h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*just posting to keep Marv busy, to keep Marv busy, to keep Marv busy*

*waves to Marv*

Is there an equivalent of Memorial Day in the UK? And is it warm enough there already for a BBQ?

A local grocery store has spare ribs on special this weekend. I've made my special BBQ sauce. I picked up some new red potatoes to make potato salad and some fresh corn - well it was fresh in Peru or where ever it came from. But my strawberries are still green so I won't have the pie unless I buy some.

You should see my strawberry patch. It's awesome. I'm going to have strawberries out the wazoo. These are the plants that I intended to pull up but got sidetracked and so just left them. They're so thick that I'll have to walk on some of them to get into the patch to pick the berries.

It's not warm enough yet, Hypatia, but there's a heatwave forecast for the end of the week.

We have a bank holiday on Monday. It's called the Whitsun holiday.

It has been warm enough here in SE UK, but then it got cold and wet again. I think tomorrow's high is forecasted as 17ºC with possible showers. We have had 3 bbqs already this year and hope that they won't be the last

The second attempt at my fruit worked well and H has had the idea of serving up the falling apart one with custard for a pudding later in the week. It's amazing how he always knows the way to make things better.

*returns from her sojourn in reality carrying a big bowl of potato salad*

Oh, let's just have the bbq right here in this thread. Marv, fire up the grill whenever you want -- the propane cannister is full, and Matina has ribs and hamburgers right here.

I have absolutely NO chance of catching up with the backlog after 6 days, so I am just going to parachute blythely in as if nothing has happened.

I had a lovely week's holiday with my PL - that man can read so fast it is scary! We read, walked, talked, slept, and generally hung out together, all of which was lovely.

What was less lovely was that I was a pink-nosed snot-goblin with the cold-from-hell, (still have it), and he had raging toothache at the start of the week, and diarrhoea at the end of the week. So, all in all, although it was extremely physical, it wasn't in quite the way I had hoped! And, on the principle of 'feed a cold', I have put on 4lbs!

When I got back I discovered that my ADSL link has gone awol in some rather bizzare and unfathomable ways. I am therefore using a modem, for which I pay by the minute, instead of the ADSL, for which I pay by the month, so my visits here will be fleeting until that is fixed.

Take care, and enjoy the barbies:

B

Did your PL spit soda in your ear, or is that just an American thing?

ferrets are illegal in california because we have a booming poultry industry that fears that if they escape, they'll breed a feral population that will eat all the chickens.

stupid, i know.

and everyone who hates hot weather should come live at the beach with me. it's always 10 degrees cooler than it is a couple miles inland. ahhhh....

I know that Pandora isn't a regular Salonista, but in case any of you are friends of hers, she says hello and will be back online as quickly as she can. I'm not sure she's actually ok yet, but with Pan it's pretty hard to tell sometimes.

I was in Mission Viejo the other evening...it does get chilly quickly, sea. Irvine does too, though. Was it really foggy this a.m. for you too?

[B4]

(preparing to start BS Management classes with UofPhoenix)

*half way up an aspen tree in the atrium, her ears twitch at the word 'barbecue', knowing that it fills the air with delicious scents and that a few titbits will come her way if she looks appealingly enough*

*then she remembers that although trees allow you to get closer to the , they are not so easy to descend from*

*an apparently self-propelled bowl of satay sauce (peanut, coconut, chilli) makes its way towards the barbeque*

[{Courtesy}]

*writing a Journal entry about what happened today with my Personal LIfe*

Did my PL blow soda in my ear?

Hmmm.

I don't *think* so. Would I notice if he did?

Anyways, the sun is shining, (at the moment anyway) and I have a doable number of domestic tasks, (washing up, washing clothes, taking out the rubbish, taking stuff to the recycling centre, unpacking, etc), which will make the flat a nicer place. I have recovered from my exhaustion yesterday. Let's just say that when I got back to Heathrow on Friday night, I was booked onto the 5.25pm bus home, but the bus which eventually *got* me home (at well after 11.00pm) had left LHR at 09.05pm. (The story involves planes which are blocking gates, fully booked bussses, delays because of the Chelsea Flower Show, and an oil leak...)

Hey, as they say, ho.

Anyways, I had a 'lost' day yesterday spent mainly asleep or squabbling with my neighbour. To cut a long and trivial story short parking here relies on accurate and courteous use of the limited spaces, and my neighbour consistantly fails to leave me enough room to park, so I have taken to pushing my nose into the space and letting my rear (as it were) out into the through-way.

He buzzed my buzzer to complain, so I said I would come down and talk about it. Then when I got downstairs he had disappeared - he certainly hadn't moved his car back, or anything useful like that. So I buzzed him. He complained about how my car was parked, (despite the fact that someone had been blocking the throughway entirely for two months during some building works).

I suggested that it might be a tad easier if he parked in the lefthand space, (ie the one I use) if it was free, and not the righthand one. He said "Ah, but I'll get parked in". (Yes, quite). And then he said "And when you go away I could be parked in completely". At which point I went BALLISTIC. I have NEVER gone away leaving the car parked here. I either park it up at a friends (over 16 miles away), or at the airport, or - as I did this week - I spend out a tenner or more and park it at the station. When I pointed this out to him he ignored me. So I pointed it out to him again. Twice. And then the b******d had the nerve to say "yes, I heard you".

Anyway, he is - apparently "tired of flat living, all the parking problems" and considering moving, though he wouldn't say whether he was going to rent the place out, or sell it. But at this rate I will be the senior person in the building, and have a certain first-come-first-served right on the the spaces. Or am I being naive?

Anyways, kitchens to tidy, rubbish to clear, things to wash...

B

Parking Space Stress? Oh dear yes, I've been there. Still am sometimes as our side of the green has a deep curve in it and it straightens out in front of our house. Now I know that we have no legal right to park on the road directly outside our house, but as we have 4 cars between us all there is no room on the drive. However our current neighbours here are considerate, at the moment.

Full page advert in the Sunday Times this morning from Anheuser-Busch thanking HM Forces for their role in the recent goings on that I'm still wary of mentioning. With military ID they' plus 3 family memebers' are being offered free entry to all their amusement parks. It appears a kind gesture, but am I alone in thinking that should anything nasty occur there would be a few useful personnel on hand?

[p]

I dunno, Hypatia, has been well into the 30s for most of the summer the last 3 or 4 years in Moscow. Hot cities are the pits.

I still can't shake this cold. One day of wandering gently round a park yesterday and I am wrung out today. I feel like a weak Victorian lady with the vapours and I'm going to recline gently on a sofa for the rest of the day.

Still raining. Mother Nature does not want me to plant beans and cucumbers.

I find it strange that places can be freezing one day and too hot to breathe the next. You'd think there would be a better system by now.

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A1059743

He's baaa-aaaack!