Since we don’t live by politics alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Cleaning two couches, pruning an olive tree
Am in the market for a used IBM laptop – they’re plentiful. Cannot work on a netbook as screen is too small. However the IBM will need a new battery.
OEM batteries seem like the ultimate market for lemons. Does anyone tips/recommendations?
Wet weekend , again.
Watched the entire HORNBLOWER CD box set I got for my birthday, and haven’t had time to watch.
For some reason, doing nothing is very tiring.
I’d be interested in Paul Burns opinion of the HORNBLOWER series, C.S. Forester that is.
Did the food shopping yesterday, including five chook carcasses for free from my favourite butchery. They looked as though they had quite a bit of meat left on them, so I poached them gently for about 30 minutes, waited until they were cool, and have just stripped nearly 400g of usable meat. The carcasses are back in the pot turning into what smells as though it will be an excellent chicken stock.
Game plan: tomorrow use half the stock to make minestrone (even got extravagant and bought a couple of appropriate sausages to slice up and add to the brew). Next weekend use the rest of the stock to make chicken and vegie soup, which will of course include the meat that I have just recovered (now safely wrapped and in the freezer).
Ah, autumn – season of mists and mellow fruitfulness …
Watched Insiders. Enjoyed watching Lenore tear strips off Bolt. Is it my imagination or was Cassidy distancing himself from him?
Spent morning on-line. Afternoon reading and taking notes from Captain Georg Pausch’s Journal and Letters. )Hesse-Hanau artillery.)
I went to a local chai shop and had cherry-blossom themed chai and some Indian-style cake with my friend Miss Wisteria Village. She’s happy because she’s moving into Miso Development at her company. Fun!
Potted up the tomato seedlings, weeded the lawn, cleaned out the chooks and gave a ute load of ‘Badilla’ sugar cane to my neighbour so he can grow his own mulch.
I am battling with Firefox since the recent update. Has anyone else experienced weird behaviour after their last update?
planted a few dozen daffodils down the hill where they should naturalise magnificently.
Worked on a paper, did the lawns, read the Guardian. Enjoyed the Canberra sunshine on a walk with the dog. Dog enjoyed getting throughly wet in the stream.
The gravatar presented a rat. Deceased, as in said Norwegian parrot.
Such a splendid gift and so proud, tag wagging,with an expectant look that inferred that many ‘good dog’ and ‘rewards’ of a tidbit nature might (read should) follow. Tales of the modern dog.
Fascinated, at least it was a rat, not a rare bird, which I had to drag from the filthy maw of my much-satisfied (and subsequently confused) cat once.
It was a baby bird too, bright green and obviously a native of some sort. I kept it overnight, thinking it had no chance because I’d heard the story of how once a human touches a bird its mother rejects it. But in the morning it was fluttering around by my flyscreen, squeaking, and outside was the mother (one assumes – it’s always hte mother in animal tales isn’t it?) carrying some insects in its mouth, and squawking madly. I got up and opened my flyscreen, and out it flew, to be greeted by a very excited mother.
So don’t ever believe that tale about baby birds being rejected after handling. Not true. At least if your bird is bright green.
The tale would have ended terribly had my cat been waiting outside, but thinking himself smart he’d parked himself right outside my door and was waiting patiently for me to open it in the morning so he could dash in and finish the job. Ha!
Your little bird fared better than the ex-rodent. all power to baby bird and mum.
Cats are such knowing creatures – one up man ship is good for a cat’s character.
ootz,
I’m on Firefox and haven’t had any new problems so far.
Spread worm poo on the Florida Robusta. Hoping for one last flush beforeautumn kicks in.
Went with the now-not-so-distant beloved and her brood to the (free) aquarium on Inoshima. Accidentally went to the wrong island when trying to get there, but managed to back-track by following the meandering directions of the in-car GPS which has a Matthew Flindersesque penchant for island circumnavigations.
Then to a “flower center”, where the beloved asked if I was planning to hang a childrens’ swing in the back garden for her children to use — that is, a childrens’ swing suspended from a Banana tree.
It was her idea to go to the flower centre. She later said that she is allergic to pollen.
Got my revenge, however, for last February’s embarrassing session of ten-pin bowls (in which I was beaten by a four-year-old and came stone motherless last with a score of 48).
This time around, I came second with a score of 71.
Not quite a lazy Sunday, all told — but not so hectic as trying to get here before midnight after my ‘plane arrived two hours late.
SG: are you okay for a beer in Tokyo on Friday lunchtime?
jumpnmcar @ 3,
Hornblower series is excellent. Slightly after my period and there are some distinct differences between Nelson’s Navy (Napoleonic Wars)and the American Revolutionary War period, two of the main ones being it wasn’t quite as corrupt as it had been cleaned up by Middleton’s reforms c. 1782, and most importantly, strategically, by the Napoleonic War the Royal Navy had universally adopted the use of citrus juice as an anti-scorbutic, (it took them about 20 years after Lind discovered the effectiveness of lemon juice to prevent scurvy in I think the 1760s.
Hence,British naval blockades against the French coast were much more effective because they could last for months and months because crews were no longer decimated by scurvy despite the atrocious salt pork diet.
Hornblower is in fact based on John Cochrane, a derring-do, rather notorious and controversal captain of the Napoleonic era. From memory, I don’t think Cochrane ever made admiral,(he upset too many people) though my memory might be faulty. From my recollection of the books, read in my early teens, Hornblower eventually makes admiral. Captain Pellew might be based on a real navy captain, who was, I think, one of James Cook’s patrons.
PB @ 16:
Hornblower, apparently, is based on the naval career of the 10th Earl of Dundonald, whilst Captain Pellew was too late to be one of James Cook’s patrons, but went on to become a Viscount with two capes, one gulf and an archipelago in Australia named after him.
Hornblower seems to have multiple inspirations. Cochrane certainly had a flamboyance and strategic genius that Cook, for all his navigational brilliance, didn’t really share, so it’s understandable that some of his exploits would be mined for fiction.
P.S. your second link for Pellew is borked.
terangeree @ 17,
Indeed. Thomas Cochrane is the chap I meant. (Should’ve looked up Rodger.) Got his first name wrong.
I may be confusing him perhaps with another Cochrane, who, as well as being in the Royal Navy, was in the British Secret service.And his exploits in the latter gave him a bit of a reputation for recklesness.
As, for Pellew, well, fair enough. Perhaps that’s where Forester took the name from. I have so much of this stuff packed in my brain by now, that it sometimes gets a bit jumbled up unless I check references.I shouldn’t write stuff off the top of my head, but look at my library first.
And I got Pellew mixed up with Palliser, who was the patron of Cook I had in mind.
Maybe this link for Pellew will work.
Gorgeous day in Adelaide- one for the ages.
Long walk and gardening. Super teev throughout the day and evening on ABC/SBS. Old friends. And yet more evidence of how lucky I was my mother convinced me to take on my cat some years back, what a beaut mate.
Fly in the ointment was the stomach-turning report on Dateline about Bahrain.
Terangeree, beer would be impossible but coffee could be done – I’m at work so you’d have to come somewhere near me. I take it you’re passing through Tokyo station?
This is sort of what I’ve been working on this weekend,
http://beingahistoryheadandotherthings.blogspot.com/2011/04/tracing-philip-schaeffer.html#comments
‘Been losing pumpkins,to bandicoots’ just as they start to get a bit of growth on. So made some wire cloches to sit over them and will see how they go.
Continuing wet has had very positive impact on pumpkins (Japonica in this area)and bananas; all very plump and healthy although banana palms need props as feet very wet and prone to falling over.
I was listening to the radio when the announcer referred to a racehorse as having the name “Global Warming Septic”. His colleague corrected this to “Global Warming Sceptic” but too late to stop a wicked seed from germinating in my mind. I think we should drop the term “climate change denier” in favour of the term “climate septic”. This is because:
1. Climate septics are full of the stuff septic tanks contain.
2. Climate septics get all their ideas from American sources.
3. Climate septics are septically contaminated by association with outfits like the League of Rights and the Central Queensland Christian Free State.
I died the Spring/Autumn cleaning thing and got rid of a lot of old broken stuff that should have been gone ages ago.
I also had a hankering for watching some plastic joker messing about, thought about watching the Insiders and decided to play Lego Batman (a videogame) instead. Far better use of my time.
I like it Paul Norton – Climate Seppos – Over paid, Overly deaf, and (I’m) over em.
Dr Honey is off to another conference, ah the life of a science widower. spent the day getting the domestics sorted, turning the basil field into pesto and the evening playing warlords, an early Ninties strategy game, on my Iphone, loved it.
25,27- funny how the truth outs.
Today is my Sunday, being spent appropriately lazily. I’m treating myself to a steak, as reward for making a pretty classic jam/jelly out of the next door neighbour’s purple guavas. Guavas, cinnamon and sugar, that’s all. I kinda wish I’d bought a pork chop instead of a steak, as this is clearly a jam with strong main-course glazing potential.
Dylwah: speaking of your basil, thanks again for the seeds. Excellent germination rate – parsley too – and strong looking babies. This despite my seedling trays being prime cat-sunning real estate when I frequently forget the milk crate prophyllaxis.
You make a good case, PN @ 25, but I think I’ll keep calling them denialists – I enjoy their outrage at being compared with Holocaust deniers too much to change.
Good to hear FDB, how is the experimental cavello negro going?
SG @ 23:
Coffee would be great. You’re in Shinjuku, aren’t you?
It will be a bit of a dash for me, though, to get there from Fukuyama and be back in time for tea.
If I can’t make it, I’m coming back up here in June.
And again in July.
And again in August…
Dylwah, I’ve rescued the cavolo nero from a blistering late “summer” caterpillar assault – thanks to the wonders of dipel – so it’s now back in full production. i.e. more than my sister and I can eat, once combined with silverbeet and bower spinach production. Next season, I’m going for fewer tomatoes and leafy greens.
Put this here because I didn’t want to break up the discussion that’s going on Saturday Salon, where I would normally have put it.
My latest poem on my blog.
http://beingahistoryheadandotherthings.blogspot.com/2011/04/poem-3.html
I like it PN. ‘Climate Septics’. There was another racehorse going round on Saturday, called Whitlam. By Elusive Quality from Weaver of Words. One to follow.
Spent Saturday in bed with a migraine, and Sunday retrieving a back yard from under the weeds here — a melancholy process, as I remember when it was full of trees.