Apologia

I should apologize to someone, but I'm not sure who. Remember all my screeching about the relay being shipped to the wrong address and how this was going to lead in the end to the collapse of Western civilization and the widespread adoption of Zoroastrian funerary practices?

Well, someone stepped in and neatly slipped the box containing my relay into my PO Box without being asked to, thus short-circuiting the whole mess. And what's really sad is that he or she would probably get in trouble with the Mail Gods if this act of human charity was made public. So maybe I should shut up now, before I get someone in trouble.

Tomorrow I'll install the relay and see if that resolves the relay chatter problem the Shrieking Eel is experiencing.

Why not today? Because today I'm being officially OCD. Years ago I was reading something about Rome and found myself somewhat irritated because they'd mention things like the Battle of Graupius Mons or the Catalaunian Fields and I never knew anything about the battles - where they were, when they were, why they were fought, who won. And I said to myself "You know, I wish someone would write a comprehensive atlas of Roman military history, roughly one page per battle, that would place battles and wars into some kind of context."

So far I'm up to 165 pages of text, and that's without any of the planned sidebars, and I'm actually not much farther along than Teutobergerwald. I could easily fill another 100 pages with tedious and annoying Roman civil wars and still not be at the time of Aetius or Stilicho. The OCD aspect of it comes from the feeling that I have to add at least one battle a day to the text, and tonight it's the turn of Edessa, where Valerian goes down to dusty defeat. And THAT is why I can't install the relay tonight.