It was a busy week last week, especially with customer a few hundred miles to the West, we're sending them all sorts of scripts and packages to try and fix their worst problems, and keep them happy. Odds are I'll be visiting soon. In fact, I'm finishing this diary in Ohio.

It was a crappy weekend, I felt like I was fighting some intestinal thingie on Saturday. Last weekend I felt much better, the weather was great, and we did very well on our garage sale.

The garage sale went really well, and we were helped by it being the last day of the estate sale (prices half off) of the house across the street, the little old lady died in March, and her son had died years earlier, all his stuff was for sale, too. After going to the estate sale, I suspect hoarding has a genetic component. The son worked for the local phone company, so it wasn't suprising to see electrical tools and supplies. It was suprising seeing lots of multimeters, I lost track after ten. He must have had seven drills, five staple guns, two ancient fax machines, an old PC and 5 1/4 floppies. His mom's side had lots and lots too. Even at half price, it was expensive, I ended up with a stapler, a bag of picture hanging parts, and a book, "Hell in a Very Small Place", a story of the seige of Dien Bien Phu. I expect I would have found her son a kindred soul.

We sold a fair amount of stuff, and gave what didn't sell away, so we had walking around money for the week, and more space in our house. Win win. The biggest downer was getting stung by a wasp, fortunately in a horny, callousy part of my big toe, so it only swelled up a little, and it made me real intolerant of antihistamines, three Benadryl would leave me loopy.

Later that weekend we caught up with Irish_girl. She had already eaten, but she went with us anyway for a Sunday brunch, bringing her toddler daughter.

That weekend's movie was Capturing the Friedman's, a documentary about a Long Island science teacher accused of running a pedophile ring with his youngest son. It made for engrossing watching, we even watched the bonus material, the best I can figure is that he was a pedophile, but may not have molested
anyone who took his after school computer class. When your star witness talks about Cinnamon Raisin gum, your case is shaky. OTOH, how come no girls took the computer classes?

No other movies, we've been too busy, but I will do a rare TV review. The Suite Life on Deck is a Disney series that is a follow on to The Suite Life, a story of two rambuntious twin boys with their MILFtastic mom in a Boston hotel with a cast of cooky characters. On Deck moves those boys, older and more awkward, to a cruise ship, and leaves the MILFtastic mom behind. So far, it's underwhelming.

Speaking of MILfs, a week ago Thursday was the Open House at twelve year old's school, I went since Mrs. Ha stayed home with seven year old. It was interesting, half her school is the old U of R's dorms, when the U of R was closer to the center of the city, I'm a sucker for the ivy covered walls. As mentioned, there were MILfs there, there were also moms and dads I have known for eight years. Wow, eight years. I also got to talk for a while with her English teacher, he called home one day because she was not turning in her homework, and heading for a D. She's gotten much better. I ended up giving newspaper_dad a ride home, he was envious of the narrow turning circle of the Tercel.

On to book reviews:

World on Fire is about 1919, and the battles against rampant Bolshevism, centering on Europe and North America. It was a good read, and scary, it was dangerous to be a union member after WWI. I'm still disgusted at how Wesley Everest was treated.

Next up was Hell In a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, I assume it belonged to the geeky son across the street. It's a detailed book about how the French nearly beat the viet Minh in 1964 when they battled for a small valley near Laos. They occupied a small, flood prone valley with insufficient forces to take the surrounding hills, brought in far too little construction material to protect against 105s and 155s, absolutely no camouflage of their gun pits and bunkers, set up their heavy artillery too far south to defend their northern positions, and had far too few troops to defend against five divisions. They weren't the first western nation to severely underrate the Vietnamese.

It was a near thing, it appears, if the French had more transport aircraft they could have landed another few battalions, and may have been able to take out some of the artillery positions or occupy one of the hills around the valley. If they had a heavy bomber force (instead of relying on NATO), they might have been able to bomb the Viet-Minh artillery and AA.

It certainly foreshadows why the French left NATO, decided that America was not trustworthy, and the Americans didn't learn much about Vietnam. The book says the French were led to believe that Indochina was a hugely important theater in the fight against Communism, the US would have their back adn fully support them. The US did supply lots of material, and had a 100 heavy bombers ready to go to bomb that artillery and ack ack around Dien Bien Phu, but they never flew.

The French didn't have a heavy bomber force because they agreed to take on interceptor roles, leaving the heavies to the US and Britain. Great idea in Europe, not so great in Indochina. Ten years later the US wouldn't get any French aid in Vietnam.

As I mentioned, I'm back in Ohio. I should be heading home late tomorrow morning, I might make Porsche_mom's significant bday party, and then I'm heading back early Monday morning, yeah 6 days of 7 I'll be in Ohio. I did find out you can buy nearly any alcohol in Ohio groceries, though Marc's underwhelmed me, it was crowded and dirty. I picked up a six of Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale, it's good for a Michelob product. There's some sort of hospital benefit downstairs, lots of young women wandering around, but I brought some games to repel them.