This is a biography of one of the more “successful” German commanders of WWII. Normally, I don’t read biographies but sometimes you just have to try something different once in a while.??

The book does a decent job of documenting the life of Model but, unless the reader is intimately familiar with military operations on the Eastern Front, some of the details simply go right over one’s head. The book sorely needs additional maps that can more illustrate events and organizational tables so that one can keep track of the various players and their units.

The book is excellent at portraying the increasingly desperate condition of German units as they are ground down in successive battles. I play games from the Total War series and, sometimes, my armies’ various units are worn down to shadows of themselves and they have to be replenished or merged. This is what happened with the Wehrmacht over time except that in their case their units were rarely replenished to any substantial extent.

The Germans really only had one shot at taking out the Soviet Union and they fumbled it badly.

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Life does go on and nothing stops me from reading. Another escapist tome down in Michael Jecks’ excellent series. I’m glad that I decided to give his series a second chance.

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The second instalment in this series. As florid and feminine as ever and still a good read. My pleasure with this book is that I found out on Lake’s website that, later on, Rawlings’ wife is killed off. I wish that that had been kept as a surprise!

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I’ve been on Freecycle for a few months now and it’s been pretty decent. Yesterday, I picked up a used sofabed to replace the one left behind by my housemate that was shredded up pretty badly by one of her cats. Rented a van for the short journey and had excellent help from my brother.

The sofabed was being Freecycled by a professor from Kingston whose dad is moving out to her city so they had to get rid of everything. Only bad news is that I seem to have pulled something in my left wrist so it hurts a bit. Therefore, no riding this morning and keeping my typing to a minimum.

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It’s been an awful year but I’ve got a bit of good news to report at last. I’ve just broken the 5000 km mark for my bicycle riding this year! I would have done this a lot sooner except for my standing down for around two weeks this month due to various injuries.

It hasn’t really been that difficult to achieve at all. It was just a steady progression up and up in my Excel spreadsheet. Actually, I’m pretty sure that I passed the 5k mark a while back because I sometimes forget to turn on my cyclocomputer. Ooops!

I must admit that I didn’t have the noblest of intentions when I first started out doing this sort of long-distance riding this year. I really wanted to show up a certain someone…actually, a couple of certain someones. It’s petty, I know, but it’s been a real motivator. My goal for this year is to break 10,000 km along with being able to hit the ‘Falls and back in one day. Push on!!!

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It’s been a while since my last review but it’s not because I’ve stopped reading. I just haven’t felt like writing anything. Still life has to go on.

Yet another in this series and this particular title is actually very good. The storyline is more complicated and a bit more serious. I’m also finding that the author is concentrating more and more on one particular character, that of Sir Baldwin Furnshill.

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Well, bad news all. Failed the level II CFA exam. I really thought that I had a shot at it this time around but it was simply not meant to be.

It’s been two days and I’m not really sure what I’m going to do now. Yes, I know that I had earlier decided to not continue with the CFA but a lot of people are saying that I should hold off and give myself some time to think things over and not make any rash decisions.

A lot of people on the AnalystForum board are telling me to give it one more shot and it’s heartening to hear some of the words of encouragement. I just don’t know yet.

Ken in Vancouver says to take some time out and I’m considering taking a short trip out there to just take a deep breath, think things through and also to visit a friend of mine who’s just been diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. You can read about Gayle’s fight here.

So, I’m in a big sort of limbo. Got to decide what will I do next? Not happy at all.

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This should be the week that the Level II results for the CFA exam will come out. It’s not that nerve-racking of a wait but it does sort of leave me in a bit of a limbo.

I’ve decided that I am not going to go on with the CFA if I fail it this time around. I mean, c’mon, second time around with several months of studying and not passing it? Someone or something is definitely telling me something at that point.

Of course, if I pass, then, it’s full speed ahead on the jobhunt and studying for Level III. Oh joy!

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Continuing on with this series and it’s unfortunate that the Toronto Public Library does not have the entire collection. This installment is a lot more involved than previous efforts and, therefore, a much better read!

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Downloaded and updated WordPress on my machine. It’s been quite a while since I’ve last done so and it’s always a worrisome process since I never know if I am going to mess something up and, then, find that everything is gone gone gone!!!

So far so good.

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