Monday, December 29, 2008

Cooking


One of the wonderful things of Christmas is the opportunity to cook!
I have made some nice hamburgers, a lemon and orange cake, orange bread (yummy!), chorizo an chickpea soup.
I am planning a chicken pot pie for today and a nice beef stew with butternut squash for tomorrow.

And i just finished the cake for today, a spontaneous variation of a french apple pie with apricot jelly. Sweet, but yummy too!

Pew. Poor dog.

Some poor basset hound had been hit by a car. At least a month ago. A week ago some people had picked him up and kept him in a little fence. Brought him here. Could not move his hind legs, paralysed, must have been hit by a car. Other things did not work either, loosing everything. Wonderful dog. Beautiful eyes, wonderful hair, well behaved. Very grateful for the food, the cleaning, the quiet nights in the garden house and the affection and closeness we could give. Took him to the vet but not home. And cried some. 

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Christmas Lights in Hidalgo








That was nice. And Chino was chatting the whole time. A lot of people obviously went to Hidalgo tonight, to see the lights. Incredible how many lights there are, how many different decorations, palm trees, light lions from China, gleaming palm trees, houses covered with bulbs in all colors.
See for yourself!


(Video is kind of noisy, but that is just from my picture camera, sorry)


Getting better

Wow, that were some days. Hardly could move my right leg, but now it is getting better finally. My whole mouth did hurt, my shoulders and so on, must have been a pretty good bump on the street I did.

I started exercising the next day, on a stationary bicycle, that helped a lot. And yesterday I took up running again. Pew, this is so nice to be able to do that again. If I sit still for too long, or get up after sitting a while, all blood seems to rush into my right knee, but that's about it.

I am feeling good. (two '0', not more, and definitely not just one. :-)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Be careful!



Wow. Fog this morning and me on the way to see a very nice ex-colleague. Just a few minutes before. I make a sudden and quite tight right on my bicycle... or try to. It slips, i crash on the ground, my hands hurt. Shoot.

Lost a good part of a front tooth. Some skin on my hands, not to bad, and as i later can see, some skin on my knees. Even the very thick wrangler is torn and quite bloody inside.

The truck driver seeing me got out of his cabin and asked if he could help, and waited a while to see if I were fine. THANKS! That was very kind and considerate.

Called Teresa, explained, apologized and she offered me to come to help, drive me somewhere etc. Thanks for that too, I did not need it fortunately but I am very grateful for the offer.

Called the dentist, they fit me in, they treated me (with a really good and not too expensive thing) and I tried to express my thanks with a little cake, as they had done their job instead of lunch break. Thanks again!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Alarm at Night

Pew, what a night. Tired, asleep and all of a sudden: Beep, beep, beep. Firealarm. Up, rush to chico, pick him up, throw wool blanket on top of him and to the door. Smells pretty burnt too, see some smoke in his room. 

Pam still sitting there, asking me what's up? I point to the alarm. It stops. The fan starts. It is the air condition. It started to heat and must have burned off the dust so strong, it triggered the fire alarm. 

I take chico to bed (with me) and he cuddles against my back. It takes me a while to fall asleep, it still smells burnt a bit.

We all sleep a little longer.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

The merchant princes

Just finished reading the 4 books, it is Science Fiction, but with a nice twist and not to technical or outworldish. Nice, but there seems to be a real end missing.

The first book -The Family Trade - really got me, nice plot, not to fantastic, tense, clean cut. And I always loved female main characters like lady detectives, and so Miriam is a perfect fit. The story develops nice, and The Hidden Family is pretty good too. With Clan Corporate it is getting less interesting a bit, Charles Stross seems to run out of ideas, and this is definitely the case with the last book, the Merchant War.

All in all a good series, I enjoyed reading quite some.
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