Cabin fever

I have been cooped up in the house for 2 straight days recuperating from having my wisdom teeth taken out.  I'm gradually working my way through Secret Weapons Over Normandy on the Playstation 2; finally read the outstanding book First Light by Geoffery Wellum which some very kind person that I can't remember bought me for Christmas; and am now reading an interesting book about the battle for Caen and breakout from Normandy in the summer of 1944. Monty has sometimes taken a lot of stick for the way he handled it - particularly from the Americans who made much faster progress - but it was interesting to read that the Germans had 14 crack divisions and 600 tanks (including many Tigers) against 14 divisions of British and Canadians, whereas the 19 American divisions faced just 9 German divisions & 100 tanks of which none were the dreaded Tigers.

In between all that I've doodled so much on various guitars that my fingers are almost as red raw as my gums.

And having spent the last 8 years trying, I'm finally bored of surfing the internet....

Going back to work on Monday seems like a great idea.

12:47:31 PM    comment []

Sunday

Thanks for the memories, Glen & Stan, sad to see you go :-(

12:37:26 PM    comment []

Friday

I had my four wisdom teeth and one other tooth extracted. Writing 2 days later I feel very fortunate that everything seems to have gone well, with minimal pain, bleeding & swelling in contrast to the many grim predictions I received beforehand!

12:35:03 PM    comment []

Wednesday

At about 5:00pm on Wedneday I remarked that it had been one of the best working days I'd had in years... famous last words!

In the morning I was talking to some curators at the Smithsonian about the whereabouts of a radio controlled Quetzalcoatlus Northropi model that aviation legend Paul MacCready built for them about 20 years ago. Here's a picture of it.

For some time I've been thinking that it would be great to do an exhibition about prehistoric flight. If there's one thing that kids like more than aeroplanes, it's dinosaurs, so if we brought the two subjects together, it could be fun.

Anyway 30 minutes after the call to the National Air & Space Museum, I receive a call to say that John & Martha King (expected guests) were bringing a couple of unexpected guests with them... Charles Lindbergh's grandson Erik who is always fun to have around, and - incredibly - Paul MacCready! Who - even more incredibly - still has the 36 foot wingspan QN model and said he'd let us borrow it! This has to be one of the most serendipitous happenings of my entire life. (And that was the first time I ever tried to spell serendipitous.) Anyway it was fun spending time with Dr MacCready who is a fascinating person even if he wasn't lending us flying dinosaurs.  Here's a story about the visit from the EAA website.

Later in the day we opened a new exhibition of Jim Koepnick's work in the Museum. Jim is one of the nicest people you could ever wish to meet and is a great photographer. He has just completed 20 years working for EAA so we asked him to select his favourite photos from that time. Jim was in the middle of a great presentation about his work when I got called out to get the bad news about the B-17... which put the dampeners on  a great day.

One of Jim's photos, in typical style.

12:32:34 PM    comment []