Salt and corrosion

I like to put a bad joke in my internal out-of-office messages when I'm away for an extended period. Last time I got back from leave, I had an email from a colleage saying 'no need to reply, I just wanted to get your joke'. It's nice to be appreciated. Although it's my absence that's being appreciated, so... mixed feelings.

Anyway, I have narrowed my jokes for the festive season break down to two. Which should it be, f-list?

Knock, knock!
Who's there?
Hannah.
Hannah who?
Hannah partridge in a pear tree.

What's Good King Wenceslas' favourite pizza?
One that's deep pan, crisp and even.

[Poll #1948326]

I don't want to be all Christmas, all the time, but while I am on the topic, I have seen several cards this year bearing the message MERRY AND BRIGHT. Obviously, they're quoting 'White Christmas', but is that a thing now? Picking random lines from Christmas songs? Because I am going to send out cards saying 'GATHERING WINTER FUEL' next year to baffle everyone. Or DEEP AND DREAMLESS SLEEP. That'd be festive.

(Oh, and the coconut Lindt ball? Tasted like a Lindt ball filled with coconut flavour. Shock.)

A headline today: Woman's death a warning on the dangers of squats, which I initially thought boded ill for people trying to tone their thighs. It turned out to be about housing, though.

April's books:

* The Manticore - Robertson Davies
* World of Wonders - Robertson Davies
* Dido and Pa - Joan Aiken
* Miss Buncle's Book - DE Stevenson
* Twelve Days of Christmas - Trisha Ashley
* Is - Joan Aiken
* Cold Shoulder Road - Joan Aiken
* The Little Book of Talent - Daniel Coyle

This month I read two completely unrelated books featuring main characters called Eisengrim. So that was special.

The first Eisengrim was one of the main characters in Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy, which I started last month with Fifth Business and completed this month with The Manticore and World of Wonders. I don't think I praised Fifth Business last month as much as I should have, because it was excellent. It stands alone as a complete story, but I'm not sure the other two would make any sense to anyone who hadn't read it first.

The trilogy is the story of three boys born in the same small Canadian town in the early 1900s, and revolves around the question 'who killed Boy Staunton?'. The first book tells the life story of Dunstan Ramsay, World War I veteran and history teacher; the second fills in the gaps about Dunstan's lifelong sort-of friend, Boy Staunton, a jaunty industrialist and friend of Edward VIII; the third completes the story with the life of a third boy, Magnus Eisengrim, master illusionist. Eisengrim was the last person to see Boy, so his story is supposed to be the definitive version of what happened, but, fittingly for a master illusionist, he's the most unreliable of the narrators, so it remains ambiguous. I didn't enjoy Eisengrim's tale as much as the other two; while Dunstan and Boy are believable characters, Eisengrim's awful childhood and adult success are a little over the top - but that's kind of fitting, since in the first book, Dunstan ghostwrites a fictional autobiography for Eisengrim, and there's a sense that the third book is Eisengrim writing another fictional autobiography. It's all very clever and meaty.

Anyway, I highly recommend Fifth Business, and if you like that, you'll probably like the others too. I did.

( The second Eisengrim of April, and boo, Christmas )

I am back online. Sort of. If it was only going to be a little while, I was prepared to wait until the internet connection came back, using the connection at work for paying bills and such, but today's paper confirmed that it will be 'many weeks' before our internet connection is back on (my landline isn't back on yet either). That's a bit grim, isn't it? Mobile reception is working, though, so I have bought myself a USB modem to get me through.

While I was offline, the Innovations Christmas catalogue arrived, and that's always good value. They are still offering advanced pillow technology. Side pillows, body pillows and two different head-cooling pillows. Are many people being kept awake by their freakishly hot heads? Apparently so. My pick of the gift suggestions was the washing glove stand, to facilitate air drying of rubber gloves. I want to laugh, but I'd actually like one of those. I think it would come in handy for knitting gloves. Not that I've ever knitted gloves, but I might if I had one of those stands.

My mother's friend, Colleen, lives about an hour from here, and she usually calls my mother when she is in town so they can go out to lunch. Nothing doing there, what with the aforementioned phone problems, so when she came over last Friday, she drove past my house on the off chance that my mother was visiting. (My house is not far from the nursing home where Colleen's mother lives, so it was on her way.) Colleen was in luck, as my mother was here, telling me how hard it is to buy UV-resistant lycra. (On a side note, does that seem like an unlikely thing for someone who doesn't like swimming to want to buy? I think so.) Anyway, Colleen told us about her visit to her mother's nursing home. Her mum is in the advanced stages of dementia, and lives in the secure wing that requires a PIN to enter and exit. Colleen said there was an old man waiting at the door when she went to leave, who tried to slip out behind her when she entered her PIN. She wouldn't let him, and he got quite upset, and she was relieved when she finally managed to get out and leave him behind. She found one of the staff and said that one of the residents was trying to escape. The staff member looked at the man standing on the other side of the door and said, 'Oh, no, he's just visiting his wife. He can never remember his PIN to get out.'

Livestreaming kittens! They always seem to be asleep when I look.

It feels as though someone has flicked a switch and turned on Christmas this week. It's everywhere. Decorations in the shops, carols piped in, gift catalogues in the paper. The Christmas issue of the supermarket's monthly magazine had pages of gift ideas, including a tampon starter kit in a sleek, black purse. Imagine the lucky girl who unwraps that on Christmas morning. The knick-knack section of the newsagent featured a ceramic cube with a painted slogan: MY MUM IS MY BFF. 'What's a BFF?' asked my mother, then, when I told her, 'Get me that and I'll kill you.'

Today I went to an exhibition marking the 140th anniversary of the local paper. My favourite exhibit was the front page marking the Queen's coronation. Imagine what that page would look like if that happened today. That would be the only story, wouldn't it? Maybe one big photo; maybe an introductory article leading to the pages and pages of coverage inside. That wasn't how it was done back then. The coronation story took up one quadrant of the front page. It was so short they had to fill up the column with a paragraph containing the breathless news that the Egg Board was putting up egg prices by half a shilling. Front page news!

I have been meaning to go to that exhibition for weeks, but I finally got my act into gear when I realised that this was its final weekend. In a couple of weeks, the local gallery's next exhibition will open, which will be all about pop culture aliens, including: the alien from Alien, an Ood and Matt LeBlanc's spacesuit from Lost in Space. I think I'll go to that one too.

My mother announced on Christmas day that she would be in early this morning because she wanted to buy some pillows and a stockpot. I wasn't looking forward to that at all, but the City by the Sea's House and Spotlight branches are hardly high points of the Boxing Day sales, so it wasn't too bad. I think House was busier when I passed it a few days before Christmas.

I saw a sheet of stickers of labels to put on jars of pantry items. It had the standard stuff like Flour and Sugar and Coffee, and also GF Flour and Quinoa. I remember helping my grandmother put some stickers like that on her tins of flour and such when I was little. She wouldn't have known what quinoa was and now I have two different sorts of it in my pantry. So there you go.



Day 352. Disfigured chocolate angel, Day 353. Brian has left the building (although I notice he left his coffee mug), Day 354. Bag in the air*, Day 354b. Obligatory flower, Day 355. String of baubles, Day 356. Livestock, Day 356a. Wise man surprised by giant turtle, Day 357. The north face of Mount Pavlova, Day 358. Christmas morning, Day 358a. Feather, Day 359b. Snake, Day 359c. Some loot

Only one week to go!




* My mother wanted something to put her licence in when she goes for a walk (so she can drive there without taking her whole wallet) and I saw this idea for weaving a little bag on a cardboard loom, so I made one for her. She came to visit just as I took this photo. 'Be arty,' she said. 'Throw it in the air and take the photo coming down.' Thus followed three solid minutes of me throwing it in the air and clicking while she sat on the garden chair laughing like a loon. Which may have been her plan all along.

Don't do drugs. Apart from anything else, you just don't know where they've been.

Also, I kind of admire this guy. That's commitment. What killjoy relatives, ringing the paper.

A Christmas meme:

1. Eggnog or Hot Chocolate?
Hot chocolate, I suppose. It's not really the weather for either.

( And many more )

There was a gift guide in the food lift out in yesterday's paper. One of the suggestions was a potato masher shaped like a ski pole. I would be underwhelmed if one of my loved ones gave me that. 'Oh, really, you shouldn't have.'

Christmas is all but done and dusted for me: the halls have been decked and presents have been opened and the black cat has been offered a piece of smoked salmon. Anyone would think I was trying to poison him with it, but he forced himself to eat it in the end.

Anyway, it's just not Christmas without bad jokes from the bonbons/crackers, is it? So pop on your paper hats and brace yourselves. This is what was in mine today:

Q. What do you call a penguin in the Sahara Desert?
A. Lost.

Q. How do you hire a horse?
A. Stand it on four bricks.

Q. How does Jack Frost get to work?
A. By icicle.

They get worse every year. And how exactly would you ride an icicle? Like a pogo stick?

For the first time in my life we have not made pav* for Christmas because we have so many other sweet or cakey things we decided we didn't need it. But now the day is here and the pav is not, I am feeling a bit panicky about it. It just doesn't feel right. Perhaps I will make one for New Year instead.

Anyway, whether you're celebrating or not, f-list, I hope you have a great day.


* Pavlova

Bird in the wall update: I've not heard any chirping or scuffling since I got up this morning, which I suppose means it's either out or dead. The panelling will come off later this afternoon to find out for sure.

There was a river of tiny white styrofoam balls along the road today, running down the hill. Someone's beanbag filling obviously got away. Not good for the environment, obviously, but lovely to watch: it was quite gusty and they were being blown into the air in little spirals. There's an idea for street artists looking for something new.

Also, there were workmen installing another ATM at one of the main banks. They'd cut a hole in the wall and put a large, square frame into it and were talking through it each other, one from the inside and one from the outside. So that was something a bit different.

I went to the shop to buy the papers, which normally cost $2.70 for the two I get. This morning the man behind the counter said apologetically, 'It's three-seventy today, the Age is a special double issue.' I only had three dollars with me, so he said, 'Pay the seventy cents when you come in tomorrow.' So that was nice of him. I said it would be good if the Age had thought to put that somewhere in yesterday's paper so people would know, and he said he didn't realise until after he'd sold half his stock of Ages this morning. 'So I rang Rogers [the central newsagent where he gets his stock from] to give them a piece of my mind for not telling me, and they didn't know either. I was telling them!' I suspect the Age might be getting a few phone calls from irate newsagents today.

What else? I've done almost all my Christmas shopping. The only thing left is for my mother's partner, John. He is hard to buy for, so I normally make him some gingerbread or ginger biscuits. Something with ginger in it, basically. He likes ginger but my mother doesn't and so doesn't normally buy ginger biscuits. So if I make some for Christmas, he gets something he wouldn't normally have and also doesn't have to share them. My mother said to me the other day, 'Are you making John some ginger biscuits this year? Make that recipe you used last year. I don't normally like ginger, but I loved them.' That's not the idea at all. I'll have to double the ginger component to put her off.

I have finally finished my annual newsletter thing. For newcomers (and old-timers who have better things to do than remember this), I am one of those people who do end-of-year letters. Don't worry, though, It's not just a list of all the wonderful things I have done, largely because I don't do wonderful things and it would consequently be a very short letter. This year I kept putting it off, thinking I had plenty of time, only to find that Christmas cards were starting to arrive in the mail and I actually didn't have plenty of time at all. But I managed to put a little something together and you can download it here if you'd like (this is the LiveJournal edition with personal details cunningly altered). You could print it out and pretend I sent it. Be the envy of all your friends! Or not.

Out and about today I was subjected to a jazz flute rendition of 'Joy to the World'. I could have happily lived my whole life without hearing that.

Speaking of jazz, the book I'm reading at the moment had a character wanting to buy some 'jazz-coloured balloons'. What colour would that be, do we think? ( Answer )

This morning I left the house on my way to buy the paper when I saw something icky looking in the front garden. From a distance, I thought it was dog vomit, but closer inspection revealed it was actually a sort of fungus growing on the bark chips that cover the ground. Later, I found some more growing on the straw covering the vegetable patch. So I spent part of the day finding out what it was: a type of mould known as scrambled egg slime. It's an interesting addition to my usual collection of toadstools.