Looking seaward

Yesterday Jiora took me for coffee to a big marina which has been gentrified since the last time I was there, probably around ten years ago. The truth is that its polished, suburban image is not what usually calls to me when I think about walking along the water on a sunny day, but it was clean and relatively quiet and there were lots of bikes, but still room to walk.

At one end of the marina is a sort of boat museum. This is the back
and front (or face!)
of a faithful reproduction of a really old boat with oarsmen below and fighters on the deck.
Here's a newer warship.
And this is the view from where we were sitting, sipping a decent decaf latte:
The weather is just getting better and better.

You carry it well, Elvis.

Of course the sis found the link to the news story about the Jimmy look-alike.

An aside: Why do I even waste my time with technology? It takes me ages to be a failure at it and it takes other people a second to do it right. Good thing I don't have self-esteem issues. Except for currently looking like a cross between Gollum and Miss Piggy (just blend the ugly parts of each).

Elvis the German cat weighs 14 kilos, apparently, whereas Jimmy weighs only 6. So why does Jimmy look bigger? Weird. I guess Elvis just carries it well. But if you go to the link you'll see a picture of the reportage. Unfortunately, you can't watch a video.

Do you feel like discussing the a-holeness of letting your cat become the fattest cat in Germany through overfeeding it and then giving it up for adoption because it has health problems related to obesity? Not really? Okay. Moving on.

Saturday I had a nice morning with Jiora at Marina Floisvou. I took lots of pictures with my cell which I can't post because of the technology involved in uploading pictures from my cell to the computer. I will get K to do it for me soon and post them all when I get back to the rat's nest from the Priests' Hole on Sunday. Jiora and I did quite a bit of walking (don't get too excited; "quite a bit" by current standards isn't all that much). Then came home and got the worst leg pains ever, so popped some strong drugs.

I am high on painkillers. Maybe that's why I have insomnia.

PS: Did everybody remember to participate in Earth Hour?

I wrote this Saturday night but the computer spontaneously blinked off and I let it go so the time/date stuff is weird in this post. Some I changed/edited, some I didn't.

Jimmy on the news?!?!?!

The perch demands its 15 minutes...

So I was making chicken pot pie for the fourth time in 10 days and had Alpha tsannel on in the living room. Kind of a lightish newscast, nothing like Star, but not tiring like the one where people yell at each other about politics till your ears ring. And I popped in to get an ingredient from the fridge. [You know the fridge is in the living room of the rat's nest, right? Cause the fridge is bigger than the entire kitchen, and until I remodel the kitchen, 10.000 euros from now, le frigo se trouve dans le salon.]

And Jimmy, Jimmy exactly:

was on TV!!! Except as the "fattest cat in Germany", looking for a new home for some reason. Exactly like Jimmy, except not as big!!! Aughgh! But you have to realize it was the same to the detail, like if Jimmy was a breed, the same exact example. And his face markings and stripey sides and absolutely everything-- carbon copy. AUGH! Except smaller! I've spent over half an hour trying to find some kind of a link and will not give up!

I don't know why this cheered me up because the rest of the day was black. A big volcano of thickened Sharpie ink spilling out and covering everything. Wasted morning trying to get chemeo, sent away due to low platelets after three hours of waiting. I am becoming more and more negative about this therapy working because my blood can't manage to keep up with the treatments and I keep getting sent home. The regimen is supposed to go like clockwork and mine is like a broken watch where you keep noticing that you forgot to wind it. I'm not saying that to be overdramatic, it's just the fact. At some point you throw the watch out, people, and get a brand new Casio and forget about it. The Casio is looming on the horizon.

BUT JIMMY WAS ON TV!!!

Hugest rat's nest news: Bathroom door installed! Heavy slider. Privacy for all! Guests don't have to pee in the dark with the TV turned up for a modicum of privacy. BIL doesn't have to pee at Everest to maintain a sense of propriety! Bonus: They had sent the wrong door frame molding, which the installer picked up on before setting out, so he brought the right stuff and I got to keep the extra molding. Not bad. You can always use that for a project... Not sure what but G will think of something, I bet.

The life-giving visitors arrive soon...
Tuesday the 13th. Unlucky day for people in this country because Smyrni was invaded on Tuesday the 13th.
Tuesday the 13th. Lucky day for me!!! It's like when you reclaim a bad word and use it differently and change its connotation and piss off the people that used to use it against you. (Also Eva insists it's a lucky day cause she was born on Tuesday the 13th.)

Happy Monday

You'll be glad to know I don't have the swine flu.
We can all go back to eating pork chops now.

Oinkety oink

Still at the rat's nest,

in about half an hour I have to take another Tamiflu pill, prescribed today by the onco, who is (slightly) afraid that my cold could be swine flu!!! She swabbed my throat and we'll know for sure on Sunday morning.

Dear Al,
Dude. If you gave me the f-ing swine flu after telling me it was allergies, bite me.
Love, Miss Piggy

PS It's bad enough looking like Miss Piggy without having her species' illness too.

Off the hook for giving me swine flu are the 'rents, who both got the jab in the Fall.
Kazzie and her Mom could not get the jab due to the very existence of the Kaz.

ALSO: THE BATHROOM DOOR IS HERE! DELIVERED BUT NOT INSTALLED. I KNOW EVERYBODY WAS DYING TO KNOW.

cioccolato gianduia con nocciole intere

Reporting from the rat's nest...

Forget for a few moments that sugar feeds cancer. Remind yourself that rebelling is a way to assert free will and make you feel like you have some control in a world where you have very little control. Now open wide.

Two steps back. Last year for work I researched/wrote an article about the chocolate industry for an upper-level textbook of which we were all really proud. Lots of good issues were explored in the various texts presented. Anyway, the things I learned about the level of child labor, including child slave labor, employed in the chocolate industry made me cry at my computer screen. The way chocolate is harvested and the distance of the fincas from urban centers means that work-related accidents often lead to death for these child workers. Around seventy percent of the chocolate produced worldwide is done in a way that should make us feel deeply ashamed to consume it. So I swore that I would only eat/buy fair trade chocolate from then on. I have been pretty good about this, not perfect. One exception is that I sometimes send my brother a certain wafery thing from here that reminds us of our childhoods. Not an excuse, though.

What does it mean to eat only fair trade chocolate? Deprivation and huge expense? Hardly. Think about it. How tasty is the waxy, hard, artificial, mass-produced rubbish used in supermarket chocolate? One bite of the good stuff is worth ten crummy candy bars.

Tonight K stopped by the fair trade store on Nikis Street and got me a chocolate bar with whole hazelnuts that is unbelievable. A rare treat that is all the more enjoyable because it is made carefully, responsibly, fairly. So when you're going to break the rules, do it right. Yummety yum.

Kazzie Appreciation Society

The rat's nest

has been doubling as the headquarters for the newly formed Kazzie Appreciation Society, and I am the president and founding member. Okay, don't you love the name Keziah? Am I the only one?!?!? It means wild cinnamon bush. And it's a family name. So perfect and beautiful, right? K and the bro-in-law picked something else but I maintain my position and continue calling Kazzie, Kazzie, hoping that it'll stick.

Yesterday the K.A.S. actually received two nutter crank calls. The phone number looked like K's, so I answered "Kazzie Appreciation Society." But it wasn't her, it was some nutter trying to speak English with an eerie high-pitched voice. Who called back again. So I hung up on him/her but it was weird.

I have knitted two spazzie bibs for my niece. Tonight I may start a chevron burp cloth. Chemeo brain has not been allowing me to knit anything much more complicated.

In other news, the bathroom door is ready! Tomorrow I find out when it can be installed. Finally, finally, finally.

Still trying to get over the nasty cold. I think I have to blame my new office mate Al for giving me this cold. He was sniffling the other day, and I said, it sounds like you're coming down with a cold, as I recoiled. And he said it's not a cold, but allergies. Isn't it kind of early for allergy season, though? So despite my best intentions to get in four days at the office this week, it looks like it's gonna be just Wed and Thur because I'll probably have to stay home tomorrow too.

Your friend,
Mrs Potato Head
aka
Marshmallow Face
aka
Allergic to Bee Stings and Just Got Stung in the Face by about Twenty Bees

(gotta love those steroids, man)

Temple in the middle of nowhere

This site had closed 25 minutes before we got there. It wasn't our destination but it was on the way. A temple for Artemis, if I recall, photographed too late in the day to look decent, and from too far away.


It was last week or the week before, I don't remember. This is the little helper building. I love little stone buildings.

And later we walked along the beach, where there were kids playing in the chill.

And then a very good coffee on a squishy leather sofa. And then sweet bread (not sweet breads) from the best place around to get sweet bread. It turned my mood around.

But today I'm battling a cold. With the help of K's chicken pot pie recipe. I cancelled my lesson and my lunch guests and am hoping that I'll be well enough to go to work tomorrow...