Just Too Much

Here's a photograph of mild interest, at least to me. First off, it's a photograph of a model displayed on the hood of the truck and posed in a way that it causes a kind of unintentional confusion. Plane? Car? House? Sky? Runway? Or doofus with a camera?

Second, it's a picture taken with my cell phone and emailed to my computer, which for me is an act of almost frightening cybernetic sophistication. Why, next thing you know I'll be programming up artificial intelligences and making pivot tables. This is not normally the sort of thing I do. I still half-expect to have to look down into the tops of cameras, so that's how advanced I am.

Third, it's a picture of the Italeri re-release of the old and treasured AMT/Ertl XB-70 Valkyrie nuclear bomber, not to be confused with the Tom Cruise nuclear bomb of the same name (I'm sorry, Tom Cruise as a Junker aristocrat? I'm just not seeing it). The XB-70 was too much of everything. Too powerful, too big, too expensive, too fast, too radical, just too damn too everything, so obviously it's the sort of model airplane that's right up my alley. Six J-79 jet engines? I need me some of that! I thought after the demise of the AMT/Ertl issue that we'd never see this particular model ever again, but those charming lads at Italeri have stepped into the breach and rescued it from oblivion.

I probably won't start working on the XB-70 for a while, but at least I have it. It is far too big and cumbersome a model to work on in bed, and sitting up in a hard chair to work on a model isn't particularly pleasant yet. Though my lower left leg and foot seem to be improving a little, my left hip, thigh and lower back are still pretty bad, and I find that when I'm in a lot of pain, I lose patience for some of the finer aspects of model-building.

"Honey, you glued the cowboy to the horse's belly; was that on purpose?"

"No, I just lost patience."