Why the correct filing of food is essential ...

Well, by the time I get around to posting this Margo should be well on her way to being the owner of the first certifiably new computer she's ever had. Yep, I've just ordered her a spanking new Samsung N150 netbook, in bright red (if that interests anyone). What she wants is a little computer that she can take with her to shows and salons and such-like, and it should fit the bill quite nicely. Enough grunt to do what she wants, and small enough to shove in her handbag (I admit, she has a large handbag) and go with it. I will, of course, have to spend some time setting the little sod up: it comes with Windows 7 starter - in Frog, yet - which is apparently a complete and utter pile of dog turds, so that'll have to go. So I shall have to install some Linux distro or another on it - luckily there's any number of how-to guides on the intartoobs on how to do that - and set up OpenOffice so it's fit for purpose, but I think I should be able to handle that. Apparently the Ubuntu remix Just Works, out of the box - I hope that I'll be pleasantly surprised and find out that that turns out to be the case. Stranger things have happened at sea.

A fairly typical month of May so far: the weather's absolutely foul. Starts out fine in the morning and then turns to thunder and rain around midday, and doesn't let up after that. It's only been four days so far, but I'm still getting exceedingly bored with it. Supposed to continue until the middle of next week too, which fails to thrill me. At least things are supposed to get better around the 20th, which'd be really good as we're planning our big Spring BBQ for the 23rd - bring bottle and bird. If any of you happen to be in the vicinity, feel free to turn up; there'll probably definitely be more than enough booze so just bring bird and whatever meat you feel like eating, and I'll char it for you.


We get Malyon back for a week at the end of the month: she finishes her exams on Monday, makes whoopee and then comes over, cunningly arriving two days too late for the barbecue. Them's the breaks when you look for the cheapest flights, I suppose: maybe I should stick a pork chop in the fridge for her. Whatever, it'll be rather good to see her. (Thank heavens for Skype - if it didn't exist I suppose someone would have to invent it. Makes it so much easier to have hour-long chats with the family diaspora. Although Margo does have the habit of holding the webcam upside-down to bring the mike to her mouth, which I imagine must make it sound pretty funny at the other end. Perhaps Mal has her speakers the wrong way up.)

Today being Thursday it's a public holiday in this here resolutely secular republic: Ascension. And being a Thursday, world+dog will be taking Friday off too, which means a four-day weekend, which means that half the country will be on the road, trying to find somewhere it's not raining. Personally I'm trying to think of things to do instead of some of the work I really should be doing, elevating procrastination to an art form. Been pretty successful so far.

It was even fine enough to incite me to drag the camera out and go for a wander up in the hills behind us. (Well, it wasn't actually foul enough to make the joys of coding and testing SQL stored procedures seem preferable.) I always take the camera with me on such occasions, ever since one time years ago when, about an hour from the house, I came across a pair of salamanders being beastly in the path in front of me. At the time I could probably have gotten away with taking a photo without risking being put inside for possession of lizard porn.

And by the time I got home from that, it was getting on time to think about getting dinner ready, which brings me, in an albeit roundabout manner, to why it is so vitally important to label those otherwise anonymous ice-cream containers of leftovers before sticking them in the freezer to await the day of judgement and the resurrection of the flesh, and also why stumbling around bleary-eyed and bare-footed in the kitchen at some ungodly hour of the morning before having borged the first coffee of the day is perhaps not the best of times to go hunting for something to turn into dinner. For not only does Jeremy, literal-minded lad that he is,  take the ice-cream containers to be full of ice-cream (and consequently, when he finishes the last tub of real ice-cream it doesn't go on the shopping list and we have leftover frozen curry for dessert), but when Mr. Brain is not yet fully-awake just about any leftover looks like bolognaise sauce, at which point your choice for the menu du soir becomes pretty self-evident ie lasagna.

As a result of neglecting these two elementary precautions, we're going to find out what cassoulet lasagna tastes like. I suspect it'll be ... interesting. On the bright side, the dog has no taste buds and will eat anything that's left (despite a tendency to fish out the bits of carrot, and she doesn't like rice) and the most complicated part is making the cheese sauce. Helps if Jerry hasn't finished all the grated cheese, of course.

Another important food hint: don't eat raw slugs. If you do, and happen to be Australian (or are eating raw Australian slugs) you could, apparently, catch rat lungworm disease. If, that is, your slug has been eating rat shit; and of course, that's the sort of question one so often forgets to ask of one's meal before sitting down to a snack. So, children, always either cook or interrogate your slugs before eating them. I'm not an expert on invertebrates, still less on gastropodia, but I'd suggest perhaps a well-seasoned fricassée, served in puff pastry shells  - but then again, if you're the sort of person who eats slugs you probably neither want nor need my advice. Come to that, you may well feel - with some justification - that someone who mixes cassoulet and pasta is hardly qualified to give lessons. Whatever, just saying.

That's all rather disgusting, so I'm off to watch Bones. And should ever a BBC series called "Luther" come your way, do watch it. Not that you'll die if you don't or anything so drastic, but you would regret it. Well, technically, if you didn't watch it you wouldn't regret not having done so, or vice versa, but you get my drift.