Fook on a Friday

Good morning, Stroock's Books Kibbutzim and shabbat shalom. 

Fridays are not usually great creative days. We shall see. Honestly we don't have much to do today. 

The foot still bothers, less, but it bothers. Baah, we needed a gym break anyway, one tells oneself. 

The !@#$ bedroom smoke detector chirped at 11:30 last night. It's near the top of the A-frame ceiling, meaning we had to go to the basement and drag the ladder up and get on the top step. We don't do so good on ladders. 

In truth we're glad, we're glad that damnable device chirped. We've been looking at it for months, knowing the battery has been in there forever, and wondering when it was going to chirp. Long time reader(s) will know we've had household equipment trust issues for quite some time. 

We took the battery out and listened to the smoke detector grow weaker with each chirp until finally, it died with a chirpy death gurgle, which we enjoyed immensely. 

In preparation for Sunday's blizzard we broke out the snow blower and tested it. Fired up on the first pull. We refilled our gas can* and even got a spare sparkplug in case the current sparkplug conks out. Right now, forecasters call for over a foot of snow. We remain vigilant. 

Since we were already at the auto parts store we bought new wipers for the SUV and relearned the dark art of windshield wiper replacement. There's a touch, and we just don't got it [You just don't got a lot of things-Ed]. 

Aye, a varied and interesting life we're leading...

What Will's Watching: Excalibur. We saw it was there on YouTube and decided, screw it. The fighting scenes are ridiculous. Nigel Terry is too old to play a young Arthur. At times the film moves too slowly. Other times it moves to quickly. We don't care. We love this movie. Excalibur is about air, setting, and ambience. It feels grounded in dark medieval reality, but mystical at the same time. Nicol Williamson is brilliant as Merlin. Lo, Patrick Stewart doing Patrick Stewart things. The last two minutes....well, they're stunning. 'Arthur! Arthur!' - 

Let's do some quotes, shall we?

'Anál nathrach, orth' bháis's bethad, do chél dénmha'.

'Your lust will hold you up.'

'Rise, father. I was your son before I was your king.'

'Any man who would be a knight and follow a king, follow me...'

'A dream to some. A nightmare to others!'

'The king without a sword....the land without a king!'

DOGE Report.

We told our design people to put an Irish flag on the World War 1990: Ireland cover. But shouldn't we use an Ulster Flag? Upon this matter we shall dwell.

As we write this Arc of Ares: On the Sea is #4 in sea adventures and #7 in alternate history. Daaaaaang.

*$2.49 a gallon. Wow!