The kitten lies in the hammock that's part of a cat tower. I'm pretty sure who he would save from a burning house, the hammock or me.

Best Buy Ever.

(The kitten came free.)

Is that cheese?

Congratulations!

As if there wasn't enough insanity/evil to spread around.

I just finished a book I won't name, because if you can't say something nice...

Still, around two third of the book, I thought, 'We're not going there, aren't we?' We did go there.

There are two types of story endings I don't ever want to see:

'It was all a dream'

&

'It was all in his head.'

The one on the lower right. Such perfect side-eye.

I have a better memory than I thought I had.
I remembered reading this, seven years ago, and I now smiled and chuckled along with my seven-year-younger self.

I hope you're not stopping? That restaurant review was fun but I'd miss the family columns.

May Chuck be better than you hope and may the chemo be a nothingburger embuggerance.

I don't even know that brand, yet I know I can agree totally.

I was very lucky (I mean: Google?!) to find a mill here in Czechia that grinds local wheat & accepts orders, from 4 to 60+ kilos of flour.
They send it out once a week, for logistic reasons & to guarantee it will always arrive within two weeks.
So I'm sorted for organic, stoneground wholemeal & rye.

It may depend if you cross borders?
I was always travelling while having long hair & beard & shabbily dressed.
It seemed too risky to have the loose leaf tea in a pouch, or in my case more likely a plastic bag.

I was always asked where I went & what I carried. Having the shop packaging seemed wise.

A poppy flower I hadn't even planted has been rising up close to one of my shed walls. The poppy grew itself a way through the netting for my tomatoes who still have to be placed there. More and more wildflowers grow close to the wall, so I'm thinking about placing the tomatoes somewhere else. That's not a problem. Removing the netting without hurting the poppy probably will be. We'll see. Pretty red poppy though.

I had rice with coconut milk & fruit for breakfast, and ate what was left for lunch, so a nice and cosy start of the day.

I'm too lazy to get up but my one and only big poppy is flowering, so that counts for peaceful?

No complaints about either adjective anyway.

May calm & peaceful find you too.

I stopped travelling quite some time ago but I remember I started travelling with various loose leaf teas, bought in my* teas store and still unopened, in my mid-twenties, so I must have done it close to three decades.

*Of course I was someone who had and talked about 'my' tea store.

awww

Someone here got an insane review by a reader who was offended that the writer had dared to introduce humour to a genre that should be free from humour.

(I can't remember but I guess some incel with firm opinions about his favourite genre; I'm guessing SF or fantasy.

I would have gone for the salad for the first one. (That recipe looks good though.)

It does depend a bit?

I write pretty sloppy first drafts, because my overall goal is to get to the end of it.

So, halfway through, I may realise (for instance) that a certain character requires more depth (or removing) but I will only act on that after the first draft is done.

I started snacking on frozen watermelon again. I'll keep doing that - but I will add this to my repertoire. In a slightly simplified form. Without the walnuts. I have three walnut trees and the first few years I overdid things, walnut-consumption-wise.

Damn. The shop is out of courgettes, till Monday. Oh well, I'll survive.

Just what I need! Thank you.

Still only one thing to say after listening to the pod & debriefing:

'Oy!'

You would know this, I'm sure, but wasn't PN supposed to have a really big brain too?

This is a novel though, not a novella, so the old minimum price was €6 (and a bit.)

Pic of the front book cover. Really hard to describe, so let's start with the easy bits. Author name above: Jan Thie Title below: In Meg we trust. Illustration: a cropped pic that started out as a photo of part of my house, close to the front door. The roof is snow-covered and icicles hang from the gutter (and from wherever else they can hang). The small outside lamp is on. In the cropped pic this means the icicles seem to shine from within. The open door is merely a black rectangle with icicles covering the top of it. The snow-covered roof is a ghostly blue that becomes a dark blue where the sky starts. It has a slightly alien feel to it, which is helped by a twig of ivy that has escaped the snow and now resembles the V of a bird (or a spaceship.)

For sale now, only at the Bald Satan Shop, unfortunately - and 'thanks' to scandalous Amazon blackmail, I had to make the books more expensive: $8.17 for the paperback and $3.50 for the ebook.

#Booksky
#NewBook

Being there

I don't even want to be tall. Average, or a bit under, would be totally fine.

I merely object to feeling like Danny DeVito each time I'm facing some 30-year-old (or younger) Dutch guy.

(I read that thanks to these baby-bloomers, we are now the on average tallest country in the world. Bastards!)

Decades ago I visited my parents. The door bell rang and since I was closest I opened the door.

A young guy stood there. Later my parents explained he was the neighbours' kid. I had babysat him but the last time I'd seen him he was about belt height. Now he was at least a head taller than me.

I am, or was, of average height. Up till thirty years after my birth that remained true, until the bastard babies born in the late Eighties or early Nineties, shot up from that respectable average of 1.80* to create an average of 2 metres** or a bit more.

*5.9 foot
**6.5 foot.

Have your eyes closed throughout, maybe wearing earplugs that take down the orchestra to a murmur and will probably* still allow you to hear when someone starts singing.

Make sure to keep your eyes closed when you pretend you're in a pub, listening to people doing karaoke.

*If not: such a shame.

He put you through the DT mangle, so something unrelated? (If you ever can say that.)

So, Needful Things.

It is one wild carnival ride and his absolute funniest book (if you're a bit warped.)

It is serious and sad in places (and I still don't know what Sk has against dogs) but it's mostly fun.