heliopausa

For me, in summer, it's the longest day, and shaping to be another long, hot one; I love summer, or the thought of summer, but one can have too much of a good thing.
Still, one good thing summer has been bringing has been the mangoes from next-door-but-one's tree, thudding down into the front yard here - it's a big tree, and the houses are built very close together, so they fall into several yards, as well as into the lane..
I have been thriftily picking them up, the ones in the yard, not in the lane, and eating them, unless the ants have got to them first - or else when there's too many accumulated, I've been slicing them up and freezing the pulp. The ants get to quite a few, though, because a ripe mango falling on a brick-paved courtyard - well, you follow. But this morning, hooray! There were two, and with skin unbroken. :)

Oh, wonderful! I thought, around about mid-morning Saturday. The people (who are very pleasant people, I haste to say; it's just that I'm a lazy beast) who were invited for lunch on Sunday can't come! And thus the weekend suddenly opened to reveal ... what is it? somethings of vast eternity. Or a day and a half of free time, anyway. :) I was cockahoop.

So... I plucked those cumquats which were ready to fall from the New Year's cumquat tree, and made spiced cumquat chutney - and I made muesli bars, too, to use up some over-ripe bananas. Went marketing, of course, and accidentally brought home a mountain of lettuce, and much green herbage (because it was past ten, and the market-seller wanted to pack up and go home). Also triumphantly tracked down cinnamon bark, for the chutney, down a market side-street, and generally had a good time. :)

And then on Sunday I went to visit an aged friend - that was absolutely great! She is recovering from a stroke, and it was wonderful to see her so much better, so much stronger. We just sat together for three-quarters of an hour, and drank water, and talked of nothing much - of planting trees recently, and looking at photos . Not a long visit, because I didn't want to wear her out, but a very, very happy one - it was so good to see her, and to see her so strong. :)

And I took in various media throughout the weekend:

- watched the 27th episode of Nirvana in Fire, which means I'm exactly half-way through;

- read some of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, which is about very exciting things, but so far is not very well or engagingly written;

- and read some newspapers online, of course, which yielded this lovely story (with picture) of a desert turtle.
What an amazing creature! And how beautiful it seems in the picture - to me, at least - gold and emerald. :)
Also, I chortled at a word attributed (wrongly, I'm sure - possibly autotranscription from a recording?) to the herpetologist, which suggested that the turtles are excavating underground - making a second pleasing picture, of a different, totally imaginary, sort! (But now I've been back and they've fixed it up - good to see journalistic diligence at the ABC. Unless it was the mortified herpetologist who set them straight.)

Crossposts: http://heliopausa.livejournal.com/67352.html

Dreamwidth just lost an entire draft post. :( Bother. To be fair, it may be related to the internet being out of commission for half the day, and not DW's fault at all. (Is anyone on Dreamwidth reading this, by the way?)

As best I can remember it included talk of:

Doctor Who, Season 18, State of Decay. I thought the plot was too much of a rehash of the old Sevateem idea (which was a good idea in itself), the acting was particularly bad, especially in the main cast (K9 excepted), and the Doctor's strategy for overcoming the resident evil (whose very name I've forgotten) looked awfully haphazard - the writers missed an opportunity for Adric to do ultra-high maths with K9, to ensure accuracy of execution. As it was, Adric was looking more like a liability than an alert and useful companion. I'd feel sorry for the Doctor, except he was a bit annoying, too.

Shakespeare. I'm gradually dragging the words out of my brain for the Stageoffools exchange, though with (of course) many qualms that this isn't what my recipient wants. But I'll finish a first draft and then think again.

Tam Cam, the Untold Story - which was a movie based on a Vietnamese fairy-tale with lots of similarities to Cinderella. (Tam is the "Cinderella"; Cam is the "Ugly Stepsister"). The untold part of the story included lots of fighting - the one-on-one martial arts kind, and the big CGI battles kind - and not one, but two CGI monsters - the bad scorpionesque one and the good leonine one. What startled me most was the final, mid-credits scene of Tam and her wicked stepmother - Tam bringing to the stepmother a brimming bowl of some mixed stew, and saying "Eat, mother." I thought - "oh - noble Tam - even after all the cruelty and wrong she's suffered, she displays filial piety to her father's wife." But it wasn't that at all. Oh dear.

Pulses: this weekend just gone - the good old standby Chilli Beans, with red kidney beans, tomato and chilli and much else.

Crossposts: http://heliopausa.livejournal.com/60605.html

I had hoped to spend some time tonight quietly knitting on a project inspired partly by todayiamadaisy on LJ and partly by having lost a beret somewhere or other, and partly by there being seven small balls of wool and a large one kicking around making an nuisance of themselves in the spare room. For a non-knitter - that is, I can, but I hardly ever do - I'd made a promising start, I thought, but I've just come to the dispiriting realisation that I've misunderstood the instructions and have cast on too few stitches and will have to start all over again - and I loathe casting on. Botherbotherbother.

On the slightly more cheerful side, it's New Moon today - so it's a new lunar month as well as a new solar-calendar one - two new months in one!

Neutral news is that the Year of Pulses continues, but isn't doing so well this week - all I have to show is a mixed vegie curry with chickpeas. Maybe I should get ambitious and try making tempeh.

Crossposts: http://heliopausa.livejournal.com/60279.html

So... stopping to think of some mildly cheerful things happening.

For one thing, some old (fifteenth century) wooden panels which had been stolen from a church in Devon, have been recovered and restored and returned to their home church.
I hold no brief for Margaret of antioch, or Victor of Marseilles, (I know nothing at all about either of them) but I hate it when something which is out in the world, publicly visible, being part of our general human heritage, is ripped away from all of us, whether from theft or destructiveness - so I was glad to see this one loss undone.

and it's good news that in the US there's been an overhaul and extension of the regulation of toxic substances. US readers will understand the political implication of this better than I would, but it's meant co-operation between Democrats and Republicans and commercial interests and the Environmental Protection agency, which all sounds good - and the safer environment at ordinary-citizen level is definitely good. :)

I think it's even good news that a man in australia can have fun making silly hats. I would actually wear the pancakes one, in the unlikely circumstance of the artist giving it to me. :)

Three mildly cheerful things closer to home:

The commitment to honouring the Year of the Pulse with a weekly meal continues: this week, a simple carrot and lentil dhal, with cumin and plum accents. :)

I managed another Sunday evening Old Who catch-up, this time going back to the beginning of the season I last week saw the end of, with "The Leisure Hive". ( Read more... )

The white bougainvillea in the front yard is in flower. :)

Current Mood: working
Crossposts: http://heliopausa.livejournal.com/56658.html

It's been a busy weekend - opera, culinary triumph, further adventures with Victor Hugo...

The opera was on Saturday night - ( but was it really opera? )
But on to domestic arts! I'd decided (inspired by adaese :) ) to make ( a vegetarian kedgeree... )( a vegetarian kedgeree... )( a vegetarian kedgeree... )

Victor Hugo! He does some great scenes!

( Great writer, but quirky as all-get-out )

and I have made progress on my NFE, of a sort - I've shifted the end-post closer, by simply cutting out some of the story. So I can feel that much closer to finishing. :) Anxiety still gnaws, though.

Current Mood: anxious
Crossposts: http://heliopausa.livejournal.com/44504.html

So redsnake05 said she was planning to post three happy things for three days in a row, and I leaped in to do the same, and here I am at Day Two, and:

1. Last in the day, but I've just finished eating it and it was very pleasant: thin (No.11) spaghetti with homemade tomato/olive sauce :)

2. Psalm-of-the-day was 19 ("the heavens declare...") which is a hot favourite.

3. I looked, and there's a Madness Round fic out there for one of my prompts!! (to be opened for reading tomorrow, my time.)

Current Mood: happy
Crossposts: http://heliopausa.livejournal.com/28475.html

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Entries tagged with food

Longest day, shortest day

A quiet weekend, and a desert turtle

Remnants of a lost post

An unexciting post

Mildly cheerful things

The weekend - with opera and Victor Hugo :)

The second of two days :)

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June 2019

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