2018 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowWell, I'm home. A few vacation and post-vacation notes:
1. The dogs have finally settled down from their daddyshome frenzy. It only took about twenty hours.
2. Reading glasses, once they become necessary, are a godsend.
3. One of my great-nephews has emerged as a history buff. At the family Christmas party, he gave me a lengthy and mostly correct, if somewhat disorganized, description of the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate. I remember, when I was about his age, reading a number of biographies-for-kids; Alexander the Great and Marie Curie are the only ones I specifically remember, but I'm sure there were more. I might poke around and see if I can get some of them, or the equivalent, for him - if that's OK with his mother!
4. I did get a fair amount of reading done - a dozen e-books, all fiction except for a history of ancient Rome (up to the Gaulish invasion). Two each by Bujold and Patricia Briggs, singletons by Carrie Vaughn, Ben Aaronovitch, Eric Flint, and N. K. Jemisin, plus older works by Edgar Pangborn ("West of the Sun"), Samuel Delany ("The Jewels of Aptor"), and for a change of pace Tennyson's "Idylls of the King".
5. "The Darkest Hour" was entertaining; it's too bad that several scenes, including the best one, were ahistorical. Churchill was in many respects a sonuvabitch, but you only have to do the right thing once to achieve greatness.
6. I hope I can get the motor revving by Monday. I have no energy at the moment, though I have put in motion a couple of things necessary for this semester's classes.
1. The dogs have finally settled down from their daddyshome frenzy. It only took about twenty hours.
2. Reading glasses, once they become necessary, are a godsend.
3. One of my great-nephews has emerged as a history buff. At the family Christmas party, he gave me a lengthy and mostly correct, if somewhat disorganized, description of the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate. I remember, when I was about his age, reading a number of biographies-for-kids; Alexander the Great and Marie Curie are the only ones I specifically remember, but I'm sure there were more. I might poke around and see if I can get some of them, or the equivalent, for him - if that's OK with his mother!
4. I did get a fair amount of reading done - a dozen e-books, all fiction except for a history of ancient Rome (up to the Gaulish invasion). Two each by Bujold and Patricia Briggs, singletons by Carrie Vaughn, Ben Aaronovitch, Eric Flint, and N. K. Jemisin, plus older works by Edgar Pangborn ("West of the Sun"), Samuel Delany ("The Jewels of Aptor"), and for a change of pace Tennyson's "Idylls of the King".
5. "The Darkest Hour" was entertaining; it's too bad that several scenes, including the best one, were ahistorical. Churchill was in many respects a sonuvabitch, but you only have to do the right thing once to achieve greatness.
6. I hope I can get the motor revving by Monday. I have no energy at the moment, though I have put in motion a couple of things necessary for this semester's classes.
