Another term endeth

Hooray - teaching is over for the summer. Now I can get down to some scholarly work. Sad to say I still haven't completed my MA but I do know what shape my research will take, so it isn't as far away as it was! Hopefully be Xmas it will be done. I also have time now to update this blog, and hopefully I will be able to get to grips with my 20 by 365 page, which kind of stalled when baby Paul was born.

First barbecue of the summer today. Nick turned up with the most enormous raw prawns (like mini lobsters). I didn't eat any - too many legs - but they did smell delicious. We already had some smaller prawns, so Wookie did really well (he loves a prawn). I made jerk chicken from scratch, grinding spices in my mortar and pestle, and spilling them all over the living room in the process.

As usual, we had far too much food for the number of people, so Ed and Tony went home with carrier bags full of the cooked prawns, plus the jerk chicken and sundry steaks etc. Bex spent the morning cleaning gunge out of the fountain, which hasn't been switched on since last summer. It's an environmentally friendly fountain, using and re-using only a gallon or so of water, and tinkles away beautifully. It now has a number of glass marbles nestling among the stones - all of which have been thrown down into the garden by the people upstairs. Luckily, none of them have hit anyone. I worry that a glass marble falling on someone from two storeys up could do a lot of damage. I'm afraid that I do not feel disposed to return any of these to the owner (and they look quite pretty in the fountain).

We have a crowd of twitty birds in the garden, gathering the berries from the ceanothus. I'm pretty sure they are green finches. It's really nice to watch them, but they do get a bit loud! I'm thinking of hanging some seed feeders in the tree. Our cats are so old that they are unlikely to try to climb up to get them. Anyway, Sylvestre would rather hunt for cheese than birds.

The ceanothus is a spectacular dark blue when it is in flower, but now we just have the evergreen leaves and the small black berries.

Baby Paul slept through the entire barbecue. He is such a good baby. He weighs nearly 15 pounds now - nearly double his birth weight. He's a lovely little squishy cuddly man. Tori has tickets for the Big Brother launch on Thursday. I'll have to watch it and see if I can spot her in the crowd. She deserves a night out - she is turning out to be a great mum. I knew she would be.


I haven't kept to my aim of regular cultural events.
Since Metallica, I have only been to one other gig (Strange Fashion) and one film (Watchmen). I have a mathematics lecture on Tuesday - does that count, I wonder?