Josh's weekend

Took Josh to buy a suit ("You work out, don't you?" asked the tailor. "I could tell. Your pecs are big enough to throw off the shape of the jacket.") and then across the street to Bob's gun shop, where Josh got his first session with a pistol. He took a Glock 9mm and did a commendable job of punching holes in paper. Today we went to a local art gallery; it came out in conversation that Josh is taking an Art degree, so we showed some photos of his work that he happened to have on his phone, and the gallery owner was quite complementary.

Thanksgiving

Josh came home from Tuesday night, so we had him and one of his friends (whereupon he and friend went to the friend's house for a second dinner), but no one else at the table this year. One brother is in Tennessee, one in Georgia, one sister with Mom and Dad in Africa, the other in North Carolina. Friends are a few miles away, or a couple of hours, or a thousand miles. It's less stressful not to have a herd of people here, but also less satisfying.

Turkey, heretical green bean casserole (made with cream of chicken rather than the orthodox cream of mushroom), scalloped potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, cider. Sherry cake and ice cream and candied pecans and a few more candied pecans and just hand me the bowl, please. Followed by plotting Josh's 21st birthday party and plans for the weekend.

The trees in the back have gone from green to yellow to mostly bare in the last two weeks.

Word count

3403

Christmas presents

Someone asked me what I'd like for Christmas, and the answer is necessarily "I don't know." Why? Because if there was something that was reasonably priced that I particularly wanted, I'd have already gotten it myself. Therefore the choices are something I feel is too expensive, or something I don't want. Included in the "don't want" group is "things that I don't want only because I don't know about them"--but of course, I can't very well tell anyone what those things are!

Sudden Threat

I attempted to read Sudden Threat by A.J. Tata, but I can't recommend it. This is supposed to be a military / espionage thriller by quote the new Tom Clancy unquote. According to the author's bio, Tata is a brigadier general with experience in the 101st and the 82nd and combat experience from hither to yon. He's got the credentials and I have no doubt that he knows what he's talking about, when he's talking about what an Army officer does. The problem is that his main character is a strong jawed CIA agent who's determined to carry out his mission, and ... that's it. He doesn't initiate his own unauthorized plans; he doesn't go against his orders; he isn't caught in a dilemma between "I want to do this but I really ought to do that" or "My job is important but I really want to be home " or "My mission is important but I have absolutely got to score a fix and keep anyone from finding out." Since there's no internal conflict, he comes across as cardboard rather than someone we could care about. I got about 75 pages and called it a day.

Classical Values blog

Where were you when wood became a felony? It's amazing what our government does when no one's looking. I've said before: our elected officials are like three year olds. If you don't keep an eye on them every minute, they will get into trouble.

Writing challenge

Tom Barclay, Derek McQuay and I are doing our own version of National Novel Writing Month. Instead of cranking out 1700 words a day, to get a 50K word novel done in a month, we're aiming for 300 words a day over a couple of months.

No, I'm not posting the text here. I will, however, give a word count: 2869 today.