Ways To Entertain Myself At The Grocery Store #42

(1) As spouse is pushing cart and I have one item in hand, toss item into cart and go hunting separately for other items.

(2) Other items secured, go seeking spouse, and find her at a self-checkout station.

(3) Put stack o' stuff down at self-checkout station across from spouse.

(4) When spouse is looking in another direction, glance around furtively and then snatch my original item from her cart and toss it on my own pile.

(5) Pretend to look innocent against the stares of startled surrounding shoppers.

Rethinking Your Labor Exploitation Plan

PROGRESS REPORT

New Words: 2000 on Chapter 3 ("Spirit, Faith, and Reason") of Arizona. Captain Cristobal starts having second thoughts about his back-room arrangements with the governor when the governor starts wanting to extract blood from the stone of Cristobal's hacienda.

I also managed to get this writing done after letting myself watch a bit of Game of Thrones while eating breakfast. I'm inordinately proud of myself for turning it off to go write. Tomorrow I may not be as strong.

Total Words: 93600.

Reason For Stopping: Getting ready for work.

Book Years: 1641-42.

Mammalian Assistance: None.

Exercise: A short walk with Tucker, then walking down to campus.

Stimulants: Dr. Pepper.

Today's Opening Passage: Unfamiliar Spanish soldiers coming to Awatovi always meant some new hardship for the natives, and the visits in 1641 were no different. But the news they brought Captain Cristobal stirred the officer to such fury he felt the need to come to the mission to rant, starting by tossing Governor Rosas’ message at the friars’ feet while they sat together in the mission garden.

Darling Du Jour: Not so much a darling as a fun scene in context...

At last, after the funeral, Cristobal remembered to give his happy news to Miguel: “Governor Rosas is gone.”

“Gone! Resigned?”

“The circumstances are unclear. I only know that he is no longer governor. Perhaps he made enough of a bastard of himself that even Mexico City finally had to take notice.”

Cristobal was so elated that at once he reduced the Moqui’s quotas to Santa Fe; Miguel thought perhaps they were still a little higher than absolutely required by the new governor, but the vastly lessened burden was welcome nevertheless. For the next few months Cristobal was perpetually cheerful, even moreso when news arrived in the winter that Rosas had been murdered at the end of January. “Nothing good comes of such a death,” Miguel warned the intentionally deaf captain.

What finally suffocated Cristobal’s cheer, however, was the news shortly afterward that the new governor had started executing the conspirators who murdered Rosas.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Farmer; More.