Sunday Night

It's Sunday night, too late to have a cup of coffee or I won't sleep, but too early to just stick a fork in the day and go to bed. So what do I think?

1. I think I want to build a model airplane, but I'm unsure of the type. I have two X-15A2 kits, but they're earmarked for special projects - one's going to turn into a stretched delta-winged X-15A5, the other is going to become Pete Knight's airplane the day he set the speed record of Mach 6.71. I want to build something easy and casual, and neither of these will be easy or casual. I have a pair of Academy Me-163 Komets, and I do like the pip-squeakish Komet, but I'd be a lot more interested in the kits if they were the 1/32nd scale Hasegawa kits. I have a startling number of Arado-234 variants, and an He-177 Greif with Hs-293 glide bombs, and a very nice ICM Il-2M3 Sturmovik.

But none of this really appeals to me. I find myself wishing I had, of all things, a 1/48th scale B-24J Liberator, or something groovy and peculiar from the 1950s, especially an XF-91 Thunderceptor. Or a Hawker Fury, a classic biplane that never goes out of style with me, or... Riddle me this, Batman: how come the models that most appeal to me are the models I don't have in my collection?

2. I think I detect among historians in general a kind of anti-Roman stance. Or is that a pro-Mithridatic, pro-Hannibal stance? Not that I care, and not that it makes a difference, but somehow it seems a little silly to prefer Mithridates on moral grounds over the man who finally defeated him, Pompey the Great. It's as though they've never heard of the Asiatic Vespers...

3. I'm going to have a bowl of cereal tonight for the first time in almost a year. The prospect fills me with almost childish joy!