dragojustine | Reading

Frequently when we reschedule something because of a bad weather forecast, the weather turns out to not be that bad after all, but this weekend, it was the smart move. It seems to have finally stopped raining for bit after it rained heavily for most of yesterday and all of today. It's been a real chilly and kind of gray spring, tbh, those few days of high 80s/low 90s notwithstanding.

Anyway, I've taken the chance to try out some recipes - yesterday, I made chicken meatballs with garlic butter orzo, which is good and I have some leftover, but I would say that the meatballs are sort of unnecessary? And the garlic butter needs a little more seasoning imo - some rosemary and oregano and basil would not go amiss - but the orzo in garlic butter is good stuff.

I also made Ina Garten's shortbread, though I kept the teaspoon of almond extract from the pecan shortbread and covered them with chocolate sprinkles - I made the dough yesterday and then baked them off this morning. 20 minutes was probably a minute or 2 too long in the oven, but they still taste good.

I also baked a loaf of bread, on which I might make French bread pizza tomorrow. We'll see. I might also bake some kind of lemon cake, since I have a bunch of lemons, but maybe not. Again, I'll see how I feel. But for dinner tonight, I made these ricotta and breadcrumb balls. Which again, I seasoned to my own taste rather than following the instructions. They're pretty good if you like ricotta.

I think that's one of the most important things you can do when you learn to cook - learn to make things taste the way you like them. I save a ton of recipes and have a bunch of cookbooks, but mainly I need them for measurements and techniques, not flavorings. I mean, don't get me wrong, sometimes they will come up with a combination that would never have occurred to me which is delicious! But a lot of the time, I'm going, I'll swap in X for Y and I will like it better. If there are too many of these in one recipe, then it's not really that recipe (not that I would comment to say so!), but the technique might be useful just the same.

*

Current Mood: full
Current Music: who's gonna ride your wild horses? - u2

petra

Anybody who wants a drabble or poem about Discworld or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, please hit me up before midnight tomorrow.

Crossovers with all and sundry welcome. Weird pairings welcome. No Good Omens or Harry Potter for creator-related reasons, thanks.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Love like the yellow daffodil is lord of all I know

the_shoshanna

Did you know Guernsey had a motorcycle club? Because we didn't

As previously indicated, we went down to the local pub for dinner again (and I did indeed have delicious fish and chips and a pint of that yummy cider). We sat outside at one of the tables in the pleasant back garden, along with a scattering of other couples and a family or two. The driveway and parking area backed onto the seating area, and after a few minutes we heard the rumble of motorcycle engines, and three very heavily tattooed men in club colors pulled up, parked their bikes, came into the outside seating area, and asked the server who came to meet them for a table for seven; two more club members and two women not in club colors joined them shortly afterward. They were seated some distance away from us, which we were glad of because several of then immediately started smoking but were sorry about because we would have loved to eavesdrop on their conversation! I'm pretty sure the first three who arrived were all in different colors, but I could only read two: Full-Boar (Guernsey) and Devil's Disciples (England).

the_shoshanna

like, genuinely hot, 30C/86F and blazingly sunny.

Phew.

We went back to our room after breakfast and zonked out for a while (Geoff has a practically unlimited capacity for napping), and then decided to walk due south from here about fifteen minutes to Petit Bôt Bay, which we'd been told was very pretty and also had a snack kiosk, and is also connected to the coastal trail network. It's basically midway between the easternmost point we ended at on our giant hike last Sunday (https://the-shoshanna.dreamwidth.org/907700.html) and the westernmost point we started at last Wednesday (https://the-shoshanna.dreamwidth.org/908256.html), so we figured we'd get there and then decide if we wanted to turn right (west) or left (east).

It was a nice fifteen-minute walk down the hill to the bay, except for the awareness that we would have to climb back up the slope. Most of it was on one of the old roads on which vehicles are no longer allowed, so they're wider than footpaths but still quiet, and we wound through the usual green banks. Sometimes you can tell that the mossy ferny small-tree-y banks you're walking between are old, overgrown stone walls that have almost disappeared under the long accumulation of greenery and soil, and often you can't. We also passed an old stone watering trough, which water was still running through and past, in a small trickling stream that paralleled us all the way to the top of the bay, where we saw yet another round tower that was built to defend against the French in the late 1780s, and the ruins of what had been a water wheel about two hundred years ago. Also, remember the Renoir Path we found ourselves on a few days ago? At the site of the old water wheel was a similar thing for JMW Turner, with a reproduction of a sketch he'd done of the site when the water wheel and a hotel were still standing.

We found ourselves walking the last few yards down to the kiosk alongside a man who had just parked his car on the side of the access road (where several others were also parked) and who was walking down to meet a friend who was setting up a couple of kayaks on the bank above the beach, so we chatted with him for a minute. He pointed out where the coastal trail going west left the beach access road, and we were like "we KNOW": it visibly began with, yes, a very long and very steep stairway climbing up the cliffside. Then Geoff and I went on to enjoy the view from the top of the retaining wall above the beach; the bay is a narrow V between seaside cliffs, and although the beach was largely rocky (perhaps there's more sandy beach revealed at lower tide), there were some swimmers, and some families with kids on the sandy part, and a number of other boaters and stand-up paddleboarders in the water. There was also a bin of children's beach toys available to be borrowed, played with, and returned: an absolutely lovely amenity that we've seen on beaches both here and in Jersey.

We debated a bit about which direction to go and finally decided on west, despite the steep climb. For one thing, the western trail had another kiosk and public toilets marked on it, about halfway to the point we'd reached coming the other way, and if we got that far we'd also be near a bus route where we might be able to catch a ride home, whereas if we went east there were fewer amenities and it would definitely be shank's mare all the way. (None of this turned out to be relevant, however.) Then we went back up the bank toward the trail, past where the kayak guy and his friend were still setting up. We talked briefly about how very hot it was, and he agreed that it was so hot that he might accidentally fall out of his kayak a couple of times, sploosh, oops! We told him we were going to attempt that grueling stairway westward; "tell our families we died proudly," I begged.

In the end, though, we only walked for a little over an hour. It was very VERY up and down, made more so by our twice getting on dead-end spur trails that looked they would go along the cliffs but that ended up going steeply down to dead-end at a viewpoint or an old military emplacement, and then we had to struggle uphill again before we could continue on. And the heat made the climbing far more exhausting than it had been on other days. Plus Geoff has had real problems with heat in the past and I really didn't want him overheating, so we were resting frequently, and drinking a lot of water; we had two full water bottles and in just the time we were out we finished one. After we struggled to the top of yet another grueling climb, I finally said that I was willing to keep walking as long as the trail was more or less level, but I wasn't willing to do another steep ascent, or for that matter another steep descent, given that we'd have to get back up it on our return. The trail did politely remain only moderately tilted for a while, so we kept on, and we were rewarded by encountering a family of pheasants in the path! A beautifully colored male who hurried away into the underbrush ahead of the rest of the family, a drab female who herded four or five chicks with her into the shelter of the underbrush, and then two more chicks who had frozen in place instead of following her, and then as we came closer broke from their hiding places to scramble frantically after the rest. That was fun!

A little after that, though, the trail began tilting precipitously downward, and we called it and turned around. Slogged slowly back to the beach -- oh god the stairs, so many many stairs -- and shared a pizza and a pint of beer from the kiosk; the only beer they had was one that Geoff likes a lot but I don't, really, and yet I was absolutely loving my deep long cold swigs of it after spending an hour on those trails, in that heat. Happily, they had umbrellas shading the picnic tables in front, so we could sit in the shade, and there was a glorious breeze. (Oddly, there hadn't been one on the cliffs, even when we were in the open -- and the blazing sun -- rather than among trees and high green banks.)

The elderly man who brought us our pizza asked where we were from, and when we said "Canada" he said laughingly that he'd learned not to ask tourists, "Are you Americans?" because the Canadians would get so insulted. We laughingly agreed, and had a bit of the standard "Isn't he awful" conversation. "I bet you get some Americans claiming to be Canadian," I added, straight-faced.

Once we were finished, Geoff went back to the kiosk to throw out the trash and get himself an ice cream cone, while I went down onto the beach proper, picked my way across most of the stony part to a big rock sunk into the sand but high and wide enough to be a comfortable seat, and took my boots and socks off to go wading! (I'd been in shorts all day. Did I mention it was 30 degrees?)

The water was colder than I expected -- although, I mean, it's the north Atlantic, I suppose I should have expected that! But it was incredibly refreshing on my hot feet, and the waves weren't high or powerful but when they rushed out again they sank my feet deep into the sand, and then on their return sometimes wrapped seaweed around my ankles. Near me were children playing with buckets of sand and water, and building a sandcastle with parents; one very small girl whose teeth were chattering even in the sun, from the water temperature; a boy lying prone on a floatie in the water and wielding a stick with a net on the end, paddling to reach and scoop up the colored plastic balls his mom(?) tossed from behind him to bob on the water in front of him; a man and woman who waded into the chilly water to swim quite far out, which is less impressive when I add that they were both in wetsuits; and some adults just lying, soaking up the sun. I'd been making noise earlier about going swimming tomorrow; beaches and hot sun and sand and swimming are not at all Geoff's thing, but when we were in Hawaii years ago I insisted on getting a chance to, as I put it, frolic in the god damn surf. There wasn't any surf here (we did see quite a number of surfers on the north coast on Thursday, the day I skipped blogging about), but the principle still holds! But I think the wading I did today may have satisfied my need. To be honest, right now I don't ever want to trudge up a hill again, even one like the one from the beach that would have seemed like nothing a few days ago. It's hot, I'm tired, it's almost the end of our vacation, we are not as young as we used to be. (How did that happen. Who let that happen.)

But I dried my feet and brushed off as much sand as I could and put my socks and boots back on and we did indeed trudge back up the hill to the hotel, where we had to collapse a bit before either of us even had the energy to shower. (Also Geoff was still sweating even after coming in, and there's no point showering when he's sweating at the same time! It takes him a long time to cool down sometimes.) Anyway, we crashed out and eventually showered and he napped again and we both blogged the day. He's posted some excellent pictures! https://geoff-hart.com/fiction/Channel-Islands-2026/may24.html (See the line going diagonally up to the left from the tower? That's the trail we took. At a slant like this: \ )

And now back to the pub down the road for dinner. I haven't yet had fish and chips on this trip, and I plan on correcting that tonight. Also another pint of that tasty English cider, and probably about a gallon of cold water, we hardly did anything, it feels like, and yet it has been a DAY.

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: amused

the_shoshanna

but we did sort of succeed at taking it easy?

Today we took a bus to a local weekly market on the grounds of Sausmarez Manor, a stately home that has been in the same family since, like, the twelfth century. Well, the estate has; of course there have been several houses on the site, and the family is not currently living in the height of twelfth-century architecture. (Although the then-seigneur's refusal to have the house wired for electricity saved it from being commandeered by the occupying Nazis, who wanted mod cons.) I had high hopes for the market, since I love farmers markets, but it turned out not to be one. There was one person selling food (sausage rolls and similar), a number of people selling handmade crafts, and several people selling mass-produced tat. I was disappointed. But it was still interesting to poke about the property! There's a sculpture garden with an enormous scorpion that I found quite disturbing (I do not like bugs, especially giant ones) and a cobra that I didn't mind but that Geoff found disturbing, and a quite wonderful lioness depicted lolling atop a stone wall, among others. And a small antiques sale was going on, and a sale of Oriental rugs: nothing that held our interest for long, but all together enough to keep us interested for an hour or so. I enjoyed paging through a pamphlet of "107 Things to See in Guernsey" from 1902, and Geoff bought a collection of some British comic strip he had fond memories of.

Then we walked ten minutes up the road to see La Gran'Mère de Chimquiere (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Gran%2527_M%C3%A8re_de_Chimquiere), a stone female figure that was originally carved about four thousand years ago, recarved about two thousand years ago, broken in half by a cranky Christian authority about two hundred years ago and promptly put back together at the insistence of the local population, and that now stands at the entrance to the driveway of a local parish church. History is just lying around everywhere! In itself it's not that much to look at, but contemplating it and the thousands of years of changing worship and veneration was quite moving.

Then we walked forty minutes back to the hotel, along quiet pretty residential back roads much more pleasant than the main drag. At one point a woman in a car pulled up next to us to ask where we were from and generally chat, and in the course of conversation told us that Paul Revere, of American Revolutionary War fame, had roots in Guernsey. (Wikipedia has no mention of this, fwiw.) I said something like "wow, I never knew that" and she said something like "well, it's family history," and I had the feeling that she meant less that she herself was related to him than that all Guernseyites are somehow related? But idk.

I have, by the way, been 100% describing myself as Canadian to everyone we meet. I admit to US roots only in particular circumstances and after some preliminary conversation, and when I do the conversation almost invariably turns to spend some time on "Isn't he awful."

Once back at the hotel, Geoff zonked out for two hours while I faffed about on the internet, and then we walked half an hour north along quiet pretty residential and agricultural back roads to a cidery where we had booked a tour (https://www.rocquettecider.com/). According to the tour guide, although not quite in these words, a super-rich family bought the whole valley in the 1990s, and a friend of theirs who had experience running a cidery in England told them, you know, the microclimate of this valley is excellent for growing cider apples, and it turned out that there had actually been a cidery there until it folded just after WW2, so they bought a few thousand apple trees and went into business. You can do that kind of thing on a whim when you're that rich, I guess; and it does seem to be a good business. It was an interesting tour, not deep but fun, and ended with free half-pints of their cider (which, unfortunately, was the local one I hadn't much liked a few days before; I still didn't like it and Geoff finished mine), plus gin and vodka liqueurs (?? no idea exactly what they were but the vodka one was deep red [?!] and very tasty) and their apple brandy, which was powerfully delicious). Also cheese and crackers and tasty house-made chutney so we didn't all die, drinking that much alcohol on empty stomachs on a very hot and sunny day.

We walked -- or staggered -- back to the hotel just in time for another tapas dinner, which they do here every Saturday. This one was perhaps even more delicious than last week's, and we were seated with an English couple from Reading, whom we very much enjoyed talking with; everybody else had finished and left by the time we said goodnight.

For us this counted as a quiet restful day: only about 100 minutes of walking, and all of it more or less level and on pavement! No idea what we'll do tomorrow, but I am babying a blister, so probably another quiet day?

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: bitchy

the_shoshanna

I am skipping over yesterday and will hope to describe it later; today I am blogging about today, in an effort to not fall too far behind.

We left pretty early this morning, since we had to be at the ferry dock 45 minutes early, and after an incident yesterday (a minor car accident -- the first we've seen, which is frankly a little surprising) delayed our bus, we wanted to leave plenty of time in case of similar difficulties. We still miiiight have had time to grab some breakfast, but no way was I eating anything other than an antinausea med before getting on a ferry again, and Geoff decided he'd rather wait and get something in Sark.

The weather today was absolutely gorgeous, sunny and gently breezy and even a little too hot. The ferry over to Sark was much smaller than the one from Jersey to here, and we had seats outside on the upper deck with great views, and the sea was calm; I doubt I even needed the pill but I'm not sorry I took it just in case. We saw many jagged rocks gouging up from the water, some of them extra jagged because of all the cormorants on them; and the island of Herm as we passed it (year-round population: about 60; tourists per year: about 100,000); and also the island of Brecqhou, right next to Sark, which is privately owned by the surviving billionaire Barclay brother. The glimpse I got of their castle-mansion looked exactly like you'd expect a ~~supervillain's~~ billionaire's castle-mansion on a private island to look like.

Our plan was basically to walk around the island, and also have a meal or two. The first walk was just up the loooong steeeeeep hill from the ferry dock to the center of the village (and the Visitor Information Centre). We'd more or less assumed we'd ride one of the wagons pulled by tractors (which are the only motor vehicles allowed on the island) that are made available, and that haul overnight visitors' luggage up for delivery to their hotels, but the crowd preceding us off the boat had filled them by the time we walked from the disembarkation point to their parking and loading area, and we didn't want to wait for them to deliver the first load of tourists and come back for more. Also none of the info we'd seen had told us there was a charge for the ride, but then we saw a fee list posted. So we said screw it, it won't be the hardest walk we've done this week, and headed for the footpath up the hill along with a number of other intrepid walkers.

That may have been the nicest walk we did all day, sadly. It was lovely, wooded and shady, steep at times but never grueling, with no particular views to admire but just a green and pleasant passage, very quiet unless a tractor-bus was chugging past us on the road that was paralleling us off to the side, behind a line of trees.

We got to the top, walked through shops and restaurants to the Visitors' Centre and confirmed that they had no maps better than the freebie the ferry company had given us when we checked in, and went to a pub for some food. Well, they weren't going to start serving food until noon, and it was 11:45, so we killed time in an excellent exhibit on life under the Occupation in the hall next door. It included a whole history of the war as Sark experienced it, including awful details about the level of hunger. (Sibyl Hathaway, the Dame of Sark, the feudal lord who ran the island from 1927 when her father died and she inherited the title until she died in 1974, went from what the narration happily described as "a healthy weight of 10 stone" to 7 stone by the end of the war: 140 pounds to 98. The feudal system of government wasn't changed until 2008, and whoever wrote the story of the Occupation clearly adored Dame Hathaway.) There were also stories of a group of local divers and others who worked for the Germans under the threat of danger to their families and communities but who slowed and sabotaged the work as much as they dared; and accounts from someone who was evacuated as a child just before the Germans arrived and from someone who stayed; and many more stories, including the code words that Dame Hathaway and her husband used in letters, to pass on news of the war, after he was deported to a German prison camp.

Anyway, once the pub was open for food, we got some excellent coffee, and Geoff got a quite tasty plate of duck tagliatelle. I, still on my quest to eat my own weight in seafood, got a crab sandwich that the menu board said was made with local foraged seaweed -- how could I turn it down? I'd had a crab sandwich at a beachside kiosk yesterday, which was...acceptable: it was on supermarket sandwich bread, thickly buttered, and wasn't all that good, really. This one was better, on a crusty roll that was still buttered but at least only lightly, and the chopped seaweed that was mixed into it didn't add a noticeable flavor but maybe it was a bit more...umami? The crab itself did taste better than yesterday's sandwich. But on the whole I think I'll give up on crab sandwiches. Geoff's pasta was better.

After lunch, we set out to walk to Little Sark, a chunk of land that hangs like a teardrop of the south end of Sark proper, connected by a high and narrow land bridge called La Coupée. Until 1902, when the first safety railing was installed, Little Sark children on their way to school would crawl across it on their hands and knees to avoid being blown off. Now it has sturdy railings on both sides, and also a smooth and somewhat leveled walkway, paved down each side but left as dirt in the middle so that horses could get a better footing, that was constructed by German prisoners of war in 1945-46. It was a very dramatic crossing; I hope Geoff's pictures came out!

But the walk to La Coupée wasn't anything special, and on the other side the dry dirt roadway was wide and unshaded and between banks so there were almost no views. We had been hoping to get to a Neolithic dolmen at the far end of Little Sark, but we didn't really have time before we had to report to the return ferry, and the walking wasn't pleasant, so we gave up and turned around. Wandered back through town, got Geoff an ice cream, and took the nice footpath down the hill again. Since we had some time, we went from the ferry harbor through a short tunnel bored right through the rock to the boating harbor next to it, which is one of the smallest working harbors in the world. It's almost entirely enclosed by a breakwater, making it also a nice place to swim; several people were in the water, and so was a very happy dog. Then we went back and stood on the ferry dock waiting for the ferry. I'm pretty sure I saw a jellyfish in the water; it was a foot or so below the surface, which was several yards below me, and it wasn't very big, so it's hard to be sure; but it was definitely moving differently from the water around it, and it definitely seemed to be blooming and contracting, blooming and contracting, as a jellyfish would. So I'm going to say I saw a jellyfish! That was exciting; I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild before, unless you count the Portuguese man o' war that stung me when I was a child.

I took another pill before the return ferry ride, and although I hadn't felt that the first one affected me at all, I definitely got hit by "may cause drowsiness" on the way home! I actually fell asleep sitting up (we had great seats on the outside upper deck again) and dreamed of figuring out buses for tomorrow's excursions. Neither Geoff nor I felt we wanted (or could manage) dinner after that big lunch, but I did want a little something, so we stopped at the M&S food hall again on the way to the bus home: I got a couple of tea cakes with dried fruit, and he got a bottle of beer 😀 (Alcohol is contraindicated with the meds, but that didn't stop me having a couple of swallows!) Consumed them back at the hotel after bath and showers, and have been blogging every since.

Tomorrow, the plan is to visit the main local farmers market -- I love farmers markets! -- and pass by a 4000-year-old goddess statue, and then in the afternoon tour a local cidery, which means many samples of cider, plus biscuits, cheeses, and the cidery's own apple chutney. Might be another day without dinner!

petra

I really need there to be a Baby Yoda in Spaceballs II: The Search For More Money.

Extra bonus points if he's called Go-Gurt.

I have no plans to watch the Grogu movie. But I want a Go-Gurt shirt.

Current Mood: sorry wrong muppet icon
Current Music: Spaceballs: The Animated Series Food Tie-In Merch

petra

Here on Tumblr. Truly a tour de force. Only a few pages long, alas. Someone needs get this person a gig doing this for money so I can buy their work immediately.

Current Mood: overwhelmed
Current Music: And I think that Schopenhauer was right

petra

Stephen Colbert made an OnlyFans joke less than two minutes into his final monologue.

hannah and I want him to go through with it and strip while giving monologues.

You know, like the incredibly famous stripper with the unfortunate name.

Elaine Stritch telling stories about Ethel Merman, then singing "Zip," which is a song about interviewing the stripper with the racist slur for a name.

It'd be like that.

I deeply do not want to face the next exactly this long -- just over 973 days as of right now -- without the leavening of Colbert. This is gonna suck.

Current Mood: sing the fucking song
Current Music: Walter Lippmann wasn't brilliant today

selenak

For All Mankind: In which the scriptwriting duo Weddle & Thompson, who first made their name on the later seasons of DS9 and were subsequently recruited by Ron Moore for BSG now script For all Mankind: War Against Your Population Is Fucked Up, the episode.

( Spoilers also spend some time continuing the quest for life, of course )

The Testaments 1.09: Marat/Sade .

This was really the title of the episode, I kid you not. Being a theatre and a French Revolution nerd sometimes really pays off.

( Spoilers were raised in a society which loves their Old Testament Style vengeance )

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: Bamberg

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: busy

musesfool

Still with the don't wannas, but for once our All Staff call was mostly interesting (though it never fails to baffle me that people put their requests for different soda in the vending machine in the anonymous complaint form instead of just asking the office manager dude about it - as I said to my boss, no questions about COLAs but always questions about colas, which evoked a real out loud laugh from her so you know, score) and I got the 2 main things I had to do this week done, so tomorrow can just be waiting around for other people to send me their meeting materials (I loathe how they have no consideration for me and my summer Friday sign-off at 2:30 pm, but the C-suite level folks are always like that).

In other news, now I am not seeing Baby Miss L this weekend, because the weather is supposed to be rainy and chilly, so the party was postponed till next weekend. It's fine. I have gotten some lovely videos and pictures of her dancing at a wedding she attended last weekend, and that will suffice for now.

So Tuesday night, I turned off the Knicks game while they were down by double-digits in the 4th quarter and went to bed. Imagine my surprise to learn that they had tied it up and then won in OT! Let's hope they can win in regulation tonight.

And finally, I knew Mike Keenan was a piece of shit, but there's some stuff in this article about the 1994 Rangers (gift link) that I did not know. Interesting read. They won then and haven't since, so I guess it might really have to last a lifetime.

Now I have to figure out what to have for dinner. I guess it could be quesadillas again. Idk.

*

Current Mood: ditzy
Current Music: Mets vs Nats on tv

the_shoshanna

Today was supposed to be a nice short easy walk of a day.

We started walking a few minutes after eleven. We caught the bus home -- well, to the pub down the road from our hotel for dinner, because once we got to the hotel boy howdy were we not leaving again -- at quarter past five.

It wasn't challenging walking, it was all basically level and the hardest part was that we were often walking in roadways, pressing ourselves against the hedge or ducking into driveways when a car went by. And we did see some lovely things, including another dolmen, and we walked out onto a part-time island that's only accessible at low tide, which was very cool. But we also walked through a bunch of not that interesting residential areas, and had to scramble across a rocky beach and clamber up its bank onto private land and sneak away to the road when our GPS utterly lied to us; we think its trail was probably programmed before all the residential construction we were walking past and through, because it absolutely insisted that we were supposed to be walking through places that were absolutely not possible to walk through.

Anyway, I am wiped, and we have to be up and out early to get to the ferry port for our day trip to the even smaller island of Sark, population 500 people (rising to 1,000 in the tourist season when seasonal tourism workers arrive) and zero cars. Fortunately I do not need to squeeze in time for breakfast, since the only thing I'll be consuming before we make landfall is a pill. But we'll ask if we can grab some bread and cheese and breakfast meat from the cold buffet before we leave, and picnic when we get to Sark.

As for recounting today's adventures, though, that's not happening tonight, and probably not tomorrow either, given our schedule. Geoff's blog of today is up, though, with a few pictures; he is less wiped than me, and also he travels with his laptop so he can type on a proper keyboard whereas I'm swipe-typing on my iPad.

G'night.

musesfool

I had a bad case of the don't wannas today, and I don't anticipate it getting better tomorrow or Friday, but we finally start summer Fridays this week and have a 3 day weekend, so hopefully that will help. I could barely stay awake until 5 pm, so after I logged off, I napped hard, and had one of those dreams where I think I've woken up, but no, I'm still asleep and then I think I've woken up from that, but no, I'm still asleep, over and over until I finally do actually wake up and am like, how did I think I was awake in those dreams, it was so clearly not reality? Anyway, it was in the middle of a big thunderstorm and there is nothing better than being cozy in bed during a thunderstorm, so that was all right.

I did want to talk about a couple of books I've read!

What I've just finished
I don't think I ever said anything after finishing The Last Contract of Isako, but I liked it. It's a noir detective story set in a far-future colony that has lost contact with Earth, and the titular Isako is a corporate samurai on her last contract. I really liked her - she was a 50yo woman in a profession best handled by younger people and she knew it. ( spoilers )

I'm seeing Baby Miss L this weekend, so I bought her some books and also read them:

- We Will Rock Our Classmates: A Penelope Rex Book by Ryan Higgins, which was ADORABLE. Baby Miss L liked the first Penelope Rex book, so I think she will like this one, in which Penelope signs up to play guitar in the class talent show, as well.

- Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein, which was super cute. It's bedtime and little red chicken wants a bedtime story but then she keeps interrupting when her papa tries to tell her one.

- The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt (Author) and Oliver Jeffers (Illustrator), which was cute but a little samey for me as an adult - I bet kids love it.

I also reread Parade of Horribles so I think I understand some of it much better but some of it is still a little ...opaque. I'm going do another reread with my notes document open so I can check off stuff that got answered (or not) and add all the new stuff that will now have to be resolved (or not). I will say that while there were some fantastic moments, it's not my favorite book - it's probably in the lower half of my personal rankings, tbh, because I feel like ( spoiler ) I'm also thinking about how supposedly Dinniman said that books 9 and 10 are really one book split into two? And I can think of several ways to manage that, so I'm very interested to see how he does it.

*

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Avs vs VGK on tv

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: mellow

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: tired

the_shoshanna

me yesterday: I'd like to do another challenging hike tomorrow.

Geoff: Sounds good!

me: Want to sit down with me and compare options?

Geoff: Nah, I already listed the hikes that interested me; any one of those that you like will be fine. Go ahead and pick one.

Geoff today: Why are we climbing up and down and up and down again? Why are there so many stairs? Who thought this was a good idea?

me: I said--! And you said--! And I said--! And you said--!

Geoff: Alas. Hoist on my own petard.

Today we hiked for five hours, and we still have a 25-minute walk each way to dinner

At least the walk to dinner will be flat!

Today we walked around the Jerbourg peninsula, at the southeasternmost point of Guernsey. Once again we started in a residential/commercial area (where the bus let us off) and walked through it into more quiet residential and some farming areas, and then began following the familiarly precipitous coastal path. It was a bit chilly to start, and the islands of Herm and Sark (and the smaller islands and outcrops that I'm sure have names, but 🤷) were blurred in the mist, but over the course of the day it became quite warm and sunny. Having started the day in thermal leggings under long hiking pants, and in a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece, and a jacket, and also in my wool hat, by the time we caught our bus home I had stripped out of everything except my shirt (with the sleeves rolled up) and the thin hiking pants (with the legs zipped off to turn them into shorts). It was lovely!

And so was the walk, which there isn't much new to say about, but I bet I can find something.

On the way to the coastal trail proper we passed two watering places that were at least two hundred years old, according to the markers. Next to the road or footpath there's first a spring or fountain that was for people to get water at, enclosed in a small sort of cupboard maybe three feet by three feet by three feet with a latched door to keep animals from fouling it; I opened one of them, but the actual fountain/spring wasn't really running any more, and all I saw was a dark interior and some trash people had tossed in. (In general both Guernsey and Jersey have been incredibly free of litter, but we have seen some.) In front of that protected water source for humans was a stone trough for watering animals, into which the water would flow after the people had their fill, and from there it ran down a built channel toward the sea. (Geoff has a good picture of one in his blog entry for today: https://geoff-hart.com/fiction/Channel-Islands-2026/may20.html)

Once we reached the coastal path we went "oooh" at amazing views of rocky bays and isolated beaches (some are accessible only from the sea) and crashing waves, and at other views across the countryside; and saw a tower or two built by the English to defend against the French, especially after France allied with the fledgling USA in the Revolutionary War, that were restored and bore historical markers explaining their significance; and also passed several German bunkers, which were ignored and largely overgrown. Also several cafes, cunningly placed at sites of particular interest along the way, but we had provisioned ourselves before starting out, and it wasn't a walk I wanted to have a beer during.

I blogged the other day about school uniforms here; well, today on a spur off the main trail we encountered a group of eighty schoolkids, maybe eight or nine years old, and maybe ten or a dozen moderately harried-looking teachers (or parent volunteers, how would I know) and the kids were just in regular clothes, not uniforms, although they were all wearing yellow pinnies and blue bucket hats to make them easier to keep track of. I know there were eighty of them because the teacher leading the first group -- they were in tranches, with an adult at the start and end of each line of kids -- told us so, apologetically, and said it was a school trip. So there was a school that didn't have uniforms!

That part of the trail wasn't so challenging, it was mostly a couple of feet wide and gently sloping, and we walked along among the kids for a few minutes. One boy asked Geoff, "Do you want to take my picture?" and seemed a bit put out when Geoff smilingly declined; five minutes later he passed us again and asked, "Want to take it now?" But walking in a crowd of fourth-graders (or however they class them here) wasn't our plan, so when we came to a fork, where the spur trail ended in a big loop and you could go either clockwise or counterclockwise around it, we chose to go clockwise, because that way was much narrower and more precipitous, scrambling down the cliffside almost to sea level, and we knew there was no way they were taking the kids on it. Although we did amuse ourselves imagining the lengthy release forms their parents and guardians would have to sign if they did... On the far side of the loop, overlooking that bit of bay, was a tower of historical interest (built in 1778 to guard the bay against the French) and I think they took the kids to it on the upper, more accessible part of the loop, and then went back the way they'd come. In any case, we didn't see them again after we went different ways at the loop.

The trail also overlapped with part of the "Renoir walk"; Renoir lived in Guernsey for a short time and painted a number of landscapes in that area, and in several places plaques have been put up with reproductions of the painting he did in that spot and also empty picture frames, so you can look through them and have a Renoir's-eye view of the specific vista he painted.

Once we returned from the spur to the main trail and began rounding the peninsula, it got very up and down and up and down again. On one uphill slog I complained to Geoff, "If we're accumulating all this potential energy, why am I so exhausted?" and then amused myself terribly by answering myself sotto voce, "That's just science. And science only matters during the playoffs." "What?" asked Geoff. "Oh, nothing," I told him.

We met a number of other walkers coming and going, but also had long stretches where it was just us, and the sound of the wind and the waves. Okay, and maybe an airplane overhead, but go with me, here. It was gorgeous. And I get a real feeling of accomplishment from accomplishing a hike like that!

The whole trail was a giant loop around the peninsula (plus the spur off it with a smaller loop at its end), so we ended up at a bus stop a block from where we'd been dropped off to start it, and our timing was perfect; there was a bus home in eight minutes. (And not just "supposed to be": an actual bus!) Home, and at Geoff's exhausted request we went straight into the bath our generously upgraded room provides! Ooooh, did hot water ever feel good on our aching feet. Soaked for a while, then showered ("You mean I have to stand up again? Unfair!" I whined), and now we've been relaxing and blogging until it's time to leave for our dinner reservation at a nearby hotel restaurant we haven't been to before, but our hosts recommended it.

When I made the reservation this morning I chose indoor seating because it was a bit damp and chilly, but it has become so lovely out that I've just changed it to outdoor.

Geoff: Can you also change it to a ten-minute walk each way?

me: Sure, honey. I'll get right on that.

Profile

dragojustine

December 2020

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Page Summary

musesfool - you're dangerous, you don't know what you want
petra - Writing for people - no really, this time I mean it
the_shoshanna - Well, that was an aspect of local culture we had not previously encountered
the_shoshanna - it is very hot today
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry rec
princessofgeeks - Not enough facepalm in the world
the_shoshanna - it was not another day without dinner. Mmmmmmm yum.
princessofgeeks - idle question
the_shoshanna - a day on Sark
petra - Paging Mel Brooks
petra - Recommendation: Murderbot fanart in graphic novel form
petra - US Politics: Stephen Colbert's next gig
selenak - The Testaments and For All Mankind: Bloody Tales both
princessofgeeks - Hmmm
musesfool - and he goes down swinging
the_shoshanna - in which we utterly fail to take it easy
musesfool - and it's on target every time
princessofgeeks - Greece 2026
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry rec
the_shoshanna - Wednesday: oof and yay and, soon, yum

Style Credit

Style: Bittersweet for Crossroads by branchandroot
Resources: I'm home again

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

that's the way that lady luck dances

Reading

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags