A Winter Walk, and a Virus!

Olga and I went to the Heath yesterday, where although it's not particularly cold, things are looking quite wintry. She's pausing above in the same spot where I shot this photo (top), for example -- quite a seasonal difference!

We found a brightly colored log that looks like someone's art project. Olga was loving the dried leaves piled around it.

I'm not sure it's technically permitted to paint a log in Hampstead Heath, but maybe it is. I do like the dreamy, colorful abstract approach!

Otherwise, yesterday was all about reading, relaxing and doing housework. I wish I had another day like yesterday -- I feel like I lost half my weekend with all my activities on Saturday. And now, off to another work week!

On a side note, I woke this morning to find that apparently I've been infected with a virus! Not the biological kind, but the technological kind. My e-mail was sending out spam links of its own accord and I even had a spam link posted to my blog! THAT did not make me happy. So I changed my passwords and hopefully I've curtailed that activity.

I wonder how on earth I got it? I never click on mysterious links, open peculiar e-mails or download unknown programs. But this illustrates another problem with my 4 1/2-year-old computer -- now that Apple no longer supports my operating system, I can't do security updates. Clearly some worm has found a weak spot. (I always heard Apples weren't vulnerable to viruses, too, so that's an interesting situation...)

A Lack of Papier Hygiénique

We've had another named storm -- this one Desmond, which blew in from the Irish sea over the last few days and flooded parts of Cumbria and Scotland. Once again, here in London we've only had high wind.

Apparently this year is the first that British storms have been systematically named, in a program that's supposed to raise public awareness about dangerous weather. Back in September, the government office in charge of such things asked the public to generate a list of names for winter wind storms that are deemed likely to cause significant damage. Somehow I missed Abigail and Barney, which have already come and gone. If we have a rough enough winter to get to the letter S, we'll have a storm Steve!

Yesterday turned into pretty much a full day of eating. After French class I went with my classmates and our teacher to a French restaurant in Marylebone. It was a nice little place, but the service was, shall we say, leisurely and we were there for about two hours -- plenty of time to work through virtually every conversation topic that could arise among seven people who barely know each other. We didn't force ourselves to speak French to each other -- probably to our teacher's annoyance -- but I did speak French with the waiter, and I told another staff member in French that the bathroom was out of toilet paper. So there's that.

Then, last night, Dave and I had our friends Gordon and Donna over. Dave spent the day cooking and we wound up with a four-course meal involving lamb shanks. (The original plan was pig's trotters stuffed with chicken and sweetbreads, but the butcher failed to debone the pig's trotters as Dave requested, so he had to make some last-minute menu changes.)

I think I'm going to eat super-light today. Like, maybe lettuce. Or All-Bran.

Finally, I have good news about the Great Harness Conflict. The dog boarder sent us the bill for boarding Olga over Thanksgiving, and it turns out she took the harness off the tab. Apparently my strongly-worded e-mail convinced her that she shouldn't charge us. I'm surprised she knuckled under, but I do think it's the right thing for her to do.

(Photo: A neighborhood restaurant in Child's Hill, near West Hampstead.)

Juanita

We had our office holiday dinner last night, at a nice little restaurant near Baker Street in Marylebone where I was literally pressed elbow-to-elbow with Dave and my co-workers around a long table. (Language side note: One of my blog pals has protested when I use the term co-workers rather than colleagues, but they're not quite the same thing, are they? I would describe most of my co-workers as colleagues, but some of them I don't know very well or work with very closely, so they're more co-workers, or so it seems to me.)

Anyway, it was fun, mainly because the wine kept flowing and we started with "Bloody Mary soup," which came with an actual shot of spicy horseradish-infused vodka. I'm surprised I wasn't standing on the table naked singing "We Three Kings" by the end of the night.

As evidence that I was somewhat boozed up, however, I offer the evidence of the white elephant gift exchange.

We were each asked to bring a wrapped gift -- something tacky, maybe something we'd been given previously that we didn't want. We were then assigned numbers, and we chose the gifts one by one, with each of us having the option to take either a new gift or the unwrapped gift of a colleague who'd gone earlier in the process. (I'm sure you've all done this at one time or another.)

Here's what I wound up with. (Bran cereal not included.)

She's a bottle. She has a cork in her head. I was boozed up enough last night that I actually thought she was sort of groovy. When I looked at her this morning in the harsh light of the pre-dawn kitchen, I wasn't so sure.

(Those feet!)

But we're keeping her, at least for the time being. She has two black braids hanging down her back that you can't see in the photo. We've named her Juanita.

Anyway, we had a good time and today I am off to my final French class of the term. I'm going to sign up again, though, so the saga will continue aprés la Saint-Sylvestre. My classmates and I are going to lunch together today -- a little fête to celebrate our dubious progress.

I also owe Olga some time outside so I hope to get out with her this afternoon, and then we have some friends coming over for dinner tonight. A full day!

(Top photo: Lewisham, in September.)

You Asked For It

Because several of you asked, here's my original deleted post from yesterday. Even though I spiked it, a fellow blog reader had it in her news feed and was able to send it back to me. (An excellent example of how things we post on the Internet are never really gone, even when we delete them!) Apologies in advance for the gloominess.
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Dave and I were just getting ready to go to bed last night when the news broke about San Bernardino. It's become a weekly, if not daily, event, hasn't it? The latest mass shooting. All I can say is, there are way too many angry, disconnected, ignorant people and way, way too many easily available weapons.

Such insanity. And I suspect that it is exacerbated by the steady flow of wealth to the upper rungs of our economic ladder, and the resulting deprivation of middle- and working-class people all across the globe (and certainly in the developed world). None of us know the motives of the attackers in California, but overall, people have reason to be angry. Even those who seem to be motivated by other causes, such as religious extremism, are often fueled at least in part by a sense of desperation and dissatisfaction about their own lives. If they had a freaking JOB they'd be too busy to plot a shooting and build a bomb.*

Do you remember the movie "Soylent Green"? Everyone knows the basic plot -- people eating people. But I keep thinking of the scenes showing a crowded, polluted, gray world, with people literally fighting and climbing over each other in the smoggy streets to claim dwindling resources. And how when you die, you're shown a movie of the world as it used to be, with wildflowers and bees and wild animals and trees and blue skies. Are we becoming that gray, crowded world? I worry that we are.

On a related note, I read an interesting column in The Times yesterday about economic growth, and whether we can realistically expect the world to continue growing without end. It's a question that has always puzzled me -- economists and business leaders say growth is essential, but how can it be endless? We work within a system of finite resources.

The problem, of course, is that in a no-growth scenario, while we may be arresting the forces that are polluting our planet, we're depriving people of stability and livelihood -- which leads to even more chaos.

I hate to say it so bluntly, but I am glad I don't have children.

*In the California case, we now know the shooter DID have a job, but came from an abusive family with a mentally ill, alcoholic parent. I still maintain joblessness is a factor in much violent mischief.

(Photo: Tottenham, in October.)

Still Not the Happiest Post

I just wrote a lengthy post that began with San Bernardino and discussed all my doubts about the condition of our world -- the guns, the economy, the scramble for resources and wealth, the prospects for the future. And then I published it. And then, just as quickly as I could, I unpublished it.

Because what do I know?

Remember how grandmothers used to say "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all?" That's kind of how I feel this morning. I mean, we all NEED to say something in certain venues -- like at the ballot box. But I'm not sure that my own personal (ultimately quite pessimistic) views about the future of the planet contribute in a meaningful way to the conversation.

And I don't want to be part of the engine of gloom. That doesn't mean I'm looking the other way. But maybe a better role for me is to just put up my pictures and talk about my life with Dave and Olga and offer a reprieve from all that.

So, be glad you have been spared. Kind of.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot to talk about regarding life with Dave and Olga this morning. The houseplant carnage has not been repeated -- we're thinking that it's best to bring Olga with us when we go to bed, rather than leaving her out in the living room and allowing her to make her own way to us on her own time. Less chance of a late-night encounter with Foxy Fox that way.

We watched "Homeland" last night -- it's making less and less sense to me these days -- and we discussed the planning of our Florida trip in December. It's growing increasingly complicated. Families!

(Photo: Lewisham, South London, in September.)

Houseplant Carnage and Cassette Tapes

Well, it's only 6:47 a.m. and already this is proving to be an interesting morning.

I woke to find that sometime during the night, the dog -- in a vain effort to get out the back door and probably chase Foxy Fox -- completely destroyed several of our houseplants. The doorway is covered in potting soil and shredded vegetation. Once again, Queen Victoria: We are not amused.

I'm amazed that Dave and I didn't hear it happen, because it must have made quite a racket, but we were sound asleep.

So it looks like I'll be cleaning that up before I go to work. Fortunately the avocado tree wasn't part of the carnage, which most severely affected a big dahlia and a pot of hyacinth bulbs.

In other news, I've been saving four old cassette tapes for years and years, despite the fact that I haven't owned a cassette player in ages and hence have no way to listen to them. One I made for my family while I lived in Morocco, one was made by some friends for me at that time, one is my Tashelhait language test and one is a cassette of Moroccan music. I finally had all four of them digitized, and last night I experimented with turning the recording my friends made into a movie file so I could put it on YouTube and share it with them. The process took HOURS, but that may be because the gerbils on the exercise wheel that powers my computer have grown old and stiff. I finally uploaded it and sent them the link this morning. I think they'll get a kick out of it, having not heard it in 22 years. (I would link to it here but believe me, you wouldn't be interested. Too much inside baseball, as they say.)

I'm just glad to have the recordings preserved beyond the physical life of a cassette. My mom used to have some tapes of my brother and I when we were very young kids -- I wonder if she still has them? I could digitize those too. I should ask her.

(Photo: A colorful design studio in Marylebone.)

Clodagh and Olga

Apparently the rain and wind that we've had in London the last few days are from a storm named Clodagh, which blew in while Dave and I were coming back from Lisbon. I didn't realize we even had named storms in England -- I'm pretty sure this is the first I've seen. Why it gets a name and others don't, I'm not sure.

Anyway, Clodagh seems to have subsided now. It doesn't sound very windy out there this morning.

And look who's home!

Olga was delivered yesterday afternoon as promised, and promptly collapsed against Dave and fell sound asleep. She slept all night like a rock, waking only long enough to eat some of our pizza crusts. (Yes, we had take-out pizza last night, for reasons that will shortly become apparent.) She's always like this when she comes back from boarding. I think she never really relaxes there and so doesn't eat or sleep well. She's still in bed as I write.

She also usually needs a bath when she comes home, but this time she'd been bathed. I told Dave, "They're going to bill us for that. Just watch!"

Although she was delivered as planned -- along with her new harness and collar -- her leash and old harness were not. So of course I had to call the dog boarder and then travel over to White City, in west London, to pick them up. As Queen Victoria apocryphally said: We are not amused. It took an extra hour out of my evening and I didn't have time to grocery shop, hence pizza for dinner. I was afraid I was going to be roped into a conversation and/or debate with the boarder about the forced purchase of the harness, but fortunately I didn't see her and I got in and out of there relatively effortlessly.

(Top photo: Autumnal street detritus, West Hampstead.)