I'm baaa-ck

I have not forgotten the blog. I'm back. Actually, I'm away, not back. But that's neither here nor there.

I'm posting from England, as those of you who have been paying attention will recall. I arrived yesterday morning and slept a good part of yesterday, although mostly through the night. It is now one a.m. again, and I was moved to send an email to a nearly teenage friend of mine, so I thought I'd pop on here and remind you all that I exist.

England, or at least, our little corner of it, was rainy today. It was a snuggle up in the house with an open fire sort of a day. I managed to keep the fire going for more than twelve hours, I'm pleased to report. Every time it thought it would die down, I threw another log on and it revived. We also spent a good bit of time dead-heading geraniums in the greenhouse, and I helped my Mum remove the tomatoes which had grown a lurgy of sorts and were covered in white fly.

After dinner and during a haphazard discussion of Jason and the Argonauts (or Jason and the Chicken Nuggets as one two year old I know refers to it as) I was moved to Google exactly who the Furies, Muses, Graces and Harpies were. I could tell you, but someone would correct my pronunciation. And at this time of night, my transliterate-spelling.

I'm half way through the latest Harry Potter book again, for the second time in two months. At least this time I can skip the bits where Ron and Hermy are getting on one anothers nerves. I'm sort of looking for clues about what has happened and what's to come. I also started Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis (you might have heard him on NPR), and Murder Plays House, by Ayelet Waldman. I'm reading Half Blood Prince as "comforting" jet lagged night time reading. Word Freak is good, and he's not kidding. I thought I was doing well by completing 300 point (Scrabble) games, but these people are making nearly 600 points per game! I obviously have a lot to learn, or memorise, if it comes to that. Not that I'm planning on competing. I play for fun. And I find doing a lot of crosswords has really helped me develop my Scrabble skills.