“I won’t get up today, he said
“I’ll spend it lying here in bed.”
-from The Stupid Joke, by Edward Gorey

What a saying to find in your calendar upon getting to work on a Monday morning! Not that today hasn’t been good, so far; I was plied with tea and eatables at the veterinary library at nine, and this afternoon there will be a major tea party here at the main library. So I shouldn’t complain at all, should I. . .

Sweetheart, that’s not the way this thing works.

Two images from this last week. . .

On Wednesday afternoon, I got an email from Johan saying he bought a book. For people who don’t know us, I should perhaps say that this isn’t exactly an odd thing for either of us to do; hence I thought it must have been a pretty special book, for him to write and tell me. So I replied and asked him what book it was. “Well, maybe it was actually two books”, he answered. “Three?” said I. “More like four”. “Five?” “Well, roughly, but actually about six.”

It turned out to be thirty-one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On Thursday morning, I sent a goodmorning txt message from the bus to Watty, who replied that yes, possibly a good morning except he was stuck in traffic. I also txted nat, who’d sent me a message the previous evening complaining about the heat, and told her there was frost on the ground up here. She txted me back with some dried apricots, which were quite lovely, so I told her to send a few to Watty on account on him being stuck in traffic and probably in need of apricots. So from the 60th latitude, I asked for dried fruit from Turkey to be sent to England.

I like living in the information age!

Next Saturday, I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for some time: participate in a Cryptic Clues race. The concept is that you fill a car with people, get a map and a number of cryptic clues; the answer to each clue is a place on the map, and the places must then be visited in the right order. And the clues are fiendishly difficult, judging from the ones I’ve looked at from previous years. I’m sure I’ll regret my enthusiasm before the day is over, but all the same I think it will be fun.

For Swedish-speakers: quite a lot about the previous race including rules (which will be the same for this one) and sample clues.

And just to prove how true that was, I’d left a sentence half-formed in the middle of the previous.

Sheesh.

Am utterly exhausted; my head is a ball of fluff - when the phone rang a little while ago I pronounced my own last name wrong and couldn’t remember the name of the colleague I’m sharing a room with. What I did? Nothing, just had a massage, and that’s almost 90 minutes ago. I wonder what sinister drugs that massage oil contained!

No, it’s pointless even to try to work. I think I’ll have an early (and long) lunch. . .

Cassandra is, too, a puppy! OK, so she’s a cat - but we call them “the puppies” (actually we say “vovvarna”). Them’s our cats, we get to refer to them whichever way we like. Sothere. And they are both great at making puppy-eyes at you when there’s something they want, anyway. . .

All right. . . Johan’s been telling me I need to put the following quotation into Néablog. I accept no responsibility for it, however.

“[. . .] There’s dead metal, that’s angel silver, that won’t rust or pit or tarnish; and dead cloths like this; and plastics like dead wood that won’t dry-rot or get wormy or split. And strangest of all: the angels could make dead food. Food that never gets stale, never rots, never spoils. I eat it.”
“I have food like that. I smoke it.”
“No, no! Not that evil pink stuff! I mean food, food you eat. [. . .]“
John Crowley, Engine Summer, Bantam Science Fiction 1980, p 182

Cassandra is not a happy puppy. She wants to go outside on principle; all summer she and Bonadea have been allowed out as soon as either of us gets home from work, and she’ll still eagerly run up to the cupboard where we keep the cats’ collars and stand purring as we put it on her, then run meowing like crazy to the door. But then, when the door actually opens, she shrinks back and all of a sudden she’s not at all certain she wants to be outside in the nasty cold weather. But when the door is closed she makes up her mind: of course she wants to be outside! She’s a cat—she must go hunting!

Forty seconds after I’d closed the door behind her today, she was sitting on the windowsill meowing heart-rendingly. And once inside, she wandered around, telling me in no uncertain terms that she’s incredibly disappointed in me—why do I have to let it be so cold? No, not at all a happy cat.

I look forward to seeing what she’ll do when it starts snowing. . .

There’s quite a few pictures from last week’s meeting floating around the Internet by now; here is one of the Golden Master Meeting web sites.