Quid Novum Infernum

 A year. An actual year. A bit more than, actually. What a crapshow.  The pandemic, obviously. But in addition: The unexpected death of my cousin. The unexpected death of my friend. The not-quite-so-unexpected death of my other friend. A week in hospital and two months in rehab. A week in hospital for TDO. The marital turmoil, and the aftermath of the marital turmoil.  Some tide has to have turned, yes? Some corner? Because life is ordered and all losses are redressed, of course. 

I could not --   c o u l d   n o t   -- get their website to allow me to order. This was probably down to the universe eying me askance at the cost, but even knowing that, after multiple failures I was still sufficiently irritated to hunt down their "contact us" page and send the following Your website is lovely. However, when I try to check out, it displays a message informing me that there's an error, without specifying what error or even which field is the issue. Please snap at your developer for me: this is terrible UX design, losing you not only sales but also goodwill. (For example, I would not normally encourage verbal abuse of anyone, even in IT, but am quite frustrated and out of patience after struggling to place this order.) Also, "wishlist" is consistently spelled "whislist". I'm an American, it's true, but this is a spelling variant I've never encountered before, and I strongly suspect it's merely wrong. You may not care --

the first page of the first Peach How did I not know until today that The Desert Peach is available online now? (I've been dreaming of the books at Lulu.com , but as I'm only intermittently employed, could never justify the expense.) If you don't know about the Peach, the link above barely scrapes the surface. The Desert Peach is Rommel's (fictional) gay brother, also a WWII German army officer. Terrible idea, right? Must be distasteful, right? Ahhhh, no . No, my darlings. Pfirisch, our Peach, is the dearest, sweetest thing, a man of grace and taste, kindness and principle, struggling to keep everyone safe -- his men, the men Germany's fighting against, his adored brother, his danger-loving fiance -- in some of the loopiest adventures imaginable (surfboarding in search of submarines, anyone?). Sounds broad and flippant, right? But no, no ,   my darlings. Well, okay, just a bit of both. But it's -- it's -- it's darling , like Pfirisch himself