Wednesday, December 17, 2008



It's berry time here in Canberra, loganberries, and boysenberries mostly but a surprisingly large crop of raspberries too. I'd like to get enough to make raspberry jam but that will be pushing it. Besides, raspberries are so wonderful to eat on their own. To the left you have a small portion of one evening's picking and the first of the world famous mixed berry jam. To th
e right you have the Imp in the sink of the remodeled bathroom. She is trying to figure out her relationship with this bathroom since I am using it while the toilet in the ensuite leaks. Plumber arrived this AM and supposedly fixed leak. She doesn't like this sink as much as the other one but she loves the bathtub.

Obviously I am alive and 90% recovered. I still have a sore throat and a nagging little cough which I hope means nothing. I am still very short on energy and get tired very quickly. I think I'm going to forget about planting corn and may plant more beans or something else easy. I have little energy for gardening and earlier this week I fell onto the driveway while trying to tug down some dying foliage (or as our bus driver in Kaui kept calling it, foilage). I have another spectacular bruise on my left thigh/hip and felt very shaken up.


Book report: I just finished the 4th volume in S.M. Stirling's post-apocalyptic series that begins with Dies the fire. The next volume is out but only in hardback so I await... Very compelling plot with lots of action. Tends to revel in gore, however. Have moved on to Iain M. Banks's Matter, which is one of his Culture novels. I looked at the size of it and doubted my attention span but I find myself on page 262. As usual there are multiple stories played out simultaneously and at differing levels of the Culture. I really like these novels but they are like nothing else I've ever read in sci-fi. They are beautifully written and complex, yet the characters make the whole complexity make sense. Any reader who is not familiar with his work should be made aware that his novels written as Iain Banks are in a different style and setting from these. The confusion must have gotten to somebody because this one is the first I've seen labeled as a Culture novel on the front. Start with Consider Phlebas or The Use of Weapons.

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