My research, let me show you it

What I found out today is:

It's highly improbable that narching soldiers can collaps a bridge by creating a resonance wave.

So the soldiers that did collapse a bridge probably did it by being too heavy for the bridge.

I tried to find out about archaic military discipline, but all I found out was that the goose step was invented to keep marchers at an even spacing, punishment in the middle ages and before was barbaric (who knew?), and armies tend to execute deserters. What I wanted to know was what happened to trainees in the time between the Franco-Prussian War and World War One when they screwed up in common ways, but I didn't. I did find out about the English army's "field punishment number one" and "field punichment number two" which are bondage exercises. But I have no idea if this has anything to do with eastern european practices, or practices in training.

I did find out lots of fascinating things about the Tsarist Army with respect to the Jewish draft.

Can you imagine a 25 year conscription? And they drafted little boys -- as young as 8, in the early 19th century (not just the Jews, other minorities), but they kept them in school till they were 18. And their children were deemed to belong to the Army also.

But again, the relevance is obscure, except that not-Poland is a fantasy world in which anything is grist for the mill.

If I post a word count will you promise not to laugh?

In the first eight days I did a bit less than 4000 words.

youtube is the curse of the unemployed

I have been taking care of business, but I could be doing so much more if youtube did not have clips of the Watersons from 1965 or all of Gid Tanner's ouevre (including a lot of songs I can't listen to anymore: somebody better put new songs to those tunes, eh?).

Mostly this week I've been clearing the medical decks while I still have insurance, and trying to figure out what to do about the flood insurance.  My agent called the company, but there's no such thing as an installment plan for flood insurance.  Why the hell not? Do they want people to lose their homes over something like that? My agent, who is wonderful, by the way, if you need insurance in Santa Cruz check out D and R -- suggested I call the credit union that has my mortgage and talk to them.  I will do that.

Naturally, I do not have credit cards.  I have never thought it was safe for me, and seeing the kind of trouble that other poor people get into by having them, I believe that I have been correct, but it's an option I don't have now.

Next week will be all about the getting new work, I guess.

Another thing I did was finally get my tags -- my car's been paid for and smogged for a while, but as usual they never mailed my tags.

My physical therapist thinks I'm progressing well, and I lost two pounds, but this not-working life is too sedentary.

And by the time I am finished tonight I will have written another two thousand words or so, which will mean six thousand words in nine days, which is much better than four thousand in eight.