Riddles

Okay, Friday is cat blog day, but my cats aren't, shall we say, performing in any noteworthy way this week.

The raccoon who's been stealing the bird's suet is out of luck because we've abandonned that feeder in favor of a new one. Suet isn't free. We've had a hard frost and I have not visited the garden since it happened. Too disheartening. Still have 3 ripe and 2 ripening tomatoes and some herbs I snipped. Latest tomatoes ever this year.

Apropos riddles: Today I realized there are two Ridleys. Ridley Scott the director and Ridley Pearson, the writer. I just finished Pearson's The First Victim and liked it a lot. Kind of like getting Anna Nicole and Nicole Richey mixed up. Comes from paying fragmentary attention. As in thinking Nip & Tuck was a reality plastic surgery shot. Bad habit, half-paying attention. Aren't all habits bad?

I entered the Gather/Borders contest with yet a second book, Promiscuous Mode, so now I have novels entered in both Amazon's and Gather's contests. Still tweaking Festival Madness.

Work on new web site proceeds apace. In the confusion of learning some new stuff, I hosed the pointer to the old web site. And I can't open the server site in my browser-- it says "under construction." Now is when I'm glad I paid a few extra dollars a month for a site with 24/7 tech support. But web site work if fun. It's cool to be a geek again. Obviously not TOO geeky
if I screwed up.

Red Sox mania is down, but there's still a warm afterglow. The sports pages don't have a separate Red Sox section anymore.

Miles to go. Fantastic sunset over the slough tonight. I do believe the sky was mauve.

Grapeshot

Colcannon

Colcannon, according to my old Vincent Price cookbook, is a mixture of mashed potatoes, cabbage and onion with gobs of butter and garnished with bacon. We made it tonight, with butter in modest proportions and the leftover turkey kielbasa from the soup a previous night. This is really good--more peasant food, and we had a green salad with it, and I'll scarf down a piece of chocolate before I retire. Yum!

Hobbled out to the garden and picked more tomatoes today. About 6-8 will be ripe in a couple days, enough for some tomato soup. My last "serious" trip to the supermarket was Sept. 19th, before the party, and we've been living on what's in the fridge and the pantry along with a couple of quick strafe's through Shaw's.

Tomorrow we need a serious shopping trip with a list and everything. I'll have to sit in the front of the store while S.O. scurries around and tries to find the right stuff. He is a better shopper than a cook, so should do all right.

Twenty-one more pages of World of Mirrors before I'm done with the last pass. Made 4 more small chapters. I never know if doing basically cosmetic stuff like that will help or not, but it seemed like a necessary thing to do. I'm curious as to how many entrants Amazon has by now. 500? Who knows.

Started a Ridley Pearson book today, and it seemed like it would be a good read. So kids, back to the editing. Have a bang up Friday night.

Grapeshot