Brrrrr. . .

Here's an old-fashioned image of Santa Claus that must be attributed to the United States. . . notice the tiny American flag in his pack.

I heard on the radio late last night that Des Moines, Iowa received 16 inches of snow yesterday and Madison, Wisconsin (where I lived and studied for five years in the 1990s) had 19 inches!!! There ought to be a law. The entire time I lived there, we never had more than about four or five inches at a time, and that was always gone after a day or two. Wait, there was one really cold, snowy period in February1996, but that was before I learned to ski. Sigh.

We had only about an inch of the white stuff here in Bloomington, Illinois yesterday, but it sure is cold this morning. Only seven degrees Fahrenheit when I checked a short while ago. Brrrrrrrr! It's days like these that make me wish for a wood-burning fireplace. Nothing like that aroma! When I was a boy and teenager, living with my maternal grandparents in Eastern Pennsylvania, our house had two such fireplaces, and from about October through March each year we had wood fires every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with more on special occasions like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's.

How idyllic all of that seems now. And come to think of it, it it actually was pretty special. It's funny how the sense of smell works with one's memories, because each time I smell a campfire, or someone else's fireplace here in our neighborhood, I am magically transported back in time. And for one fleeting moment, all of those memories flood over me. I clearly recall when I was four or five, and my grandfather showed me how to lay and start a fire on the hearth, all the way through to the last time I made a fire myself at their house in the early 1990s. What nice times and memories those were and remain. Ok, ok. Pre-Christmas nostalgia over.

Thanks to everyone who has left a comment about the beta version of General von Tschatschke! Only a bit of time for soldier painting yesterday, but I used it to work on him some more, touching up his horse with some lightened washes of reddish brown and adding some white markings, to make the noble steed a bit more interesting. The good General, too, received some finishing touches as well. I'll leave him alone now -- don't want to overwork anything -- and continue on to his ADC, Captain Alphonse von Pfeffernuesse.

For that figure, I'm leaning toward some kind of light blue uniform, though I'm not sure about facing colors yet. We'll have to see. I'd like to finish him in the next couple of days, in any case, so I can return to those last nine RSM cuirassiers. For now, I've got a few student papers to read and final course grades to tally while Young Master Paul sleeps in my lap. You know what they say about sleeping babies and dogs, right? There's considerable wisdom in that old saying, let me tall you!