Drinking Midnight Wine
My “I need to read at the airport and REFUSE to take Dart-Thorntot with me” book. A Simon Green, but less dark than his usual stuff, which was refreshing. Quite odd and very entertaining; I was worried it was going to morph into needing a sequel but this story has avoided it, although of course there is always room for another with the same characters. Highly recommended.
Now I need to get back to the Deathstalker series, but a) I think I’ll have to read the lot again, and that will be a bit painful – they’re so dark; and b) I know something bad is going to happen (thanks a lot, Kate). So I’m in denial.
Walkerville book sale
Well, yes… the most expensive book I bought was $2… I bought 10 books. For $11. I felt a bit guilty, but hey; good books, and cheap! There were stacks of people there… if I’d had time I think I probably could have picked up even more (I would have had to grab a bag in order to do so, though). As it was, I am glad they didn’t weigh my bag at the airport since I was just a little over the limit.
So what did I get? Good question, so glad you asked:
A Short History of the World, by none other than HG Wells
The Last Plantagenet, by Tyler White (that’s about Richard III, in case you’re wondering)
The Borgias, by Michael Mallett (which I started reading at the airport, and got a fair bit read because the plane was late in leaving; more readable than I had expected)
Journey among Warriors, by Eve Curie (yes, the daughter; no idea what this is going to be like)
The Idea of History, by Collingwood (hurrah! for $1, no less!)
Firebird, by Muchael Asher (some conspiracy novel)
Empyrion Omnibus, by Stephen Lawhead (confused me no end when I saw the title and it not by Simmonds; looks good)
The Chosen, by Ricardo Pinto (some fantasty schlock, I expect; interesting to try)
and Running with the Demon, by Terry Brooks (I’m feeling a bit guilty about not having read the entirety of the Shannara series).
Some Edith Pargeter (aka Ellis Peters) novel, which I actually left in Adelaide so as to save room in the bag
So that’s the lot. Very exciting. I also came home with one of Mum’s books, which she has donated to the cause (of teaching, that is): Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosaling Wiseman, which she says is excellent and well worth reading as a teacher. So that should be good.
Houseboat on the Styx
This was one of the books Mum got at the Walkerville Libarary/Council book sale – more about that later. She bought it on Saturday; it’s a little book, and only 170 or so pages on that lovely thick paper they used to use, so I read it all that day. It is one of the funniest little books I’ve read in a long time… and that edition was published in 1925! And it said it was the 28th impression! It’s by a guy called John Kendrick Bangs, which is hilarious in and of itself. The premise of the book is conversations between people in the ‘good’ part of Hades. Think Shakespeare, Napoleon, Nero (?!), Dryden… it was actually laugh-out-loud funny, which is fairly rare for me; Mum got a bit sick of me reading out the great one-liners before she got a chance to read it. I think the funniest bit I remember is Nero saying that the only thing he hadn’t murdered was the English language – and that directed to Dr Johnson. HA HA HA. I thought it was funny.
Water change
J came home; he was almost as distraught as me about the fish. We did a water change right there and then. J isn’t convinced that the ammonia is a result of lack of water changes… thinks the filter is working all right and all, so it shouldn’t be a problem… we wonder whether the tests might be past their use-by, since we’ve had them forever. Must check that.
Also did a water change on the main tank. Looks better with water to the top.
The reason for water changes
I have been at J for a number of weeks to do water changes in both the tanks. I really wanted to do it two weekends ago; I really, really wanted to do it last weekend. I didn’t push enough. A couple of days ago the water in the qt started looking a bit cloudy, and J agreed we would do one this weekend. I looked in on them when I came home and gave them some food. Two hours later, I looked in the qt again and two of the half-grown fry are dead – just lying on their sides in the tank. I have done tests; ammonia is up, and the pH test reads about 6 or so but I don’t trust it, and I can’t find the tube for the other test we have.
So I should have pushed harder and done water changes when they were needed. We are way too slack about doing it, particularly in the qt; the main tank gets away with it because it has two filters and lots of plants. The qt does not have this luxury.
Cecilia Dart Thornton #2
She is driving me nuts. I can’t stand her style at all – way too purple for me, I’m just not that visual – and I don’t like not knowing what words mean, and besides I think she is just being gratuitous in using them. However, I am half-way through the third book because the story is just interesting enough to keep me going. I am very much looking forward to finishing them and getting back to something a little less tortured.
Flowers and stuff
Don’t recall whether I mentioned that the hyacinths flowered – 2 out of 3, anyway. That was very exciting, and they smelled fantastic; they’re dead now. Yesterday morning I discovered that I had a miniature daff flowering, and at least one other is on the verge… AND one of the other bulbs also has a flower! Not sure if it’s a Bell or a Moonlight Thing; must check the packets to compare.
In other news, I dug up a struggling azalea today, and I hope it appreciates the efforts I went to in doing that and actually survives; no idea if I got enough root mass, but it was not very happy at all behind the hedge. Neither is the other one, but I haven’t got any more potting mix so it will have to wait. So will the tiger lily seeds which Kate gave me the other day, which was very exciting to come home to – a bromeliad as well, and a fuchsia cutting!! It was such a lovely thing to come home from school to.
Other things are going well. Mum massacred the roses, but they needed it; they are already growing back. New zygo is flowering – old zygo has been a mass of flowers for a few weeks now – coriander is still growing! All very good.
Things Fishy
I only realised last night when I was showing off the fish tank to some friends that there is basically no algae left in the tank – no bad, nasty, take-over-the-tank algae anyway, which is really all I was worried about. So this is highly exciting but makes me realise that I have been neglecting my fish a little. However, on my way home also yesterday, I went via Coburg. I bought some more of the feathery plant – Condamine or something? – because there was nothing of it left in our tank. I also bought a bristlenose catfish… and two little silver angels… It took J quite a long time to notice them in the qt, because they are the same colour as the mollies. They cost me $14 (all up); I could have got them for $3.95 each, but the tank that had that price on them only had fish that looked red around the gills and even some around the base of the fins, so I thought it best to go for the more expensive and more of a chance of surivival.
I have spent a large part of today watching Ajax (a large part of my fish-tank-watching time, anyway, which is not necessarily a large part of the actual day) …which reminds me, I noticed a stowaway on the new plants yesterday but by the time I got to pulling it out of the water, he had transferred himself to a different plant. So I was quite worried about a snail plague (which J thought might mean buying clown loaches). However, this morning when I was doing some planting and pruning, I found the stowaway snail! I have put him in the qt, in memory of the other, rather more bewildering pop-up snail who got washed out when we moved house. Anyway, Ajax: he has been remarkably active today and very fun to watch. Even J agreed.
Mars Attacks
Of course I’ve seen this before; I’m watching it right now to prepare for Film Studies. Very funny. I like it. Students might not get all the funny bits, though, since I’m sure most/all won’t have seen all that many old scifi movies such as this movie is based on. I’m sure there are lots of sly gags that I don’t get, because I haven’t seen the right movie.
Which reminds me: I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Independence Day, but I don’t remember ever noticing the start-up screen message and sound when Jeff Goldblum’s character, David, opens his laptop: “Good morning, Dave.” HA HA HA. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud in class since I didn’t think the kids would think it was that funny.
Books I am in the middle of
There’s quite a few. Mostly history books that I have begun and got bored of/waylaid from. It’s guilt-making – which is a bit silly in itself, really, because why do I insist on feeling beholden to a book, for goodness’ sake? But here’s a sample:
History of London Bridge – I think I got up to about the last chapter of this and then got waylaid. I should go back and just finish it off, but her style got on my nerves a bit.
History of London – Peter Ackroyd’s bio of the place – is not really designed to be read from cover to cover, I think. The chapters are essentially vignettes, and I should read them as such. I should actually read them…
Something about Emma and Enid, the last two ‘English’ queens (ie before the Norman Conquest; actually Enid is the last, since Emma is French herself…). This was a really full-on bio, and I found it quite hard to read and fairly dry. I should try it again now that I’m actually teaching the period and have a better, if still rudimentary, knowledge of it.
Chaos – James someone wrote it (Gleick, J says; I pronounce it Glike, he Gleek…) – I started it mainly to see how my attempt at reading real science would go, albeit something written for a fairly lay audience. After a while, poorly, it turns out. It was interesting, but…
1066: the year of the three battles. Begun the first time I was teaching this period. A bit too much military stuff for me; I just don’t have the head for that sort of info… I find it hard enough visualising which way north is, let alone anything else.
And there are a few more books on the shelf, throwing accusatory stares my way every time I start a new book rather than finishing them off…
Randomly Yours, Alex 