But I'm over the storm

Well, bleah. I suspected it yesterday evening, but couldn't avoid it today: I've got a cold. I hope it's just a little one, and that it'll be over soon, but it's terribly inconvenient. Better that it's arrived now than when spaceroo was over, I suppose, but since I have to teach tomorrow I'd be a lot happier if I could just have stayed home the whole time and sulked. It would've been a lot more convenient to have gotten sick on Thursday, when I could have four days to grumble about the unfairness of it all. I've been gulping down the medicines left over from spaceroo, which doesn't work, but the process of buying and consuming medicine makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something.

On the other hand, the cold and decision not to go out and do anything today gave me time to play a little Hearts of Iron. This World War II grand strategy game (you choose industrial, economic, scientific, and diplomatic policy, and military strategy, but not tactics) -- I'm playing as the United States, which is the easy country to play -- is turning out a bit odd. In October 1938 public opinion in the United States is a touch more in favor of war against the Axis than it is in the United Kingdom (54 percent versus 48 percent); and Canada is 74 percent pro-war. And they're just about keeping up with my research program. This might be weirder than the game where Germany ended up with a New Zealand zone of occupation. You don't expect to see six tank divisions in Toronto. I know these games are only of interest to other grand-strategy game players, but I like talking about them anyway.

And I found those books I'd lost; I probably should have posted about them before. They were in another stack in my study, with the spines resting against a pile of trade paperbacks, and with a couple books I knew I wasn't missing on top. That's how they ended up evading me all this time. Now I just have to re-alphabetize all the books I've finished reading.

Trivia: Peppermint Patty first appeared on 22 August 1966. Source: Peanuts comic strip of 22 August 1966, reprinted in Peanuts: A Golden Celebration, Charles Schulz, among other sources.

Currently Reading: The Assassination of Lincoln: History and Myth, Lloyd Lewis.