This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Mortal Errors Series: ———- Editor: Alfred Hitchcock Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Crime Fiction Pages: 229 Words: 105K
Despite what the cover says about “30 Stories”, in this edition there are only 23. That’s the weird thing about these Alfred Hitchcock collections, they were released and released with different names, different number of stories, etc. I can’t imagine readers were very happy with that kind of treatment by publishers back then. Of course, looking at readers today, they put up with a ton more horse caca from publishers and sometimes it feels like they’re eating it with both hands 🙁 Ok, grumpy old grump complaining time is over. Now get off my virtual lawn!
One of these I recognized from a previous collection. The story was “A Padlock for Charlie Draper”. It’s a good story but the reveal at the end about the reward loses its impact on a re-read. The rest of the stories ran all over the place from bad guys doing bad things and getting away with, to bad guys getting their just desserts to good guys doing the right thing and getting the badguy.
I just sat back and soaked it in. That seems to be the best way to enjoy these kinds of stories.
★★★★☆
Table of Contents:
WHERE’S MILO – Fletcher Flora
THE WASTEBASKET – Jack Ritchie
DEAD GAME – Harold Q. Masur
POLTERGEIST – W. Sherwood Hartman
A CHOICE OF WITNESSES – Henry Slesar
ONE BAD WINTER’S DAY – William Link and Richard Levinson
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: The Integral Trees Series: The State #2 Author: Larry Niven Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 171 Words: 73K
I read this 30+ years ago as a young teenager. The library paperback had that cover and I can tell you that the reason I liked this story so much back then was because there were seven foot tall women taking their shirts off every other chapter (or so it seemed).
This was an adventure story in a very different SF setting than any others I had read. A smoke ring surrounds a star and giant trees and debris survive in this ring instead of planets. Having read A World Out of Time the other month, the connections to the State make a lot more sense.
However, Niven still seems obsessed with women taking their shirts off and people having sex in low to zero gee.
I do plan on reading the sequel, but after that, I suspect I am done with Niven. And I certainly won’t be re-reading these books again.
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia.org
Twenty astronauts aboard an interstellar “ramship” colonized the Smoke Ring five hundred years before the story begins. Their descendants have adapted their cultures to the free-fall environment. Without gravity, even those who live in integral tree tufts are much taller than Earth-average humans, having grown up in much weaker tides. Many people are able to use their longer, prehensile toes as another set of fingers. The small number of devices left from the original crew are coveted items in Smoke Ring societies.
Quinn Tribe inhabits the “in tuft” of Dalton-Quinn tree. They normally subsist on the tree’s cottony foliage, augmented by hunting and a flock of domesticated turkeys. But since the tree passed near Gold six earth years ago it has been falling toward Voy, nearly dropping out of the Smoke Ring. As a result, the tribe suffers a severe drought. The tribe’s leader, the Chairman, decides to send a party of nine up the tree, ostensibly to hunt and re-cut tribal markings into the trunk. The group consists mostly of people with disability and people the Chairman dislikes, including the Chairman’s son-in-law (and rival) Clave, and Jeffer, the Scientist’s apprentice.
When they approach the midpoint they notice that the tribal markings are different; upon reaching it, they are attacked by members of the Dalton-Quinn tribe who live at the other end of the tree. During the battle a massive tremor splits the tree in half, causing the in tuft to fall farther toward Voy (killing its inhabitants) and allowing the out tuft to find a new equilibrium that is closer to the Smoke Ring’s median. The seven surviving members of the Quinn Tribe and one of the attackers jump clear of the shattered tree and are left adrift in the sky with only a few “jet pods” (high pressure seed cases that provide a temporary thrust when opened) as their only method of propulsion.
Before dying of thirst, they hook a passing “moby” (a flying whale-like creature) which takes them to a “jungle,” which is a floating mass of plant life. They cut loose, crash, and find themselves in the middle of a battle between the Carther States, who live in the jungle, and slave-runners from London Tree. The group is split when six of them are captured by the slavers; the other two remain in the jungle.
Carther States counter-attacks some weeks later, and the Quinn Tribe group is reunited. During the battle they steal London Tree’s CARM (Cargo And Repair Module), a small spacecraft—a relic of the original settlers. The CARM is still functional due to careful management and its robust design; its solar panels provide electricity to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, which it stores automatically and then burns for propulsion as needed. London Tree’s “Navy”, bow- and spear-armed warriors, use the CARM to conduct long-distance military actions and slave raids on a scale impossible for wingless humans in a zero-g environment.
Not fully understanding how to pilot the CARM, the Quinn and Carther warriors engage its main rocket motor, which accelerates the ship at several g, enough to prevent the crew from reaching the controls to turn the motor off. The CARM is propelled up into the thinnest part of the gas torus before running dangerously low on fuel. As a result, they become the first Smoke Ring inhabitants in centuries to see the naked stars.
Unknown to any of the inhabitants of the Smoke Ring, Discipline, the ship in which their ancestors arrived, remains in orbit, and its AI autopilot, Kendy, has been attempting to watch their progress. When Kendy sees the CARM dangerously far from the habitable area of the Ring he contacts them. With help from the on-board computer and after some interaction with Kendy, the occupants of the CARM eventually safely return to the Smoke Ring. Unable to reach any of the trees that they know, they decide to settle on a new tree, which they dub “Citizens’ Tree”.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Three Men Out Series: Nero Wolfe #23 Author: Rex Stout Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Mystery Pages: 130 Words: 59K
First off, I couldn’t easily get rid of the links in the synopsis below. I use LibreOffice to write my initial reviews and there is an option to remove all formatting from copied text. I assumed that would take care off it, but it didn’t. I didn’t care enough to go through and individually de-link everything. Which is stupid, because linking is as much a format issue as font size, type and spacing is. Oh well, whatever. I’m not real happy with libreoffice right now. I feel like it stabbed me in the back.
I enjoyed this collection of 3 stories, just like I expected I would. I might have even given it 4stars except for two things.
First, the final story is about baseball and I find baseball deadly boring. If it had been the first story, I probably would have forgotten about it and it wouldn’t have influenced me. But it was the last story and so that was the note I went out of the book on. Not necessarily bad, but not good like I wanted.
Secondly, Nero Wolfe keeps leaving his bloody house. I have commented on it before, but Stout really breaks the “Wolfe doesn’t leave the house” rule all the time. Too many times for me. In two of the three stories here he leaves the house! No, no, no! If you have rules, you obey them and only break them once every 7 or 8 books. Otherwise it’s like a piscetarian claiming they are a vegetarian, ie, it’s utter balderdash.
I know that’s a lot of complaining. But I still like these stories and highly recommend them. It’s more like going to a high class restaurant and being irritated that your waiter didn’t put “quite enough” shredded parmesan on your plate of capellini with artisan tomato sauce :-/ So let me tell you, this waiter is NOT going to be getting a big tip from me today.
Herman Lewent offers to pay Wolfe $1,000 to solve a problem regarding his family’s finances. Lewent’s father left his entire estate to his daughter Beryl in his will 20 years earlier, with a provision that she should look after Lewent’s needs. She sent him $1,000 per month until her death one year ago, leaving the estate to her husband, Theodore Huck. Lewent has tried to persuade Huck to give him a portion of the money, to no avail; Huck intends to keep sending him only the $1,000 monthly payment. Now, Lewent is concerned that one of Huck’s three attractive female employees is trying to seduce him into cutting Lewent off, and he wants Wolfe to find out which one it is. When Wolfe rejects the case as a family squabble, Lewent mentions that Beryl died of ptomaine poisoning at Huck’s house; he believes that one of the three women murdered her. Wolfe turns the case over to Archie, who accepts and travels to Huck’s mansion, where Lewent also lives.
Huck’s declining health has confined him to a wheelchair, which is motorized and outfitted with various conveniences. The three employees Lewent suspects are secretary Dorothy Riff, nurse Sylvia Marcy, and housekeeper Cassie O’Shea. Archie questions Huck, using the pretense that Beryl might have hinted at entrusting one of them with part of her father’s estate to be turned over to Lewent, in an attempt to draw out information on them. Huck sees through the deception and even believes it might be part of a blackmail scheme on Lewent’s part, so Archie questions the women instead, as well as Huck’s nephew Paul Thayer, who lives in the mansion and who warned Lewent about the women’s possible designs on the money. Stopping at Lewent’s room, Archie finds him lying dead on the floor inside, the base of his skull caved in. However, the skin is not broken, there is no blood on the floor, and the blow appears to have been delivered at an upward angle. The geometry of the room leads him to believe that Lewent was killed elsewhere and his body moved to this location.
Archie calls Wolfe with an update, then continues his questioning of the household members without revealing his knowledge of Lewent’s death to any of them. He is thrown off by Huck’s decision to present Dorothy, Sylvia, and Cassie each with an expensive jeweled wristwatch. Finding himself stumped after dinner that evening, Archie calls Wolfe and tricks him into coming to the mansion by faking an attack on himself. Wolfe is furious that Archie would stoop to such methods, but prepares to question the household about both Lewent’s allegations and Beryl’s death. He learns that Beryl had died after eating pickled artichokes at a party; since she had taken them all and no other guests became ill, it was assumed that the artichokes had been poisoned.
Wolfe offers Huck a deal: for $100,000, he will investigate and use what he finds to persuade Lewent that his suspicions are groundless, with the caveat that no one will ever tell Lewent of this arrangement. Huck accepts the terms and everyone agrees to keep them secret, and Wolfe and Archie excuse themselves to speak with Lewent in his room. Only after Wolfe has examined the body and the scene does he allow Archie to call the police and tell the others of the murder. Inspector Cramer and his men soon arrive to question the household members; while this is going on, Archie suddenly realizes that he knows how Lewent’s body was transported without attracting attention.
Wolfe identifies Huck as the murderer and explains that he tricked Lewent into bending over to pick something up off the floor, then struck him with a spherical paperweight. The smooth surface would not break the skin, and Lewent’s posture would make it appear that the blow was delivered upward. Huck then put the body in his lap, covered it with the quilt he always used to keep his legs warm, and drove his wheelchair to Lewent’s room to dump the body. He was eager to accept Wolfe’s $100,000 offer because he knew that Lewent would never hear of the results, and he had earlier poisoned Beryl in order to inherit her fortune. Cassie provides further motive, saying that Huck had been having an affair with her; when Beryl found out about it, Huck made up his mind to kill her.
Sylvia removes her wristwatch and puts it in Huck’s lap as Cramer prepares to take him into custody. Even though he is eventually convicted, Archie does not know if Dorothy or Cassie ever returned theirs.
Leo Heller, a mathematics expert who uses his knowledge of probability to assist his clients with their problems, tries to hire Wolfe for a difficult case. He believes that one of his clients may have committed a crime, but does not want to tell the police of his suspicions without evidence to back them up. Wolfe angrily refuses the job, remembering a past incident in which he lost a client to Heller, but Archie offers to stop by the next day for a preliminary discussion.
The following morning, Archie goes to Heller’s private office at the agreed-on time but finds it empty, with the door open. Taking note of several pencils lying in an unusual pattern on the desk, he asks the five clients in the waiting room if any of them have seen Heller in person, but all of them say no. That evening, Inspector Cramer arrives at the brownstone with news that Heller has been found dead, shot through the heart and stuffed into his office closet. Accounts of Heller’s movements suggest that he was killed shortly before Archie entered the office.
Cramer demands to know Wolfe’s involvement in the case for two reasons: an envelope in Heller’s desk, marked with Wolfe’s name and containing $500 cash; and the pencils, whose pattern he re-creates as best he can. Archie corrects it slightly, tearing the eraser off one pencil and placing it in the middle of the pattern. Cramer is convinced that they stand for Wolfe’s initials when viewed from the side, even though one grouping has too many strokes to form a W. Wolfe dismisses Cramer’s claims, keeps the $500, and briefly looks through a book from his shelves before locking it in a desk drawer. He asks Cramer to bring in Heller’s five clients as well as Susan Maturo, a woman who had left Heller’s building just as Archie entered to meet with him, and urges Cramer to watch for instances of the number six.
Wolfe and Cramer question these six people one by one, learning of their various reasons for wanting to see Heller. They take a particular interest in Susan, a nurse who had worked in a hospital where a bomb exploded a month earlier, killing 302 people. She had thought of hiring Heller to find the culprit, but changed her mind at the last minute and began to think of hiring Wolfe instead. The number six figures in every person’s account, but a remark by one client – about Heller’s winning tip on a racehorse named Zero – prompts Wolfe to have everyone brought back to his office.
With the pencils laid out on his desk as they were on Heller’s, Wolfe explains that the book he consulted earlier was on the history of mathematics. The two groups of pencils were arranged to symbolize a three and a two, and he originally assumed that the eraser between them stood for multiplication; hence his focus on the number six. However, the mention of the horse’s name made him realize that the eraser was meant to stand for a zero. Before he was killed, Heller had laid out the pencils to form the number 302 – the death toll in the hospital bombing.
Aside from Susan, the only client with any substantial connection to that hospital is Jack Ennis, an inventor who had unsuccessfully tried to persuade the staff to use a new X-ray machine he had designed. Wolfe conjectures that he set the bomb as revenge for this rejection, learned that Heller might have become suspicious enough to call in Wolfe, and killed him. As Ennis is placed under arrest, Archie reassures Susan that he is guilty, and a jury reaches the same conclusion at his trial two months later.
Wolfe and Archie honor a house guest’s request to see a baseball game by taking him to the final game of the World Series at the Polo Grounds. The tickets come courtesy of Emil Chisholm, part-owner of the New York Giants, but Wolfe is in no mood to enjoy the game or the surroundings. The Giants fall far behind the Boston Red Sox due to inept fielding on the part of several players, and Archie notices that Nick Ferrone, a talented rookie, is not part of the day’s lineup. He and Wolfe are summoned to the Giants’ clubhouse by Chisholm, where they meet manager Art Kinney, team doctor Horton Soffer, and talent scout Beaky Durkin. Soffer has discovered that four of the Giants players have been drugged, by drinking beverages laced with a sedative before the game. Suspicion immediately falls on the absent Ferrone, and Archie finds him dead in another room of the clubhouse, his skull fractured with a baseball bat.
The Giants lose the game and the Series, and the police arrive to question everyone on the team at length. They begin to focus on catcher Bill Moyse, who had previously confronted Ferrone over his interest in Moyse’s wife Lila. As the questioning comes to an end, Wolfe asks that the four players who were drugged remain behind, along with Kinney, Soffer, Durkin, and Chisholm, and comments that one fact has come to light and drawn his attention. Realizing that he had previously seen Lila seated in the stands and looking pleased at the Giants’ poor play, Archie leaves the stadium and finds her and a friend sitting in her parked car a few blocks away. He claims that her behavior may lead the police to think that Moyse was paid to drug the drinks and fix the game, but learns from her friend that she was angry at Moyse being left on the bench throughout the entire Series and had taken pleasure in their loss.
Lila insists that Moyse had nothing to do with the drugging or the murder, but admits that the two of them had been approached by someone who wanted Moyse to fix the game: her uncle, Dan Gale. She drives Archie to Gale’s drugstore in an attempt to persuade Gale to tell the police and clear Moyse’s name. Instead, Gale threatens to disfigure her with sulfuric acid; Archie recognizes that he is trying to buy time for his associates to arrive and deal with their intrusion. Gale, a compulsive gambler, lost ownership of the drugstore but had been offered a chance to reclaim it by fixing the Series on behalf of organized crime.
Archie and Lila subdue Gale, spilling the acid but not injuring him or themselves, and Archie calls the police to come pick him up and look for his accomplices. Upon Archie’s return to the stadium, Wolfe confronts the eight men who have remained in the clubhouse and notes that the assumption that Ferrone drugged the drinks is implausible. Brought into the Giants’ organization by Durkin, Ferrone had performed so well that his next year’s salary would be increased and he would receive a large bonus if the team won the Series. Instead, Wolfe conjectures that Ferrone caught someone else drugging the drinks and was killed to keep him quiet.
The fact that drew his attention is that Durkin had been sitting in the stands from the starting lineup announcement until the time he was called into the clubhouse. Wolfe considers it highly unlikely that a scout who had brought such a promising young player onto the team would not become angry over learning that he was not going to play in a pivotal championship game. Wolfe asserts that Durkin acted as he did because he had killed Ferrone, but he has no proof until Kinney and the players intimidate Durkin into admitting his guilt. He had accepted a bribe to fix the game as a way to pay off his gambling debts; when Ferrone confronted him over a bet he had placed against the Giants, Durkin panicked and killed him. The money is found hidden in a radio, and one of the players knocks Durkin unconscious when he tries to flee.
Just before Archie can call the police to inform them of Durkin’s capture, they call the clubhouse with news that Gale has confessed to paying him off. Wolfe and Archie find themselves at odds with each other over whether they or the police can take credit for solving the murder.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
This was the last story that both Goscinny and Uderzo did. Goscinny died part way through. Not that I could tell, or even really cared, but maybe you do? Yes, weep dear populace, for your mighty hero, your captain, is dead. Deader than Marley in fact.
Ok, that’s enough time for mourning. Get over it now.
Sigh. Another visual medium bites the dust. It isn’t that I disliked this but I simply didn’t care about it. Since this was the last Asterix by both, and given how I’ve been feeling about manga, graphic novels and comics, I’m going to take a break at least until the new years. I want to enjoy these again and not slog through.
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia.org
After fighting the Belgians in the northern part of Gaul, Caesar states that they are the bravest enemies he has ever faced (historically claimed by Caesar). His soldiers agree with him, to the point when they consider being posted to the camps outside Asterix’s village as a period of leave.
Chief Vitalstatistix is aghast at the idea that his village, which has been the terror of the Romans for years, is now looked upon as relatively harmless. He is further outraged when he hears of Caesar’s remarks. He claims that “his villagers” are in fact the bravest men of Gaul, and travels to Belgium to prove his point. A reluctant Asterix and Obelix go with him after Getafix tells them not doing so could make the story come to a sticky end.
After crossing the border, they encounter a village of Belgians who rely on brute strength (and a regular diet of meat and beer) to successfully scare off Caesar’s troops. These Belgians are led by two chiefs, Beefix of the Nervii and Brawnix of the Menapii (though Brawnix comes across mainly as a second-in-command).
To prove that the Gauls are the bravest, Vitalstatistix proposes a competition. The contest consists of raiding and destroying Roman camps on either side of the village. The Belgians and Gauls destroy the camps, telling the soldiers who they are. By the end they have destroyed an equal number of camps. Meanwhile, the Pirates’ ship is wrecked when Obelix throws a boulder catapulted at him too high, causing the Captain to complain, saying he and his men are neutrals. Word is sent to Rome, though the facts are exaggerated, talking about vast hordes of Gauls, a savage pack of hounds, and a mysterious fleet of neutrals. Caesar goes to Belgium himself to restore order unaware of the fact that the whole thing is to get him to decide once and for all which side is the bravest.
Upon Caesar’s arrival, Asterix and Obelix go to meet him under a flag of truce. Asterix proposes that Caesar meet both parties at an arranged meeting point and tell them they are equally brave so they can all go home. Outraged at being reduced to a mere umpire (as opposed to emperor), Caesar furiously declares that he will meet them in battle instead. In the ensuing fight, the Romans get their way in the early stages of the battle through the use of catapults. But then the three Gauls, and their magic potion, join the Belgians after they thwart a Roman flanking maneuver, and, by combining their efforts, the Gauls win the battle.
With the battle lost, Caesar decides to leave for Rome. On his way he comes across the Gaulish and Belgian chiefs. Caesar proudly announces that he will lay down his life, but the chiefs only want to know who is the bravest. Caesar angrily declares them simply all “crazy” and leaves Vitalstatistix and Beefix laughing the incident off. They have to face the fact that they are all equally brave and, after a victory feast, part on good terms.
And the angel said unto Bookstooge, “Take up thy staff, for with it ye shall smite the nations, shattering them until the reforging shall appear.”
And Bookstooge replied “My lord, what shall I say? For thou knowest I am but a man of few words.”
“I shall give thee a scroll, a scroll of doom. From it shalt thou read, day and night, excoriating the nations for not making thee king of the world” was the angel’s answer.
“Furthermore, I shall make thee strong as a tree. Deep roots feeding thee, body hard as steel, impervious to all their outrageous slings and arrows. Fortune wilt be thine!”
“And this shall be the sign twixt me and thee. I will turn this maple tree purple, for such a thing has never been seen in the land before, nor shall it be seen again. Thus I have spoken, thus it shall be!” And the angel vanished without a trace.
The Prophet Bookstooge took up his Staff of Prophecy, and from that day onward, even unto the everlasting future, he swatted all the little boys and girls who ever dared to set foot on his lawn. And peace reigned across the land.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
I skipped to the final volume to see how things ended and to see if it was really worth my time wading through an extra 16 volumes. My verdict is a resounding no.
While there was a lot of unexplained stuff, I was still able to grasp the broader details. There was a super-homonculi who was trying to become a god and Edward pretty much punches him to death. Yeah, the power of brotherly love, blah, blah, blah. Then everyone gets a relatively happy ending and Al gets his body back because Ed exchanges his ability to perform alchemy for it.
I didn’t care. I didn’t care how everything had gotten to the point where it was. I know the ending now. If I want to see all the inbetween parts, I might try the anime. But given how I am reacting to returning to manga (ie, realizing I am pretty much done with it, period), I don’t know if I want to try anime again either.
I read this the same day that I read the Groo comic. I thoroughly enjoyed Groo and did not enjoy this. Just like I didn’t enjoy the One Piece volume I read earlier this month. I just have to face the fact that my time with manga is done. I hate coming to realizations like that. It means I’ve changed and while change is a good thing, I still don’t like it.
★★✬☆☆
From FMA.fandom.com
From the back of the volume:
“The Final Chapter! With the help of Hohenheim and their allies, the Elric brothers launch a desperate final attack against the homunculus “father.” But to claim victory, some may have to make the ultimate sacrifice. And when the dust clears, will a happy ending await our favorite characters in the final volume of Fullmetal Alchemist?”
The last of the original X-Men trilogy. Sadly, Brian Singer did not direct this, as he had gone on to do that horrible Superman Returns movie. So it is hard to judge if this movie was really as bad as it was because of him leaving or if it was just a bad movie all on its own.
While I didn’t hate it, it was a chore to watch the whole thing. The biggest problem was that whoever the writers were, they simply tried to pack in way too much into the one movie. You have a very poorly done Dark Phoenix arc (Jean Grey is the most powerful mutant EVAH but kept it under control with Professor X’s help and she goes bad), you have a story about Magneto declaring war on humanity and assembling a massive army of mutants, you have a “cure” for mutantism that causes schisms amongst mutankind, you have some of the major mutants being killed off and you have a whole new crop of Team X-Men and evil Mutants being introduced.
It was just too many story threads and instead of being woven seamlessly together, they were all raggedly cut off to make room for the other threads.
Then you have the characters. They do not act like how they did in the previous 2 movies. Especially Professor X. Instead of taking time to explain anything, to anyone, he just starts roaring about how he knows best and everybody needs to listen to him. Perfect example of a megalomaniac in fact, and he’s supposed to be the good guy. Rogue decides to get the vaccine so she can have a relationship with Iceman, who is in the midst of his own little triangle with Shadowcat, ie, Kitty Pryde.
It was messy, uncoordinated and not a well executed film. Not one I’ll ever be rewatching. I’d say it’s only for those who want to watch the entire X-Franchise instead of good films.
After having spent a wonderful day and night experiencing how The Other Half Lives, Mrs B and I finished up celebrating our anniversary by heading over to Lincoln and participating in the 48th annual NH Highland Games and Festival.
It was sunny and warm and perfect weather. The upcoming weekend was supposed to be rainy and bleh, so of course everybody had the same idea as us and came on Friday. What a bunch of part timers! If they were really hardcore, they would have come on the weekend and been miserable. I dare say they should all have been ashamed to even SAY they were of scottish descent. Phhhhhffffffttttt!
We arrived around 10am and were immediately sent to the dreaded Lot D for parking. A dirt plowed area where about 100 cars could be squeezed in. Then we all shuttle bus’d to the Loon Mountain Resort where the Games were being held. Let me tell you, there is no better experience than standing in line with 200+ people waiting for four (yes, that’s right, FOUR) shuttle buses, while those other 200+ parasites whine and complain about everything. The line is too long. The bus is taking too long. Why is the bus picking up people in that other line? We should just walk (we were about 2-3 miles away). It wasn’t like this LAST year. There’s too many people, they shouldn’t have come. And on and on it went. It was by the grace of God alone that nobody was strangled, beaten or shot to death just to show them what real problems looked like.
And that was how our time started.
Thankfully, once we arrived and got off the bus, things started to get better. We bought our one day tickets with nary a speck of trouble and immediately headed over to the sheep dog competition. While we didn’t stay long, we saw some dogs herd sheep through an obstacle course and then pen them up with just whistle commands from the shepherd. It’s pretty amazing.
Next on our list, and the biggest draw for Mrs B, was the Cooking Demonstration by Gary MacLean, the National Chef of Scotland. He’s a very personable man, devilishly handsome and I could understand about 3/4 of what he said. It was amazing! 😉 He regaled us with funny anecdotes and little personal stories while he and a local chef helper made up short bread, meat pies (they had a fancy name, something something bridey something something) and some sort of clam with bacon and kale concoction. He was cutting and stirring and laughing and groaning and kept us all very entertained for that hour. Afterwards, everyone could go up and taste a sample of what he had made. Being the good new englander that I am, I stayed in my seat and glared at everyone. Sadly, Mrs B’s California roots were showing and she not only went up and tested the short bread, but she actually talked to some perfect strangers while in the line. Land o’ Goshen! What’s this world coming to?
After that, we went our separate ways to wander and wonder as our fancies took us. I headed over to the Scottish Vendor area and bought myself another nice walking stick. A 59in hickory stick with roughed in finish so my fingers had something to grip. I hope to have some pictures of that by this Sunday. Once I had that particular weapon (I did wear my sig, but it was concealed as always), I stalked the grounds, looking for the least peopled area I could find. It took awhile, but eventually, tucked away in a corner, I found an unoccupied row of bleachers where you couldn’t see the gigantic brute men lifting 450lb stones for fun. I sat there and wrote in my journal, expressing myself to myself as only I can. It was a good time. Mrs B merrily went her way looking at pretty much everything, but in search of the elusive oat cakes. Short bread was everywhere, but oat cakes were apparently not in style this year. Thankfully, with a second, much slower investigatory stroll while putting to The Question various merchants, she was able to procure for herself two boxes of the precious treasure.
Now that both of us had achieved our goals and reached our limits, we returned to the dreaded Lot D and began the long journey home. Thankfully, it was all highway driving so I just put on cruise control at the speed limit (so we’d be the slowest car and everyone would pass us so I wouldn’t have to tap the brakes) and 2 1/2 hrs later, we were home, safe and sound.
And thus ended our day and our celebration. Thankfully, we are currently enjoying Sabbath, so that’s all right then! 😀
This month Mrs B and I celebrate our 15th Wedding Anniversary. To celebrate we decided to go away for a couple of days and spend the night at the Adventure Suites hotel. It’s a fun little place. We got the Victorian Spa suite.
We took a very leisurely drive up North. Nothing like a couple of hours of being in the same car with no distractions to start the memories flowing. It’s been a great 15 years and we’ve accumulated some very strong memories. Some really bad, some really good. Thankfully, we’re both of similar temperament so we tend to view both in the same light.
Once we checked in, we went out for dinner at a nice local restaurant and ate and chatted some more. While we’re both introverts, we both like words. Getting outside of our normal environment helped us to talk about some of the stuff we don’t normally talk about. Like how much we love soccer, or why the lottery is actually a really good thing for society. You know, those deep things that bind all couples together 😉
We got to bed early because the next day, we were heading over to the Highland Games. More on that tomorrow!
I will leave you all with this wonderful video of King Charles III, back when he still Bonny Prince Charlie. I cringe every time I’ve seen it, but Mrs B just laughs her head off.
