Greetings, friends. (XXXVII)

Greetings, friends. I’m in New Hampshire at my late mother’s house. I haven’t gone out today. Adah and Keith did bring over takeout for dinner. It is always such a pleasure to see them.

Other than that, I don’t have much on my mind today. I made an omelet with Ellie’s eggs this morning. They were delicious.

I discovered this morning when I went to make breakfast that every carton of Ellie’s eggs contains a printed slip of paper with a dad joke, e.g.:

How did the chicken feel after a long day on the farm?

Eggs-hausted!

The eggs were, of course, delicious.

Adah informed me that, in fact, that what became of Mrs. Izabella McCoy is in fact well-recorded.

But, in her treatment from the Indians, she experienced a very agreeable disappointment. The kindness she received from them was far greater than she had expected from those who were so often distinguished for their cruelties…. Nothing like insult or indecency did they ever offer her during the whole time she was with them. They carried her to Canada, and sold her as a servant to a French family, whence, at the close of that war, she returned home. But so comfortable was her condition there and her husband being a man of rather a rough and violent temper, she declared she never should have thought of attempting the journey home, were it not for the sake of her children.

One of the Native men who abducted Mrs. McCoy from Epsom was later murdered by a white man, who was imprisoned to be tried for the murder, but was reportedly sprung from jail by his friends and family before justice could be brought.

Speaking of well-attested by history, it turns out that Major Andrew McClary was an Irishman by birth. His family hosted a tavern up the hill from here, which was used for local town meetings until they built the meetinghouse nearby. McClary was, according to Wikipedia, “a local champion in the sport of boxing and wrestling.”

McClary actually survived most of the battle of Bunker Hill. In the aftermath, he rode to Charlestown for medical supplies for the wounded. On being warned of the danger of crossing Charlestown neck under enemy fire, he replied, quote, “The ball is not yet cast that will kill me!”

McClary may have been thinking of a musket ball. As may be, he was killed by British artillery shot while returning to his regiment, a patriot to the end.

Meanwhile, back in the 21st Century, Adah and Keith and I drew up a list of things for me to do while I’m here. Over the next couple weeks, we’re going to take each room in the house, one by one, identify the mementos and valuables, and discard the rest or else mark it for subsequent disposal.

So this is probably not the week for me to start playing Kerbal Space Program again. After touting the game in my earlier journal post, I got a hankering and remembered that I have never been able to properly design or fly an aircraft in that game, much less a single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane.

Anyway I started a new career game with the explicit strategy of focusing solely on spaceplane development, and leaving rockets for measly things like space probes. The only problem with this strategy is that KSP, for whatever reason, puts aircraft parts farther up the tech tree than basic rocketry. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

So I’ve learned enough to build aircraft that can take off and theoretically land, although that last part is extremely dicey. I think I’ve landed an aircraft undamaged so far maybe once. Both Jebediah and Valentina have each narrowly survived a rapid and almost total unplanned disassembly of their aircraft at the end of a mission.

I really don’t need to be spending time on this; I have enough else to do with my life. Suffice to say I’ve learned that the dining table here is the wrong height for using my wireless mouse, because my wrist is already fucking killing me.

It was nice to have a day off yesterday and play video games. Unfortunately, between that and the jet lag, I was up playing until 3 am. May God in his infinite mercy save me from the compulsive habits I fall into when I really get started, though.

And once again, a 15 minute post took me a half hour to write. If you’re reading this, I hope you got more sleep last night than I did. Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet cessandam est. G’night!

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