Slocombe's revenge

Dear Internet humans!

Slocombe the cat here. I've taken it upon myself to update you, because 'someone' has been going to work this week and leaving me all alone. That is not a very wise move, because then I get up to no good...

Even though I'm a retired ancient cat, I'm pretty sharp mentally, if I do say so myself! Someone noticed her avocado plant (raised from the compost heap) hasn't been looking so good in the past few days. She brought it in when the frosts came in the fall, and it's been fine, until the past week or two...

Here is a photo of it from a few months back:

What she finally figured out tonight, was that due to her office visits the past weeks, I've been lacking in 'structured outside time' on my lead! I like nature and smelling the fresh Essex air and getting a little dirt under my paws. To make up for it, I figured out how to balance myself on the plant pot, and, uh, water it.

Yes, I have a perfectly fine and functioning litter box.

Why must I do this then?

-->Because I'm terribly bored since someone leaves me here alone all day, and I don't have a balcony cat flap!

So now, she's finally figured out the mystery of why her avocado is suddenly keeling over and damp...because she caught me in the act. Drat! Curses! Foiled again!

Well, it's only Tuesday, and she's at the office through Friday this week. I can think up some new mischief in the meantime...

back in the saddle

I am very blessed to be able to spend most of my time working from home. However, I acknowlege, appreciate and validate that blessing by periodically coming to the office when requested by my employer. As I only go into the office 2 days on average per month, when I go in, I make the best of it and I go in with bells on.

Starting tomorrow, I need to go in for the entire week. Periodically, I spend a week in Germany in the office, but it's been at least 18 months since I last spent a week in my local UK office.

My lunch is packed and in the fridge.
My pc, notebook, office key and badge are all packed in the backpack, as are my cereal and office snacks.
It takes me about 25-28 minutes to walk to the office.
The weather report has been reviewed and my clothes are selected and set aside.
My main alarm and backup are set.

Now, all I need is for Monday morning to begin...

ask and you shall receive

Looking out at the front balcony this morning while on work calls, something caught my eye:

Once I was finally off the phone, I was able to investigate further:

It's a fluffy white feather, which somehow drifted onto the wet clothesline, and then remained there. I never get birds (or feathers!) on the clothesline or on the balkon because Slocombe is a fierce and mighty presence. I do occasionally see blackbirds on the roof however, or pigeons lower. It's quite a fluffy feather:

You may recall that my mother periodically sends messages, but she prefers the back balkon, so I don't think this one was from her.

Of course the internet is the source of all knowledge. Tiny white feathers are either an angel's calling card, or specifically related to a Guardian Angel. When I looked out a few hours later the rain had dried and the feather had moved on.

A few days ago, I asked for a sign. I guess I got it.

The balkon garden: oregano

It was mild in my corner of Essex today, around 11 degrees, and not raining during the day. Most of the garden is looking like it is supposed to in wintertime.

One of the few bits of green that I have is the oregano that I started from seed outside last summer:

Once we get some warmer temps in a few months, I expect this to go crazy. I was curious to see if it would survive the snows and our numerous days of below freezing temps, especially being in a container rather than the ground, and it has done much better than I anticipated.

The plastic bag vending machine at Stansted

Forgot your plastic ziploc bag for your carry-on liquids? No problem, for 1 GBP you can get one from the vending machine in Stansted.

• Kinda clever to use a design similar to a kiddie gumbal machine, like the ones you often see that cost two quarters in the US or 1 GBP here.
• Kinda highway robbery, 1 GBP (1.20 EUR/1.58 USD), for a plastic baggy. Especially so, when you consider that more often than not I've forgotten to put an item or two, such as my eyedrops, contacts, or blistex into the separate plastic baggy, and I've never been called out on it.

When I was in Germany last month, they didn't even bother to ask people to show their plastic bags or to separate out their liquids from their hand-luggage. Everything went through the x-ray in Frankfurt and the very serious Germans took a long time to look at my backpack on the screen.

Herr X had something identified on the screen and Frau Y asked if she could search my bag. However, my bag has many zippers and she was not finding what she wanted, so I peered over to see what they spotted. In my 'school' section, I carry a small metal pencil sharpener, it is encased in a metal capsule to catch the shavings. I pulled it out.

Ach so! says Frau Y, and holds it up for Herr X.

Herr X: Ach so! Eine kosmetisch yadda yadda.

Yes--my 'cosmetic pencil sharpener' and I have spent over two days here, that was long enough, thank you.

And they didn't give a rat's behind about all my liquids like my hand sanitizer, eyedrops, contacts etc. rolling around in the various pockets, sans plastic bag. But all that brainpower was working hard to confirm that my pencil sharpener was authorized to travel internationally to the US.

Tonight's frugal dinner: Polish cauliflower with a twist

A long while back, I mentioned that I had made Polish cauliflower.
I like to eat as frugally yet healthily as possible, meaning, I want to eat well, but cheaply. ;-)

Here was tonight's modification to that original version:

It's one quarter of a cauliflower (from France) 4 mid-size carrots (from in the UK, East Anglia), 1 spring onion, olive oil-based butter, and bread crumbs.

Throw the carrots in a pot of almost boiling water for a few min, add in the cauliflower for another brief few min, and then separately melt the butter with the breadcrumbs and chopped up spring onion, which should be ready in under a minute. Put the cauli and carrots into a bowl and then pour the contents of the other pot on top.

The reason for the dish?
Tonight, I went to Essex Boot Camp, where I had a groupon offer from December. It's a might fun way to spend an hour on a Tuesday evening, traversing through the park and then doing push ups around a tree and other silly but generally varied tasks. After all that fitness, I thought it best to skip the pizza deals mentioned yesterday. ;-)

As well, I've been finding a lot of good deals on produce. The cauli, carrots and spring onion were all on the 'sell-by' mark down date. It's kinda silly, as the carrots look superb and have at least another week and half in them, but who am I to complain about cheap produce?

Costs?
the cauli: .75 p for the entire head, so maybe 20 p for this portion
carrots: the bag of 12 was .38 p and I used 4, so let's say 12 p
the spring opion was in a bunch of 10 that was down to .58 p, so 6 p for this one
I'll skip the butter and breadcrumbs cost as they's been costed out previously.
Desert was a marked down kiwi: .25 p

Overall cost then for the meal was around .53 p (.63 EUR/1.56 USD) and there were no leftovers. :-) Even if I would have purchased the produce at its original cost, it would have only doubled or tripled the meal cost, so still ok for the UK.

I did have a carb heavy lunch though in anticipation of working out, so this was only meant to be something lighter.

Wondering if new year's resolutions are in place?

Papa John's pizza here in the UK sent me an SMS today that in January I can get any pizza buy one/get one free. Domino's is offering any pizza for 9.99 this week only.

I'm wondering if the pizza business is taking a hit, if people are sticking to their New Year's resolutions to eat less, lose weight, exercise, etc?

I however, can be tempted, probably later this week. ;-)

Since I survived the flu (which started on this side of the Atlantic, and then raged while I was in the US, only to be carried back here), I've been carefully watching my food intake. The flu managed to hang on until last week Sunday, so it basically brought me down in the work weeks before I left and then proceeded to decimate my hols.

However, I am now back.