Two years ago today, one of the funniest and best sci-fi writers ever died. Yet unlike with Pratchett or Adams, I am not overwhelmed by people sharing things about Vance. Thus:
From Nopalgarth, to the Blue Planet, to Pao, to Araminta Station, to Tschai, to Durdane, to Lyonesse, throughout the Gaean Reach, the Alastor Cluster, and the Oikumene, and back to Kaiin, the Glory of Ascolaiis, on Old, Dying Earth — wherever you go, you are by NO means forgotten!
På något sätt har grannarna fått reda på att vårat hus ska säljas innan CDA (de som förvaltar huset eftersom ägarinnan bor i Afrika) har orkat meddela oss. Read the rest of this entry
Fråga inte dina krukväxter om råd — vänd dig till en legitimerad läkare eller liknande.
Tomas has finally left, after four weeks here (plus the week at the conference), so today I’ve spent most of the day cleaning, relaxing, and reading. Read the rest of this entry
Så här ser min högerankel ut. Jag har målat en svart prick på varje bett för att lätt kunna se om det kommer några nya under natten. Lyckligtvis är det här andra natten i rad utan nya bett, så det vi gör tycks fungera! Read the rest of this entry
10 dagar kvar.
Jag och Deb var och rastade hennes hund Oscar på kyrkogården härintill häromdagen, och Deb visade mig en speciell grav som jag inte visste fanns:
Lilly E. Grey, offer för odjuret 666 (= satan). Det ligger tydligen alltid en massa mynt där för att folk lämnar kvar dem för att visa att någon varit där.
The last few days have been quite busy, especially since we do other things after the catching is done (baking, watching movies, and so on). We’ve reached 1238 searched birds, and today we finally got lice in large numbers from Song Thrush Turdus philomelos, as well as a few lice from Dunnock Prunella modularis and Treecreeper Certhia familiaris. We also got some lice from a male Goshawk Accipiter gentilis just a few minutes ago!
On the other hand, I’ve lost full control of my legs, and am walking around as an invalid, with Heidi having to support me when I want to go from the lab to the main part of the house. I’ve suffered from sleep deprivation the last few days, as I’ve been having recurring dreams about my dead grandmother. This happens every now and again, but this is probably the worst case ever. I don’t remember the actual dreams, but they leave me with the same ghastly feeling as when my father and I went to her apartment just a few days after she had died, and it looked as though she could come around a corner at any moment. I can’t describe the feeling properly, but it is haunting me, and once I wake up, I don’t fall asleep properly again that night. Maybe ten-twenty minutes every now and then, but when I fall asleep, I am gripped by the same feeling, and wake up again.
Possibly this, or possibly something else, has caused my legs to malfunction. The legs feel very heavy and stiff, but the knees feel as though they would give out at any moment, if I just put too much weight on them. I have problems lifting my feet, as it feels like I have no strength in them whatsoever. When I got up this morning, I got the same feeling in my arms as well, but that seems to have passed (though they still feel a bit weak), and I had problems focusing both when listening and when searching for lice during the first few net rounds. I really hope this will clear up tomorrow, and I’ll try to get a good night’s sleep today, even if I have to take one of Heidi’s sleeping pills.
Incidentally, we are trying to find out whether or not we could go to the bird rehabilitation center outside Gothenburg and/or Nordens Ark in early October, and collect lice from their birds. I haven’t heard back, but I’m hoping it will be okay, and that we’ll get to try to find some lice from some owls and other, larger, birds. We’ll see if any of them get back to me…
This is what the vulture cake looked like (it is now eaten…)
We were first going to make the cake in the shape of a vulture, but it turned out to be too small, so it wouldn’t have been enough for everyone (or everyone would have got a very small piece; conceivably, in this Conservative-Norm world of ours, one or two would have got divided the cake between them and the rest would have been distracted by the news that Japan got the 2020 Olympics!)
The cake was made in several steps, the most salient were the baking of two sponge cakes, one with chocolate and one without. Between these (they were too thin to cut) we put raspberry jam and some very thick custard. Whipped cream on top, and then we traced the likeness of the vulture in sprinkles. It looked too much like a crane or a goose carrying a pair of paddles:
We therefore felt obliged to write “vulture” on the cake so that there would be no embarrassing situations in which passing vulture fanciers believed we were somehow detracting from the International Vulture Awareness Day by instead celebrating an unrelated crane-based event. We could have written this in sprinkles, but Barbara thought it would be better to use some chocolate sauce, so she mixed milk and cocoa in the old Lucky Luke manner:
“If you want to make good coffee, wet half a kilo of ground coffee slightly, put it in the pot, and let it brew for an hour. Then add a horse shoe. If the horse shoe doesn’t float, you add more coffee.”
The sauce was inedible (except to Barbara, but those weird Spanish ladies can eat anything. Or so I’ve heard).
In any case, the cake was nice, and everyone became aware of vultures, and the problems they face. Or, rather, the problems they faced, as most of them are dead.
I recently came across this, a case where it is very clear what the cost of creationism is. Read the rest of this entry
I was surprised that Budskapsbyggaren still existed! So surprised that I decided to celebrate by building another great poem: Read the rest of this entry
Treeweasels 