Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has a bad case of the sniffles. He supposes the fall alergy season is upon him and he needs to get back on his allergy medication and some decongestants. For a condition that is reasonably harmless (watery eyes, stuffy sinues, runny nose), it can really make you feel like crap. And when you feel like crap, you probably shouldn’t blog.

(Excursus: Your Maximum Leader thought that perhaps the good Smallholder would post some more yesterday… But apparently he blew is proverbial wad the day before with his amusement concerning William Henry Seward. By the way… Care to see the Smallholder in front of William Henry Seward’s House? Clicky here for the image. Three posts in one day… Should we expect a three month wait now before another post?)

Now some of you might be wondering about the title of this post… Iglooit. Well, your Maximum Leader has learned that iglooit is the plural of igloo. You know iglooit. The snow/ice block shelters built by the Inuit. Villainette #1 had a school project that required her to learn all about iglooit. She also had to build one. Mrs Villain suggested using sugar cubes to build an igloo. This seemed like a sensible idea. The sugar cubes would approximate the texture and color of snow. It seemed to make sense. And your Maximum Leader assumed that (the elementary school teacher) Mrs Villain had done some sort of project like this in the past. Well… He assumed incorrectly. She’d never done anything like this before.

Well… Allow your Maximum Leader to tell you something. Building an igloo out of sugar cubes is a royal pain in your arse. It might have been a little easier if we had used a fast drying glue. But we had a large supply of Elmer’s white glue, and that was the binding medium of choice. Eventually, your Maximum Leader had to shore up the interior with wads of (removable) paper towels to keep the structure from collapsing while drying. Mrs Villain decided to use some leftover vanilla cake icing as a mortar on the exterior of the structure (sort of like the Inuit using loose snow to fill in any gaps or cracks between blocks).

Now your Maximum Leader has described his role and Mrs Villain’s role in building this quasi-confectionary igloo. Allow him to assure you that the majority of the work was in fact done by Villainette #1. While the total effect is not Hollywood-special-effects-model quality; it is perfectly fine for a 5th grade project for a 10 year old. The igloo is a little lopsided, but the effect is right.

Oh yes… Your Maximum Leader forgot to mention the role of Villainette #2 and the Wee Villain in all this construction. Villainette #2 felt her role was that of building inspector. Her comments were “it’s leaning over too much here” and “you shouldn’t leave so much space over here” and “I don’t think that looks like a dome.” Villainette #2 was eventually banished from the construction site. The Wee Villain felt his role was to check the quality of the building materials. So he would come and sneak up and steal sugar cubes from the box and then run away and eat them. The would also dip his fingers into the cake icing and then lick them clean.

Your Maximum Leader imagines that he’ll be finding partially eaten sugar cubes and globs of icing all over the house for the next week…

Carry on.