Missive #196

“Against all expectations, Krispos had won the crown of Videssos. But how long could he hope to keep head and crown together?

For trouble was brewing in every, quarter. Civil war erupted under Petronas, the late Emperor’s uncle. This is the second book in the Tale of Krispos trilogy and the sixth in the Videssos Cycle. A continuation of a good story by Turtledove with only one more book remaining to be read in this Series and the Cycle.A brilliant general and a canny politician, Petronas had a very personal score to settle against the upstart Krispos.

And even as rebel troops took the field against the untried Emperor, outland raiders swept down from the northlands in a tide of carnage. The power stemmed from foulest sorcery, and Videssos’ wizards could not counter its evil curse.

Krispos reign showed every sign of being brief — and very bloody…” — Book promo @ goodreads.com

There is not much going on here with me. This past Wednesday we got some more rain. This time it was more in keeping with what this area usually gets; a total of 0.02″. No erosion damage like what the big storm brought and no mud for Erik and I to be walking in.

I have started to doing my online shopping that I put off until after the craziness of Cyber Monday and the Christmas buying. The first thing that I ordered arrived yesterday which was a Ronxs model JL872 multi purpose electric lighter. This will take the place of the butane Bar-b-Que lighters that I have been buying to light my stove.

I went online shopping again yesterday and found what I wanted but almost all the search results were for Amazon. I don’t do Amazon! So I finally found what I wanted at the manufactures website and tried to place and order; tried 3-4 times and then contacted their Chat. Had a longer than necessary chat where the other chatting party finally told me that the product was not in stock but I could go to Yuma and pick it up at a Best Buy. I don’t do Best Buy either.

I then tried Wal*Mart and eBay but got Credit Card failures at both sites after 2-3 tries each. Went to my email account with the intent of contacting a rep at my bank to see if she could help find out what was going on. Didn’t need to do that because I found an email from the bank that said they had shut my card down after suspected activity. The suspect charge was my annual payment for my host server. I clicked the ‘it is a good charge link’ and went back to shopping. This only took about an hour or maybe more but I finally bought the product at Wal*Mart.