kestrel

a group of CIXen are trying to organise themselves into a cohesive group, going to Bruges for a “gourmet weekend”. The gourmet night (which is beginning to resemble the eponymous Fawlty Towers episode) is due to take place this Saturday, so we’re cutting it just a tad fine to find a restaurant that will take us all (think there’s about 30 of us), never mind settle on a menu that will satisfy the carnivores, vegans, allergistes, fish haters, and just downright plain awkward.

I’ve lost track of just why the restaurant we had already settled on decided that they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) accommodate us, and rebooked another party – it’s just possible that our fame preceded us, I suppose.

but I’m sure, nevertheless, that a good time will be had by all – jooles (Brussels resident) and the_bear (denizen of Amsterdam) did what seems to have been a pretty throrough, and alcoholic, reconnaissance of Bruges on Saturday, and appear to have found a couple of likely venues (go them, I think is the expression). Now we just have to settle on the menus without blood being spilt. I’m sure it will all be fine, but I may take a large branch with me to beat the Landrover … just to keep in the spirit of the thing.

I’ve just been into the bedroom to find Iggy curled up on the bed. He is a very seasonal cat, so we can now be surethat the summer is gone for good.

actually, now I come to think of it, when I got up this morning, there were six out of nine cats in the house … temperatures are about to plummet, folks – be prepared.

we popped out to get a few bits … came home with bunches of herbs, some veg, a few bottles of wine. Went to the Kitchen Shop, and escaped spending only £6.90 on a couple of spoons, which is practically unheard of for us. Called in at the chinese supermarket for oils and stuff, had brunch in The Bristolian, one of our favourite cafes in Montpelier. Sadly, it’s been gentrified (well, the whole area is “coming up”, and house prices there are getting ridiculous) – and they don’t do sossidge any more … all gone designer [sigh], so we probably won’t go there again.

came home via Whiteladies Road, where we popped into the Expensive Hi-Fi shop to ask if they knew anyone local who could chip a DVD player to make it multi-region (hush – don’t tell the Copyright Police or they will come round and execute us). They could, and they did, and we also managed to purchase a really neat little wireless for the kitchen, as can be seen here – we plumped for the Classic Walnut version, as it was charmingly retro. Beautiful plumage^H^H tone it has too – much better than the tinny old trannie* that we used to have in the kitchen. According to the web site, it’s $99.99 in the US – I leave UK readers to guess what we paid for it here.

of course, I should have been at home working, which is what I’ll have to do this evening. But a nice afternoon out all the same.

*no offence to anyone, like

from http://www.museumofsex.com/joinus/corporatesponsorship.html

forePlay();
giveHead();
hug(“”);//A1
hug(“”);//A2–collections
hug(“”);//A3–visit
legsOpen(‘corporate sponsorship’,1,4);

I really must give more careful consideration to my tag names!

Stuck for the perfect gift for your female friends?

Then try the new and improved Mouse for Women

Given the difficulties with the utilisation of the standard mouse experienced by women, the leading computer companies IBM and Microsoft have joined forces to try to find a solution to the problem.

Both companies, after many years of research and experimentation into the needs of women of all ages, have created a new mouse (ergonomically designed for female hands) and it has already had a great impact among the female population of computer users, finally ending years of problems caused by previous designs.

this image came to me via a mailing list, and I thought I’d share it with you all. This man is the leader of the free world, $deity help us all.

now then – can we spell Weapons of Mass Destruction?

was a delightful way to spend a Sunday afternoon. We tasted all manner of lovely things – cheeses, apples, lots of smoked meats and fish, ate paella and rarebreed sausages and (in my case) ice creams of gooseberry fool (wonderful) and ginger. The latter was done with crystallised ginger, and I absolutely must have a go at making that in the Gaggia.

we also found a rather nice kitchen shop, where we bought a splendid cast iron flat griddle. And one of the highlights for me was encountering the blacksmith from Dragon Forge, who makes the most amazing replica weaponry. I completely fell in love with a small samurai knife made out of wonderfully annealed steel, and a snip [sic] at £600. Now I know what Pete can get me for my birthday!

we staggered home with smoked trout, chicken, duck, venison, pork, lamb, etc – wonderful things for lunches. And some gorgeous ewe’s milk cheese with cumin seeds. And masses of URLs for online ordering of organic meat – such a shame our three freezers are currently bulging at the seams, or we’d have bought masses more.

that was the first time I’d been out of the house for almost a week, bar a swift visit to the local greasy spoon for lunch on Friday, and it did both of us the world of good. We really must keep an eye out more for such events locally.

got MCRs webstats working again, after they ran out of disk space on that partition (why are the simplest things always the last ones you look at? And, indeed, why did someone not notice? – not our responsibility, squire), and did the custom stats report they wanted.

did the changes for PAI, apart from the contact form – how do I know what form-to-mail stuff is on that server? I hate using other people’s servers – there’s never the stuff you need on them. Oh, and thanks, client, for sending me half of what you want in a bloody Powerpoint file [shudder].

did another couple of hours on XMLing the truly hideous code that purports to be the Association’s HTML. – about another week should see the end of that [sigh].

and we answered Harmen, looked at Pippa’s stuff (albeit without success, but we don’t have sufficient rights on the box), and got some business cards printed. And for the first day in many, my to-do list has got shorter.

and yes, I know it’s Saturday. Too much to do …

so I decided to unwind by doing some cooking. And that’s another story, which I shall write up later. In the meantime, this glass of Fleurie will do very nicely.

p.s. it is so nice to have this Seals and Croftss album on CD. You’ll likely never have heard of them unless you are of antedeluvian years, like me, but they are one of the classiest exponents of West Coast rock from the … 70s, prolly. You can read Amazon’s review here – lovely stuff. Next up on the house jukebox … another wonderful and ancient album 1-clicked (oops) from Amazon – Johnny Guitar Watson’s Funk Beyond the Call of Duty

bored, Bored, BORED. Taking 400 odd pages of appallingly badly “coded” HTML (where not only FrontPage, but also [shudder] Word, has been let loose in the hands of an inexperienced web person). And XML-tagging them so that they can be put into a database.

it really is extremely tedious, but I daren’t sub it out as the stuff is in such a mess …bollox.