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Taking a "No Day" in the Grand Duchy of Stollen. . .

Here is an old Knoetel print I've always enjoyed, a bunch of Prussian hussars clowing around with the contents of a French officer's trunk.

It is Saturday morning (Yes!), and I am taking a "No Day" here at the Grand Duchy of Stollen, saying "No!" to most other things besides tinkering with 20 RSM95 Prussian musketeers (the final batch of that large 80-figure regiment begun in January 2015).  I will also listen to jazz online from Norwegian State Radio (NRK Jazz) all day, begin organizing my ideas for a hobby-related article that is due before long, and take a closer look at the contents of a nice little package that arrived earlier this week from Fife & Drum Miniatures.  

The latter contains a bunch of Prussian and Austrian limbers, limber riders, and 64 limber horses.  Christmas all over again in a way, which it was since I finally applied a Christmas 2015 gift from my in-laws (plus a bit of my own scratch) to the purchase.  The coming summer will see me then keeping the grass mowed (a fairly mindless and innocuous activity that I enjoy), working on 16 four-horse gun teams with limbers, and developing yet another article, this time of a more serious nature for eventual publication in an academic/pedagogic journal if all goes well when everything has been said and done.  

But that is putting the limber before the horse(s)!  Today, a quiet, relatively easy "No Day" at home with the Young Master (we have a date to play with his knights and castle too), the Grand Duchess, the cats, and, of course. . .  the toy soldiers.  As a music professor friend of ours once observed tongue-in-cheek to my wife several years ago, "It's soldier season.  It's always soldier season.  You've married a nerd, honey!"  I wear my badge loudly and proudly.  And now, it's time for another mug of coffee.

-- Stokes

Comments

Conrad Kinch said…
That's sounds like an excellent way to spend the day. Any prospect of getting the lads on the table soonish?
Der Alte Fritz said…
#noday

:)
Whiskers said…
Lucky you. I am also trying a "no" day but I have a wife and a dog, so it has become a "well, all right then" day :-(
Neil Moulden said…
I had a "drive the wife and kids to the mother in laws, then back home for 4 hours of painting day" on Saturday. Managed to finish some Napoleonic French Dragoons.: )

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