No news is good news? Nothing much to report except the wound has not healed so I am still in lying around mode. My surgery has been postponed till Aug. 10 and I am praying for quicker healing. The plastic surgery folks have put me on a silver based cream that supposedly promotes healing and I hope it works and fast.

I've been reading Peter Hamilton's Void series on the Kindle and have started the final volume. I like it but it does seem overly complicated. Too many threads to keep untangled. Sometimes I think authors, especially those sci-fi writers who produce doorstop volumes, forget that readers so not sit down and read their books all in one sitting and might get confused by dozens of characters who disappear for long stretches. My BBBB is Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. Very different story to the one taught when I was in school. Most of my ancestors came to the new world in the Great Migration of Puritans in the 1630's but I have one who came on the Fortune which arrived a year after the Mayflower. It is very ironic that the people who left England because of religious intolerance instituted the same religious intolerance as the rule in their Massachusetts colonies.

I am in the clutches of Masterchef again which is very frustrating because cooking is out of the question at the moment. I am more of a Nigella Lawson cook than a French Laundry type cook, but I'd love to be making soup and bread this winter. But I can't carry anything very easily with the walking frame. Carrying a glass of liquid into the living room is perilous, so standing at the stove is impossible. I can read cookbooks and dream.

A few random thoughts: I am appalled and shocked by the earthquake in Japan but the ones in Christchurch, NZ, touched me more in some ways. I've visited Christchurch and the video of the destruction of the centre of the city were unbelievable. This week I'm full of affection for my Aussie home and don't want to leave but the opinion changes and will continue to change over the next few years. I am loathe to leave my garden. I suffered from a case of dermatitis from a new hand cream a couple of weeks ago; that is, my hands got a painful rash with blisters and I now, weeks later, still have skin peeling off my hands. I have very sensitive skin and any unfamiliar cream or lotion can potentially make me break out in a rash. Knitting or spinning is hard with shredded skin all over my hands. I have also been sharing my house (in addition to the Imp) with ceiling animals. I'm pretty sure I had possums at first but they were gotten rid of. Now it's rats, who are persistent. I have had weeks of listening to rustling in the ceiling despite exterminators' efforts to poison them. They are attracted to my nice warm heating ducts.