My boiler stopped working yesterday morning, shutting down my heating system, and as a result I spent all day yesterday arranging for repairs before the house chilled to the point of becoming uninhabitable. The circulator failed, resulting in an electrical malfunction that only managed to avoid catching fire because the valve above it leaked, extinguishing the sparks. This resulted in a busted circulator and a blown fuse. The circulator was easy to repair, according to the HVAC specialist, but the stupid special little fuse took two hours to replace because no one in the area carries that particular type and it had to be procured from twenty miles away. This happened simultaneously with the much-delayed closing on the house I have been trying to sell since last summer and with FedEx delivering my repaired computer. It was a busy morning that slid into a busier afternoon when the ongoing legal issues I have faced entered a new phase when the complainer (whose name I no longer use) demanded the removal of his name from every URL ever published on this blog. Despite the hardships, by the end of the day, I had a working furnace, a working computer, and only one house. My lawyer also drafted a response to the complainer. But I had no time to write, so I have nothing else to share this weekend except that my publisher has asked for revisions to my Legends of the Pyramids book and I now must work on that since I have a working computer again.

My publisher has delivered to me a reader report and a set of notes for revisions and changes to my book on legends of the pyramids. Based on the manuscript, they would like to revise parts of the book into a more visual organization. They would like to see a revised chapter right after New Year's. I will be taking some time off during the holiday weeks to work on the revisions.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again! Every Christmas season, I follow the lead of NPR, PBS, and the charity of your choice and ask my readers to help with the upkeep of this site and to help keep it commercial and ad-free. In the interest of saving some time, I am adapting my pitch from previous years for this post.

You know it is going to be one of those days when you get told that your lawyer is calling and you have to ask which lawyer, and for what reason. I ran out of time for writing a blog post because I spent the day dealing with legal issues. Part of the day was spent trying to finalize the sale of my former house, whose closing has been delayed for weeks while the purchaser's bank dragged its feet. With the paperwork on that finally moving forward for a closing before the end of the year, I had to simultaneously deal with another situation arising from claims made years ago against this blog. My attorney and I had to discuss our response to a request to remove content from this blog. The issue is still ongoing, and I cannot provide additional details while the matter is active.

My original intention was to review Unexplored + Unexplained today, but the Science Channel has locked the most recent episode, which I am unable to view because the network is not included in my cable package. Oh, well. No loss to me. Meriwether Lewis is still dead, and I did not need another conspiracy theory about it. Meanwhile, here near Albany we received two feet of snow, and I had to spend much of the last two days clearing snow. I did not have time to write a blog post, especially after I devoted so much time this weekend to reading and reviewing Gods, Man, and War 2. Normally, I would have divided the book review in parts anyway, but I thought that putting it up as one blog post would be more useful to anyone looking for information about the book. Let us say that it counts for two or maybe three posts this week.

Because I am formatting my manuscript this week, I will wait to post a new blog this evening when I review Ancient Aliens.

Since I spent yesterday celebrating Halloween with my son, my next post will be later tonight when I review the new episode of Ancient Aliens.

I had planned to write something long today, but yesterday I had quite a surprise when I proudly informed my publisher that I had completed the rough draft of Legends of the Pyramids a month early and they replied that they expected me to have all of the artwork for the book (the book I was not supposed to have finished writing until December) submitted to them this Friday, along with the captions and the page numbers (again, for the book I was not supposed to have yet finished) on which they should appear. So, today I am illustrating an entire book in 48 hours and scrambling to meet an arbitrary deadline for a book I apparently was supposed to have written backward to match the pictures, since I can see no other way to start with the pictures and end with a manuscript.

Truth be told, it’s been a bit of slow week in the world of pseudohistorical zaniness. At the end of the month To the Stars will launch the new volume in Tom DeLonge’s and Peter Levenda’s God, Man and War series, War, but I don’t imagine they’ll be sending me one.  As I write this on Wednesday evening, I just finished proofreading and indexing my Mound Builder book—which took me longer than expected and was much more work than I had anticipated. The older I get and the more responsibilities I have, the harder it is to cram several extra hours of work into each day. When I got close to the end, I decided to just take the day and push through to get it done. I wrapped it up Wednesday morning and then spent the afternoon formatting the final document, which I sent in to the publisher just before close of business yesterday. To be frank, I’m tired and decided to take the day to decompress before I resume work trying to push out the last few pages of my pyramid legends book.

The publisher of my Mound Builders book dumped 400 pages of proofreading and indexing on me yesterday afternoon with a very short deadline, and I am now swamped with work as two book deadlines loom. As a result, I will try to finish my review of Scott Wolter's new book for tomorrow, and then I will need to take time off to proofread and index.