Whenever I need my buckles swashed...

...I call on Blackbeard. I have always been fascinated by pirates and piracy of old. Not sure why. Maybe I was a pirate in a previous life. I got this toy years ago just for fun. It sits on my nightstand keeping an eye out over me and my reading material. Once I am finished my Master's degree, I plant to have a bit of fun digging into pirate history as a break from physics history. Something completely different, as it were, to mix things up a bit. All work and no play...besides, what is life without a little adventure now and then?

Swashbuckling means to be adventurous but it can mean to excess as in swaggering. It also means boastful or recklessly flamboyant. I don't do a lot of swaggering. Wobbling and staggering due to lousy knees but not swaggering. Not my style. I would like to learn how to use a sword, though. Must be those old Errol Flynn movies.