A moment I'm glad to have missed

El Cabrero has been devouring recorded books at an alarming rate lately. Almost anything will do. To give just one example of how desperate I am for listening material, I'm about to finish a book about the typhus epidemic in Napoleon's army during its invasion of Russia in 1812.

Hot damn!

(It's titled The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army by Stephen Talty. And it's actually a good read. Or listen, as the case may be.)

It's full of battle scenes, lice, hospitals, fevers, amputations, antiquated medical practices and all kinds of jolly stuff. But mostly what I got out of it is that I am SOOOO glad I wasn't part of any army that invaded Russia and had the misfortune not to get out of Dodge (or Moscow) before things got cold. There is no comparison between the WV winter and that of Russia, but I've got all I can handle here, even without lice and angry Russians.

So there's that anyway.

BACK TO BUSINESS. Maybe the best that can be said about the budget deal that the US Senate passed today was that it could have been worse. Here's another look. At least it didn't involve a whole lot of lice, an epidemic, being stuck in Russia in winter without food or supplies, or cannibalism.

Stay warm.