Soledad&#39;s Journal

My counting is rubbish; checking again I think this is top-level comment number 26...

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Yes! I made it onto page 2! \o/ Chocolate all round to celebrate!

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What can I say? We are good, baby!

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We are indeed! Have I mentioned my great love of Uhura to you? (Your icon made me think of it.) It isn't just Uhura the character I love, though, I am so impressed by the actess Nichelle Nichols as well. Have you read her autobiography? I found it fascinating, with all the things she has done before and after Star Trek.

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I have it standing on the bookshelf, right above my bed. I admire that woman, she's brave and beautiful and brutally honest.

Have you seen her in "Heroes"? Or in that old movie, where she played that Dorina or whatever she was called?

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Yes, I did see her in Heroes, her and George Takei both! I really loved the first season of that show, but somehow it lost me at the start of the second...

After reading her autobiography, I have had great trouble liking anything about William Shatner; I never was that fond of Captain Kirk in the first place, but I usually try to remember that actors are different from their characters and give them a chance even if they play someone I don't like. But Nichols tales of Shatner's behaviour just made really dislike the man, and I haven't seen anything of him to really contradict that.

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We are in complete agreement about Shatner. I liked him when I saw him in T.J. Hooker, but I was a young girl back then, and that was just a stereotypical cop show. Every other role he'd ever played was a jerk. Including Kirk. I guess he simply played himself.

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It has got to the point where I actively avoid watching things with him in it.

And in other news: The threads have started collapsing on this page, too. Hurrah! Chocolates all around!

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jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com

\o/ p2

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Latecomer reporting for duty.

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Welcome, welcome! We have enough virtual food to treat everyone!

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And so, happy birthday week, Day 1

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Thanks, Finch. :)
It's good to hear from you again. It has been too long.

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I've been busy fighting the Community of Hilversum *and* one of the publishers I use to work for. That kind of thing takes a lot of energy.

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Yeah, I can imagine. We have that kind of atmosphere at school all the time, since the insipid reforms. Good luck to you!

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altariel.livejournal.com

Hurray! Finally managed to find the way in!

A very happy birthday to you! Hope you have a lovely day!

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That's still coming up. I've had very Hobbit-y days, buying groceries and preparing ungodly loads of food for my guests on Saturday. Most of it goes into the freezer and will be heated up, of course, as I have to work insane hours, this week even on Saturday, but we still hope for a great party.

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Sooo, on with the food discussion, I proudly present... Mum's famous aubergine paste
(or is that a creme???)

In any case, she bakes two medium-sized aubergies on an iron plate on the hearth. Once they've cooled, she peels them, purees the fruit flesh and mixes it with chopped onions. Or with onion paste, lately. Then she adds some sunflower oil until the whole thing is smooth, thick and creamy, and seasons it with a pinch of salt and either with lemon juice or with vinegar.

Usually, she just eats it as a bread spread, but when she prepares it for guests, she fills it into small, hollowed tomatoes.

Me, I hate the thing like the plague, I can't even stand the stench of it, but everyone else who gives it a try gets positively ecstatic, so I thought I'd share the recipe. *g*

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I'm with you on aubergine -- can't abide it!

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For me, it has merely decorative purposes. The colour is amazing, but I don't think it should count as food at all.

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The texture & taste are horrid, and most people seem to prepare it with lots of salt, to draw out the moisture, which makes it even worse.

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I saw someone grilling slices of aubergine on tv once - not in a real grill but in a grilling pan. They used oil in it. I tried to copy the method, hoping I'd like it that way (I was trying to eat more veggies at that time), but it turned out horribly sloppy and dripping with oil. I almost got sick.

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My mother used to do that -- urgh! I think there are some flavours that combine well with them (figs, goat's cheese) but I can't get over the slimy consistency. I dimly recall I once had some aubergine crisps (crispy, brittle) but how that effect was achieved I know not.

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I am going to have to disagree with your here; I love aubergine, in many different forms! Your Mum's aubergine paste sounds delicious! One of my favourite things to get in the Lebanese restaurant, that I used to live near in London, was baba ganoush. All I know about it, is that it is made with mashed (cooked in some way; I think smoked) aubergine and it is yummy! Much better than hummus any day.

Say 'hi' to your Mum from me!

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Sometimes paste is nicer than the vegetable -- I've found I love beetroot paste when I dislike beetroot. Smoking does improve the taste of a lot of foods.

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As I said: all our friends are mad about Mum's aubergine dish, so she has to make it every time we have guests. I usually go out of the house while she's doing it. *g*

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At least it means there's more of the real food for you!

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I have never heard of beetroot paste; is this something one can buy, or did you or someone else make it? I very much dislike beetroot, so I am not at all sure I would buy it if I saw it, but I love the colour of it so if it really tastes very different to the vegetable I might give it a try. Having said that though, I have had borscht and very much didn't like that either, so maybe I wouldn't...

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It's a bought paste, which tastes utterly delicious despite having some beetroot flavour. The main ingredients, aside from beetroot, are borlotti beans (which one can't taste at all), yoghurt, sour cream & tahini, and it does taste a lot of sesame, which might explain why I like it so much. I've taken to it with rice cakes & low-fat Greek yoghurt as a relatively low-calorie snack.

I'm not fond of borscht, either.

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I shall have to keep an eye out then! I do generally like sesame, and everything I have tried so far made with tahini, so it sounds promising. Low-calorie snacks are definitely something I need more of...

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There are so few snacks that are genuinely healthy and low calorie -- so many of them have salt to bulk up the taste.

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I wish

the_wild_iris were here with us, because this would be a topic for her heart: did you watch Merlin? And Camelot? What do you think, pro and contra?

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I haven't heard from Wild Iris in ages; I hope she is well.

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She does react to text messages - unfortunately, texting is expensive over here, especially texting abroad. She told me she no longer had the attention span for LJ... whatever that is supposed to mean.

I miss her, too.

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I hate this exodus from LJ. It used to be such a lively place, and now I feel like a fossil for not abandoning it for some form of microblog (a thing I abhor more than aubergine!).

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I agree, it is a sad thing. LJ was such a great way to keep tab on your friends, to discuss shared interest leisurely... Perhaps we are fossils, but why shouldn't we intent on keeping our fossilic ways when they suit us better?

I don't feel the urge to join every new internet phenomenon and abandon the good things we've had for a decade or more. This entire faster, faster, faster tendency makes my brain hurt. Plus, I find Twitter and Co utterly confusing.

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I've never had much to do with Twitter (I don't text, either) but Tumblr -- argh! I can't make head or tale of it.

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And, oooh, I managed to change my icon, without having to preview and reset it! Let's see if this works...

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Nope! Sigh. I don't know what LJ is playing at.

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I have never watched either. When the BBC did their new version of Robin Hood I was quite excited, but I found the first episode so stupid and boring it put me off not only it, but Merlin as well since people kept comparing the two and saying they were similar. That is perhaps a bit hasty of me... So, tell me do you think I should give any of those a try?

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Robin Hood is laughably terrible. I bought the DVDs for the first two seasons (in the throes of an extreme Richard Armitage lust that the first The Hobbit film cured) but have never finished watching them they are so bad. The young actors who play Marion & Robin are abysmal and have no sexual tension at all, and I'm only a fan of deliberate anachronism when done consciously and sparingly.

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You think Armitage was bad in the first Hobbit film? I find that the first film was the peak of cinematic artistry and canon compliance compared with the second one.

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Given that I loathed and detested the first film, and had suspicions about the canon compliance of the second, I decided to give it a miss. My blood pressure is high enough as it is...

It wasn't so much that Armitage was bad as that film-Thorin is a travesty, and the whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth.

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I liked the first film more than I expected I would, but that was mostly due to Martin Freeman's Bilbo. Thorin I found not so bad, but the other Dwarves were sad caricatures.

The canon rape was harder to stomach, and it only gets worse in the second film. It isn't even about Bilbo anymore.

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Freeman was quite good, I grant you. He was the only thing in that entire film I could stomach.

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The first season of Merlin is lovely - more a fairy tale for young adults than anything else. It treats the source material very loosely, and some aspects simply don't make sense, but it has a unique charm, and the young actors are very likeable. And, of course, they have Stewart Head as Uther Pendragon, which is great. After I stopped looking for Buffy, I enjoyed his performance very much.

Season 2 is still quite lovely, but later on the show loses its footing, IMO, and the main turning point, Morgana turning evil, is totally unconvincing. I couldn't buy that, and as a result I couldn't really buy anything that came afterwards, but the whole thing is still enjoyable. And Colin Morgan is simply amazing.

Camelot is closer to the original legends, save for the fact that there's no Lancelot, or rather that the love triangle is turned upside down. There is a lot of gratutious sex and nudity (it is a SyFy show, after all), and none of the main characters are even remotely likeable. Sir Kay is cute, but everyone else is a jerk. Still, it is an interesting approach, even for women. I'm told that the guys mainly watched it for Eva Green's boobs that are revealed while practicing evil magic.

No wonder the show only lasted one season. It ended with a semi-cliffhanger, too, annoyingly enough.

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Tony Head is wonderful. He'll never convince me to drink Nescafe, but otherwise the guy can do no wrong.

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Did he do an ad for Nescafé?

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He came to prominence in the UK (way before Buffy) for a series of Nescafe Gold Blend adverts, which remain among the best-loved UK adverts of all time.

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Haven't seen it, but am curious to hear what folks who know the "original" King Arthur think of it.

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Which one? There are half a dozen so-called "originals", including the versons of Cretien de Troyes and Sir Thomas Mallory, and they all contradict each other, although certain motives are usually the same. :)

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jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com

I watched some of both - but never ended up finishing either. I mean to some day, but Merlin annoyed me so much by the absolute determination to reverse all character development (especially wrt to Merlin's magic always managing to stay hidden).

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Yes, they managed to hit the reset button right at the start of each new season of Merlin, which made less and less sense with each passing year. Too bad; there is some heartbreakingly beautiful fanfic, both friendship and Arthur/Merlin that deals with their relationship amazingly.

As for Camelot, I was mostly put off by the unlikeable main characters. Still, the motivation of Camelot's Morgan was a hundred times more convincing than that of Merlin's Morgana.

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So what foods do you love to hate? We've been taking about aubergine above, which is one of mine. Sweetcorn is another thing I can't abide, especially tinned.

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Hamburgers. They taste like sawdust soaked in stale motor oil, put in day old rolls that have been soaked in dishwater. And don't even let me start about Ketchup.

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With you on hamburgers. I've once had decent ones, at a posh American ski resort where they were obviously made freshly with high-quality beef, then grilled over charcoal, and served topped with sour cream & pickled cucumber. That's the only time I've eaten them in decades -- the BSE scare in the UK was a bit off-putting, even if one liked them.

And ketchup! I hate that so much I'd forgotten its existence. Baked beans, too.

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I have to say I have never had a hamburger that tasted like that - I must remember if I ever make it to Europe never to have a hamburger.

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Sawdust, definitely! They're really foul over here.

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Beetroot! and parsnips! Actually, I find there are very few root vegetables I do like, which people tells me is very strange since I am a vegetarian. The one prominent exception is sweet potato, which I had for the first time not long ago and positively loved. I also like raw carrots, but don't like the teste of them when cooked...

Edited Date: 2014-10-03 09:48 am (UTC)

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I don't like parsnips, either. Sweet potato is wondeful, though we don't eat it very often these days -- we used to do a fried side dish of spiced sweet potato with curry, but we've had to give it up as too calorific.

I know several vegetarians who don't like large numbers of vegetables. My mother-in-law, for instance, doesn't seem to like any vegetables very much and has been a vegetarian for ~40 years.

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One of the recipe books I got for my birthday this year, had a recipe for a sweet potato gratin with peanut butter, which was positively scrumpcious! It would probably sadly fall in the category of 'too calorific' though, because it contained quite a lot of cream...

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Peanut butter's another thing on my Can't Abide list! But sweet potato gratin sounds delicious -- and one could always try it with low-fat yoghurt instead of cream.

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I love peanut butter, and thought it worked really well in this dish. My plan is to use coconut cream/milk next time I make it, because I think that would be a good taste combination, but again you may find that rather calorific. My recipe also had the zest and juice of a lemon in it, which worked really well with the sweet potato.

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I love peanuts, it's mainly the texture I don't like in peanut butter, so it might work ok. I adore coconut milk -- we used to cook with it a lot but we've had to give it up as part of the calories drive. (Which has rather taken over our lives, sadly.)

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I am trying to not let my plan to loose weight become the big thing in my life; to that end I aim to eat things I like, just in smaller portions, and not having (too much) unhealthy snacks about the house. Actually, the way I usually do dinner during the week, reheating a box with a precooked meal from the freezer helps with that; I can simply make the portions smaller when I freeze them. The trick then is to not 'fill up' on snacks afterwards...

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Smaller portions really helps and after a while one adjusts to them. I've found it's important to eat enough t meals to feel properly full, otherwise I just overeat on snacks, and end up eating more overall.

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One trick that I find does help is also drinking plenty of water; it fills up your stomach, without adding any calories at all! But yes, I do find it is important to come away from a meal feeling full, because as you otherwise you very easily have more by snacking. I wish there were some really tasty, low calorie snacks, but I find that snacks are usually either or...

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I'm really bad at drinking water, I keep forgetting -- but yes, it is supposed to suppress hunger.

I agree about snacks... After long experimentation, I've been eating beetroot paste on rice cakes with a dollop of zero-fat Greek yoghurt (the Liberte brand is quite thick) which is tasty and only about 70 calories a rice cake.

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I mostly try to avoid having snacks at all, because I find that partly once I start snacking it is very hard to stop. Also, I was brought up to not really have snacks between meals, because it is bad for your teeth so that is still very much at the back of my mind. If I don't think about having snacks, I find I can go quite long periods without them, but once the idea gets into my head I have a lot...

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I find I lose energy if I don't eat every two or three hours. Sigh. My metabolism definitely wants me to be fat.

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A lot of my snacking have to do with being bored, or wanting/needing a break. So I try to make the 'snack' a cup of tea instead, or just go for a walk to check my pigeon hole or something. Though sometimes I get a proper craving for something sweet, and then only that will do!

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Believe it or not, there's a limit to how many espressos I can drink -- at least without getting so wired I can't sleep for days!

We're a bit in the middle of nowhere here -- no pigeon holes to check. But conversely the nearest shop is a mile away so I can't pop round the corner and buy doughnuts/biscuits/potato salad/marzipan, as I did when I worked in London or Cambridge.

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The shops being not-to-close does indeed have some advantages! When I used to live in London, there was a corner-shop downstairs in my building, and another three mini-supermarkets within less than five minutes walk. If I wanted a snack, I could get easily get it even if I didn't have any at home. Here there is a little local shop not that far away, but I don't go past it in my regular travels to and from work, so I mostly don't really think about it being there. The nearest shop I do use, is the Tesco about a mile down the road along my cycle path to work. While it is still possible to nip out to just get a snack, my laziness usually wins over my desire for snacks...

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The nearest supermarkets to here are about 7 miles in one direction (where we usually shop) and 6 in the other. It does make dieting easier! Especially these past few days when my car has been in the garage.

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I haven't got a car, though I am intending to buy one since it can be very useful for getting things for the house and garden, not to mention getting out into the countryside. However, my plan is to exchange my Swedish driving license for a Northern Irish one (as the UK government tells me I should do after living in the country for more than three years) before getting a car; that way I won't have the hassle of trying to get a car insured with a non-standard driving license, or having to change things over when I do have to 'renew' my license in a couple of years' time. The progress I have made on this plan so far is: 1) Getting the form I need to fill in, which was not as straight-forward as you might think; it certainly wasn't available on-line and I had to email several times before someone actually answered and then sent one by post. (Achieved a few months ago) 2) Getting photographs of myself to send with the form. (Achieved this week).

At the moment I mostly cycle, to work and to do grocery shopping. For going into town, I use the train; my house is less than five minutes walk from the nearest railway station, so it is really handy.

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Getting any official documents in the UK can be very hasslesome. I recently renewed my passport and was appalled to find that while it was possible to fill the form in online, one still has to print it all out and post it. Surely all they need is the photographs and a signature? Well done on getting the photographs done - -that's a real slow step.

Cycling is really good for one's health -- unfortunately I stopped when I injured my back and have never managed to get back into it, despite buying an expensive reclining bicycle, which I've never got to grips with.

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I've given up on the losing weight project as long as I can't retire. During school term, there is just too much stress and too little time to eat healthily; and besides, I need my comfort food to survive with the last shards of my sanity intact.

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I had got really frighteningly overweight, and Mr EA got told to lose weight after his knee operation, so it seemed like a good move to join him in dieting. But I know what you mean about needing comfort food to survive sanity intact... It's really hard.

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I forgot to tell you that I actually saw the season premiere of Dr. Who, in which a new Doctor arrives. A dear friend invited us over to eat and watch. The evening was fun, but I guess I just don't quite "get" Dr. Who. I saw it in NZ when we were kids -- that was back in the Jon Pertwee Doctor days. Back in the States, I saw a bit with Tom Baker because my middle sister liked it, but he just made me buggy. There's "quirky, then there's "a bit odd" and then there's "oh please stop." Baker was the last one. [ducks under the table in case a food fight breaks out over Doctors]

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Tom Baker was my ideal Doctor! (Though my adolescent self liked Peter Davison, too.)

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For me, definitely Christopher Eccleston! Although I quite like Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, too. Peter Davison is a bit, as the Germans would say, "licked smooth" for my taste. And the others are all more or less insane.

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Eccleston was an intersting portrayal; I wished he could have continued in the role longer. Davison was too young for the role, even when I was a teen, but I thought he was sweet :)

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I first came to Doctor Who for David Tennant's first season; he captured my heart with the library scene (points to icon) in the second episode!

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I love that quotation! But though I like some of Tennant's work, I didn't really warm to him as the Doctor. I don't think he was written very consistently and I hated all the Rose/Doctor stuff.

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It is the quotation that turned me into a Whovian! I know I am very late to the game, but I plead innocence due to having grown up in a country that didn't actually broadcast Doctor Who until after I emigrated! I mostly tuned the Rose/Doctor stuff out; somehow I think I managed to actually not notice that the Doctor was supposedly in love with Rose, because it just didn't make sense to me. I loved Martha when she first came on, but then they made her have a crush on the Doctor, and dumbed her down with it, which upset me greatly. Actually, the companion I found myself liking the best was Donna, which was very surprising given that I positively hate what I have seen of her own comedy-stuff!

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As I said to Soledad, I was only allowed to watch BBC as a child so I was forcefed whatever the Beeb decided was suitable for children.

Martha was brilliant; I wish they'd done something better with the character. Donna worked surprisingly well; I liked having a properly adult companion for once,

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I think you have hit on what I liked about Donna; she wasn't a little kid, but a real grown up and a proper match (but not at all in the romantic sense) for the Doctor.

We didn't watch much television at all when I was a child; there were only the two SvT channels (Swedish public service) available and they had only a very limited amount of children's programmes. Out of those, quite a scared my older sister in some way or other, so I think my Mum just decided against children's TV in general. So we mostly watched the news, mainly for the weather forecast, which matters quite a lot if you grow up on a farm.

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And one didn't feel as if her entire life revolved around the Doctor -- she had a strong relationship with her grandfather.

I wasn't allowed to watch all that much either -- we were allowed to watch from when we got home from school until dinner (which was usually only a short time), and then we weren't allowed until we'd finished our homework. Often I got so much homework (and was so perfectionist about it) that I didn't get to watch anything more at all. We did tend to watch the news as a family at 9pm and I sometimes got a dispensation for educational documentaries.

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We did watch some education programmes; the Swedish public service television and radio company had (probably still does, but I have been away for going on nine years) a branch called Utbildningsradion which means "the education radio". They had a number of programmes for learning languages. I especially remember one series called Young Australia that we all enjoyed quite a lot. As we got older, we did also watch some drama series, but I would probably have been in my teens by then.

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One of the rubbish things about being brought up in the UK is how difficult it is to learn languages -- it really isn't the norm and it isn't catered to much in broadcasting.

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I took French in school, but I don't really speak it; I think one of the main reasons people in Sweden are as good at English as we are, is that we get a lot of British and American television series and films, and we do not dub them except for very small children. Therefore you do hear a lot of spoken English and that helps you learn the language. Lovely though French is, it is a smaller language and we got very little French spoken on Swedish television. So despite taking it for six years, I don't really speak or understand spoken French. In the same way you don't get exposed to a lot of any one other language in the U.K. so it is difficult to learn another language even if you do want to; then there is the added problem when English is your first language of what other language to learn. It may not be official, but English is very much the common language in much of international communication, even between people where no one is a native English speaker. That makes it the sensible first choice for a foreign language to learn; there isn't really as clear cut a choice for native English speakers as far as I can see.

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It is embarrassing how most people in continental Europe are fluent in English, but the English-language television is definitely a factor in your favour. I think there's also a cultural difference -- here it is often considered uncool to learn languages for some reason, whereas in many European countries it is completely the norm to be fluent in several non-native languages. I once worked with a Finnish lady who spoke six languages fluently; her English was lightly accented but otherwise close to perfect.

I learned French and German at school for five years apiece, but in neither case can I speak the language at all any more. (I can read French a little.) There are occasional French subtitled films but German is even less easy to come by. I don't know what language I'd learn now if I had a choice to start again as a child. Spanish perhaps? Chinese would probably be a good bet, population wise, but much harder for an English speaker.

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I took German, too, for the last three years before university, and then at university for a year; I can actually speak and understand some German, and definitely read it, but I feel it would be a great embarrassment if I didn't with that background, since for my university course we had to read a different German work of fiction each week of the academic year! It also helps that I already know two Germanic languages -- Swedish and (at least in theory) English -- so that often enough I can understand things in German without actually ever having learnt the word.

The extra problem with trying to learn Chinese, apart from it being such a different language both in type and script, is of course that you would have to choose which dialect you wanted to learn; I understand from my Chinese colleagues that the different dialects are wildly different and knowing one does not lead to understanding others.

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I used to work with a lot of (Swiss)-German speakers but their English so far surpassed my German we always spoke in English. German & English don't feel particularly similar to me, though I know many words have common roots. I gather from those who learned Spanish at my school that it's possible to guess many of the words from the French.

I understood that written Chinese was dialect independent?

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It was a problem of sorts, for the international people in my group at Uppsala University; they were generally not 'allowed' to speak Swedish at work, because everybody else's (technical) English was so much better than their Swedish. Of course, that meant they never got a chance to practice their Swedish and therefore didn't improve...

I, too, thought that written Chinese was entirely dialect independent, but my Chinese colleague here at Queen's implied that was not the case. However, I was mostly referring to the fact that the spoken Chinese is very different in different dialects.

Knowing both Swedish and German, I can see the Germanic roots in (some parts) of English; there are definitely very strong other influences as well. Sometimes knowing English actually helps me with my French, with words like 'liberty'; the Germanic 'freedom' is not quite as recognizable in Swedish 'frihet' and German 'Freiheit'.

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My husband spent a couple of years living in Germany but barely learned any German because everyone there spoke English, and they all socialised together.

Modern English is quite a complicated language, I think; a bit of a mongrel -- there are roots in Latin, Greek, Old French, Old German and several other languages, and often there are concepts that can be expressed with several words with entirely different roots. I've never studied it but I imagine Anglo-Saxon would be strongly linked with Swedish? (I fear my acquaintnce with Swedish is limited to watching Wallander and the like...)

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I haven't studied Anglo-Saxon either, but yes I do believe it is the Germanic parts of English with strong links to Swedish. I do find that the more languages (of a certain group) you know, the more likely you are to spot even the less obvious links. For example, 'light' in Swedish is 'ljus' which is pronounced with a silent 'l'; in Danish (and I think Norwegian) it is 'lys' and in German 'Licht'. Going straight from Swedish to English, it looks quite different, but taking the route via Danish and German it looks much more similar.

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According to the dictionary handily placed within reach of my chair, light comes from OE 'leht' which looks very similar to the German, whereas 'lumière' presumably shares roots with all the English words sourced from the Latin, such as 'luminous'.

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I have two problems with English, personally:
1) The almost complete lack of connection between spelling and pronounciation;
2) The complete lack of consequent rules. Things work differently on different days of the week or by rainy weather or only God nows why. Learning the countless rules of German grammar is a PITA, but at least when you have learned them, they cause no further problems.

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Hmm. To a native speaker it all feels quite logical (well, I'll give you the occasional pronounciation nightmare -- 'Cholmondeley' near us is pronounced 'Chumly', for example).

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Eccleston had a strong presence; IMO, he was probably the only truly adult Doctor since Jon Pertwee. I just couldn't stand Tennant's hystronics, and what little I saw of Matt Smith, it didn't impress me, either. Sorry.

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I'm just a bit young to have seen Pertwee as a child. Eccleston is a really strong actor, I think, with a surprising range considering how distinctive his voice & ears are.

Tennant was intermittently ok, and I've enjoyed some of his other stuff. I think he was terribly written & badly directed, and the whole thing played more and more to a small section of the audience. I lost interest entirely before the end of Tennant, so I've never seen Smith in the part, but he's far far too young.

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I never saw any of Dr Who as a child. Such things weren't available over here. I picked it up after watching Torchwood, to see the bigger picture.

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We weren't allowed to watch ITV as children, so whatever got served up by the BBC was what we watched... I can't imagine some of the original Doctor Who plays well to an adult audience -- it wasn't very sophisticated, as I recall.

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I never cared much for the visual tricks. I prefer the plot and the characterizations. If those are good, I don't mean if the monster is a guy in a rubber suit and if I can spot household items used as futuristic tools to steer a spaceship. And some of the Jon Pertwee era stories are really good in that area.

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I don't remember the plots being particularly great during the Tom Baker era but to be honest I don't remember it too clearly.

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From what I could see, the quality was very uneven. Some plots were amazing, others unbearably childish.

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I'd recalled some of the bad ones...

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I forgot to mention that tonight, I fetched out the comforter cover. We've been sleeping under the comforter sans cover for several days, but it's not officially "cold" until the cover is on it!

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We've got insane weather over here. Over the day it's warm and sunny (or warm and clouded over), so they won't start central heating, understandably enough. But over night, it drops fifteen degrees Celsius, and we broke out the winter comforter to prevent getting a cold.

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They turned the heating back on at work at the end of September, which just so happened to coincide with the warmest weather we have had for quite some time. I went from constantly wearing a sweater in my office, to almost wishing I had worn shorts!

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In other news, I am currently baking a (rather flat) loaf of bread using wild-crafted yeast. While down at the sea last week, I set a bowl of warm water and flour on the ledge of the large front porch. The first batch didn't take after two days, but my second attempt worked. However, it's been very slow going -- or is that "slow growing"? I brought the bowl home and "fed" the yeasties some more flour and water After a couple days, it changed to what looked like a viable bread starter, so I set some aside in a jar in the fridge (for the next batch) and made the rest into a dough.

The dough has not risen much since, and it remains prone to being sticky, although the texture in my hands feels right. The flat ball I just put into the oven on the hot baking stone is not much bigger than the span of my hand. So, we shall see what happens...

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wild-crafted yeast?

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The description sounds like sour-dough to me, but I might be missing something...

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Sounds adventurous nonetheless. ;)

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Oh absolutely! I wasn't trying to belittle the baking adventure

lhun_dweller was describing, just chipping in that there may be a different term for it that was more familiar to others.

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Sour dough I know! I wondered if Lhun Dweller might be gathering the yeast herself from the wild, which sounds very adventurous.

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A friend of mine gave me a fantastic book on baking a few years back; among the things it described was how to make sour dough from scratch. The process sounds very similar to what

lhun_dweller describes. I think it might even have used the phrase 'wild yeast'. I tried it and it was great fun, but it also felt rather wasteful; you kept doubling the size of your sour dough every day, and then throwing most of it away every four days, for four weeks. I was very pleased with the taste of the bread, even if like

lhun_dweller describes, it didn't rise as much as I expected.

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Mr EA has a baking streak -- he's been known to make sour dough in the past but he's been too busy of late. Hopefully next year when he's (semi)-retired he'll get back to baking -- we'll have an Aga which is good for breadmaking.

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I do love baking, but I find that living on my own and not eating much bread (I usually try to do salads for lunch to keep the calorie content down), making bread is not very sensible. Luckily my group at work are always very helpful in eating anything sweet I bring in, so at least I get to do some baking without feeling too guilty about how much I eat.

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Even with two people, baking generates far too much bread to eat sensibly, sadly.

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It is a great shame, because baking bread can be such a therapeutic activity, not to mention the lovely smell in the house!

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We have the lovely scent of roasted coffee beans in the kitchen :) Which have the advantage of being calorie free!

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I do love the smell of coffee, but I just can't do with the taste! Living on my own, that means I don't really get the smell of coffee either...

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Aie! A person who doesn't like coffee! [Makes cross symbols]

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I meant to learn how to drink coffee, honestly! But then this course mate of mine told me I wouldn't be able to get through my engineering degree without drinking coffee. That was just a challenge I couldn't let pass by. Then, just to make sure I wasn't accused of cheating, I didn't drink coffee for my Ph.D. either. And then I moved to England, where people actually make good tea, so learning how to drink coffee just slipped off the list of things to achieve in life. I used to think drinking coffee was the mark of being an adult; this might still be the case, I have just given up on being an adult...

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I learned to drink coffee slowly through my childhood -- my father apparently made it for me with milk before I can remember, and then as a fairly small child we stayed in France where they didn't serve milk with coffee at all, so I learned to drink it black, with lots of sugar, before I was ten. Then I gave up the sugar as a teenager, and started drinking espresso when I graduated and first got a proper flat to put an espresso maker in. So for me it's definitely not a mark of being an adult!

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In the remote parts of Sweden, where I grew up, coffee was what the adults drank when you went visiting; children got cordial. With age, I find I don't much care for most cordial any more, finding it far to sweet. When I moved to university, tea started being offered as an alternative hot drink. At first I drank it very weak with lots of milk, and that would have less strong a taste than coffee so it was easier to get used to. Nowadays, given the choice I will mostly have peppermint (or even better fresh mint) tea.

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When I was a child, children in the UK also got fed cordial -- or at least squash, which is much the same. (Never quite worked out the difference.) Most adults drank tea, not coffee -- my mother, who preferred black coffee to tea, was quite an exception.

I must get back to drinking herb/fruit teas -- I used to do it a lot but I've got out of the habit.

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All through my childhood my parents would have coffee with breakfast and tea with the evening meal, which consisted of sandwiches. They were the only people who I knew of who did drink tea, except my Mother's family in England.

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Perhaps my equivalent of coffee as an adult drink is wine -- my parents often drank wine with the evening meal, but I've never really learned to like anything but the very sweet wines -- dessert wines & Gewurztraminer. I don't drink red wine at all.

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Alcohol is another of those things I just never got around to learning how to drink. This was a bit more of an active decision on my part; I found I could have good fun without drinking, and having been brought up awkward by an awkward Mother, I figured I could be the difficult person who made sure there were non-alcoholic beverages on offer for me as well as those who might not be as comfortable being different. Sweden is a very conformist country, so not-normal is a very bad thing indeed to be and people will go to surprising lengths to avoid having that epithet levelled at them. I am already counted as weird, for having a non-Swedish born Mother, so I got used to it...

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I gave up alcohol almost entirely when I was in my twenties. It was quite difficult -- work colleagues were often very pushy and my parents were very hostile about it -- but I've never regretted it. I do drink occasionally now but rarely in group situations and only then when I feel totally comfortable. Most of Mr EA's family is teetotal for religious reasons, which does help.

I've never fitted in, so being the weird teetotaller didn't bother me too much, except for all those people who assumed I must be trying to get pregnant.

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I, too, tried to learn to drink coffee, and I could enjoy the taste. But my belly simply will not tolerate it: not in a cup, not in a cake or any other food. So, it's tea for me, and enjoying the smell of others' cups. [grin]

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Mum gave up 'regular' coffee, when she had an ulcer decades ago. She found she could still drink the instant kind, with about half coffee/ half milk. Indeed, she says she prefers instant coffee to the other types, though most other people I know who like coffee think instant is a disgrace to the name.

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Personally, I think instant is blasphemy, but everyone must find what works for them.

We make a middle strength espresso, the kind where you can still discover the taste of coffee, not just the bitterness.

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I have learned to tolerate the existence of instant without complaint as long as no-one calls it 'coffee'. Mr EA drinks it a lot with milk (the man has to have some flaws...).

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At least instant tea seems to mostly have gone away! I never quite understood the point of that; while making proper coffee does require special equipment, it is quite possible to make a decent cup of tea straight in the drinking container...

Not being a coffee drinker myself, I usually keep some instant 'coffee' in the house for recipes that require coffee and to offer to guests (notably Mum, who as I mentioned does like it). I did usually offer it to my friend K paraphrasing Douglas Adams as "a substance almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee".

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I've never seen instant tea -- I don't think it really took on in the UK. The tea bag in mug method is pretty easy, even for a lazy tea-maker like me.

I have made instant for the builders; I don't think they liked it when I made them espresso! And my sister-in-law much prefers cafetiere coffee; she's very polite but she dilutes my espresso about 50:50 with water then adds a lot of milk. I can't recall when I last drank instant myself; more than 25 years ago I think!

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Mmmm.... coffee....

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Mmm indeed!

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I cannot drink coffee, even though, as someone once noted, my tea is dark enough that it looks like coffee! However, The Beloved is quite fond of his coffee. He grinds his beans, and when buying them at the store, often mixes a couple of the choices. So, I get to enjoy the wonderful aroma!

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Oh, and in college, my then-boyfriend's roommate sat down at the dining hall table, looked at my cup, and said, "I thought you couldn't drink coffee?"

"I can't," I replied. "That's tea."

He looked hard into my cup, looked up again, and said, "No. That's coffee!"

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Ground fresh beans do smell simply wonderful :)

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Indeed.

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What is an "Aga"?

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It is a special type of cast iron heating stove and cooker, invented by the Swedish Nobel prize winning physicist Gustaf Dahlén. We have never had one in any of the homes I have lived in, but everyone I know who has loves them!

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I hadn't realised they were Swedish! Somehow they feel very British. My husband had a Rayburn in his previous house, but we've neither of us ever owned an Aga, so it's going to be an adventure.

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Others have already done a fine job of explaining the "wild-crafted" yeast, so I'll just add that it's a fancy schmancy hippy dippy term for, as several of you have noted, something humans have been doing for thousands of years! [grin]

Alas! the first effort did not produce an edible product: way too dense and still sticky in the center, despite copious amounts of flour. Nice smell, and the bit that baked enough to sample was, indeed, tasty and tangy.

Reading through the comments, I wonder whether I should try the feeding-and-chucking-half thing for a bit to get enough yeastie beasties growing to lift a full loaf. I certainly had to leave the dough sitting a day or so at each stage to get it to rise. Well, I still have half the original starter in a jar in the fridge, so I could give it another go. And we're back down to the house by the sea next weekend -- we decided some more time down there was A Good Thing -- so I could try a fresh start. I'll keep you posted.

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Even with the four week, feeding-and-chucking-a-lot-away thing, my dough didn't rise a lot or very quickly. The recipe book said that was to be expected though, and I did quite like the result. So I would encourage you to give it another try and would love to hear about how you get on with it.

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So, what should we be aiming for today? For 300 comments or for Page 3?

BTW, last night I imported the first 134 comments to DW, just in case. Tonight I'll do the same. Better safe than sorry. Let's hope LJ holds out until that hour. *knocks on wood*

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What would the birthday girl prefer?

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Either or both - I'm not choosy.

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We seem to be doing better with the '300 comments' option, than getting onto the third page...

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Indeed! I think we should go for that, before we all get some sleep!

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Unless someone else has beaten me to it, this should be comment number 293, so we should definitely be able to get to 300 tonight!

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Go go go!

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We now only need two more (of which this should be one)!

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It's saying 301 now, so our work (for tonight at least) is done!

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We could do with some inspiring topics to discuss!

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What is everyone having for dinner tonight? I am being very lazy! I stayed at work until twenty to eight, so I order a pizza on-line for delivery, specifying when I wanted it delivered with a bit of margin so that I was sure I would have time to cycle home. Actually, I ended up with a bit more margine than I needed, so despite the fact that I have been home for 15 minutes, I still have another ten to wait for my dinner...

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We've just had chicken curry with butternut squash & lemon juice (which we're using in place of rice) and cucumber & mint raita. One of our standard meals but enjoyable, nevertheless.

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I love butternut squash! Do I understand correctly that you use it and the lemon juice in place of the rice? If so, can you explain further? It sounds intriguing!

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Yes, in place of the rice we used to use as the carbohydrate source. (We were both on a diet for 4 or 5 months earlier in the year and gave up rice & potatoes [Mr EA gave up bread, too], and although we're not calorie restricting any more, we're sticking to not eating rice or potatoes.)

We steam the squash in cubes in the microwave, which is really quick, and pour freshly squeezed lemon juice on it when it's hot, then use it as a side dish to the curry. It's very tasty but it only works with curries that aren't too wet (as it doesn't absorb fluid) or too hot (it's not as cooling as rice). We use it in place of potatoes/potato salad, too. We tried it with stir fries but it didn't really work as well there. It's much lower calorie than rice, and it counts as a vegetable portion too. (I'm not very good at eating fruit/veg.)

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That sounds very interesting; I mostly roast butternut squash, with quite a lot of oil, which isn't helpful when aiming for low calorie content. The idea that this way of cooking it would also be quicker, is good too. I find myself rarely cooking dinner on a week night, because by the time I get home I want dinner quickly. For this purpose, when I do cook I try to make a large batch so that I can have ready made meals in the freezer. But sometimes it is nice to have a meal that hasn't been through the freezer!

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We used to roast it with olive oil too, but this way is tasty, much less oily and quicker (tho' cubing it does take time and needs a great big knife).

With the curries, we often make a big batch and eat one portion, freeze another and sometimes even refrigerate a third. The curry usually improves for refrigeration overnight though freezing doesn't do a lot for the meat texture -- not a problem for a vegetarian, though!

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I noticed my local Tesco selling precubed sweet potatoes and butternut squash; I might be lazy and go for that option... It also has the advantage of giving me both of those two vegetables which I love, in a quantity that is (semi-)reasonable for a one person household.

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Oh, that's an excellent idea -- we've been buying precubed pineapple to make fruit salad, which is a huge time saver.

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I love pineapple, but rarely buy the fresh stuff, partly because of the effort involved in getting to the eating. The other part is that a whole pineapple is usually a bit much for me on my own. When I have bought pineapple in recent years it has mostly been the precubed stuff, though I find my shop often doesn't sell just pineapple; rather you have to buy their selection of fruit salad which is sometimes to my taste and sometimes not.

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We used to buy whole pineapples but too often they went off before we got around to using them. Also we have granite work tops which are sensitive to the enzymes in pineapple so it is particularly difficult to cut them!

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I had that problem, too, and I hate throwing away food, which is why I stopped buying them. I have mostly been satisfying my pineapple cravings with not-from-concentrate pineapple juice, which tastes properly like pineapple, unlike the concentrated stuff which is often just sickly sweet.

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Throwing away food always seems like a crime, though we do it all too often.

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I am usually far more ambitious about what cooking I will actually do in a week, when I do the grocery shopping, than what actually happens, which does lead to very sad food wastage. I do believe in ignoring 'best before dates' though, and using my own judgement about whether food is still OK to eat, so I don't throw out as much as I might.. Still far too much, though.

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I take the view that with a lot of food, if it isn't obviously foul smelling or mouldy then it's fine, though with chicken or prawns it's more of a problem. We've just finished some overlooked cherries that were dated best before 6 September and they were absolutely fine.

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Yes, shellfish and chicken are definitely foods one should be extra careful of; being a vegetarian myself these days, I luckily don't have to bother about those. ;-)

Finding some forgotten cherries sounds a very happy thing to do, when they are still edible. I have had grapes, which I forgot about to the point where they turned into delicious raisins!

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I gather it's perfectly possible, and indeed common, to get food poisoning from bought salads, but somehow shellfish always makes me more nervous than other foods. Being vegetarian does have a lot of advantages.

I think there might be another slightly less old batch of forgotten cherries, too -- will have to dig them out.

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Gobbling up samples!! Tomorrow is the real life party, but I worked all day today and will be working tomorrow till noon, too, so I had to make the cheesy buns, the sausages in puff pasty and the phenomenal apple-cheesecake tonight. There was much testing and sampling, and now I'm both full and dead on my feet.

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Tasting the product is definitely one of the best things about cooking/baking! Though I do also very much like seeing other people eat it with enjoyment.

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That, hopefully, comes tomorrow.

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Sampling is the best part of baking - It's best to do most of the prep work the day before the party, it's just so exhausting. I'm sure your guest will love everything you've made.

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The past couple of evenings I've been working on my last year's Yuletide recs. I always read (or at least start) everything in sources I have even the vaguest knowledge of (including many where that's just I've read a fanfic before, or I've heard people talking about the source, or someone recs a story and it looks accessible without canon knowledge). I bookmarked about 150 stories to reread back in January, and now I'm finally ploughing through them all again, with ~15 to go.

The slow stage is always the final one, where I've read everything at least three times but have a big batch I can't decide whether to rec or not. I'm trying to be more organised this year, so my file now has heaps for Grey Area on Fourth Reading...

Does anyone else recommend regularly? How do you go about it?

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I had such good intentions with

telekis_vendiak, my reccing journal, but I always end up years behind my actual reading, such as it is. I do put stuff on my Favourites list at FF.Net, but mostly to find the stories I like again.

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I'm quite good at bookmarking stories to reread, but very poor at actually rereading and deciding whether or not to recommend them -- particularly if they're longer than I can read in a few minutes.

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How about plans for the weekend as a discussion topic?

I am sadly going to have to spend a fair chunk of my weekend at work, preparing teaching material for an on-line Master of Science course I am both coordinating and teaching the first half of the semester. I am actually reasonably well prepared, having got half of the weekly notes written weeks before the semester started. However, since I also teach an on-campus module for the first three weeks of the semester, with three lectures a week, I find that I don't have time to get more notes for the on-line course written during the week...

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We've got a huge backlog of gardening to do -- lots of bulbs to put in, which are languishing in our too-warm kitchen, and a big area of weeds that needs clearing and digging over so we can plant it before the frosts set in. It's always enjoyable buying plants, but it's much less enjoyable digging and weed clearing to put them in. My back still aches from last weekend!

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I went to a garden centre last weekend and bought bulbs, too. They are just going to have to wait a bit longer to go in the ground; I know the packet says to plant them straight away, but I can't help thinking that since my kitchen isn't much warmer than the in-door part of the garden centre where they displayed the bulbs, they should be fine sitting there for awhile. I also bought some plants, wanting some hanging baskets for my front porch. Being lazy, I bought ready planted baskets though, so all I had to do was hang them up! :-) What really needs doing in my garden at the moment, is mowing the lawn. Not sure I am going to get around to that this weekend either, which in all likelihood means it won't happen until next weekend. I keep thinking I could do it one week night, but what with the evenings getting shorter, and me usually being to lazy/tired to do much when I get home from work, in reality it is very unlikely.

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I wondered that too, but our kitchen is quite warm atm (tho' unheated). Ready-planted hanging baskets sounds like a great move. I hate lawn mowing but we managed to get half of it done last weekend. The other half is a bit of a weed/rubble fest, sadly (we had builders...)

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I don't really mind mowing the lawn, once I get started, though I do find I keep putting it off. There is also the fact that the way my mower works, trying to mow the lawn while it is wet (with dew, or rain) gets the mower clogged up with the cuttings, which means you need a special, and not that common, type of weather that isn't helping...

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We have that problem too, and there are big trees in the middle of the lawn which shade it in autumn so that it doesn't dry off until late in the afternoon, so it has to be dry all day...

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My house shades half my lawn; it isn't very big, which is one of the reasons I don't really mind mowing it once I get started, because it is relatively quickly done. And it does leave me with a nice feeling of accomplishment!

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It looks really nice when it's done, which is pleasant.

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I'll have to work in the first half of the day tomorrow, and shortly thereafter I'll have my early birthday party, with six guests in a flat of the size of a handkerchief. It will be fun. After that, I'll be busy cleaning up - and then I'll be dead. Well, sort of. ;)

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I hope the party is a great success! As to fitting six guests into a very small flat, we have a saying in Swedish: Finns the hjärterum, så finns det stjärterum. which translates as if there is heart-room there is bum-room, to mean for people you like, you don't mind squashing up.

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That's funny! ;)

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I thought/hoped you would like it! It is a favourite saying of mine. :-)

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That's a lovely phrase!

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I like both the sentiment and the way that it is expressed. :-)

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I hope the party is great fun! Don't tire yourself out too much catering & clearing up!

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DW importer hates me. I tried to import my new comments, and it simply doesn't. Yesterday I gave it a second try and the comments got imported. Today, the new ones won't get through, not even after the second try. I'll try it tomorrow again, and if it doesn't work, I'll have to bother Support. *sigh*

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Sigh. It maybe doesn't like importing the same thing repeatedly?

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It is a recurring problem. Happens to my weekly imports, too.

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I never bother importing comments.

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I do, but even if I didn't usually, the party consists of comments, so losing them again would be really sad.

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Btw, you could also post a reminder in your LJ that links here -- don't know about anyone else, but the party post has already dropped off the first page of my f'list.

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Also, you obviously can't save a page of LJ as a whole. My laptop only saves the entry, with a garbles mess around. The computer at school automatically scrambles the expanded comments while saving. Guh.

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It is really annoying, the different formats of things and how you can't save a sensible off-line copy! Finger's crossed LJ won't eat the party this year, and that you get the importing issue sorted with DW.

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We seem to have reached -- and exceeded -- our target of 300 comments for tonight, so I will say good night! Looking forward to continuing the party tomorrow.

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Good night! I might not be around much over the weekend, I fear.

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Hope you have a great weekend, and don't tire yourself out too much with gardening. The party will still be going on afterwards, I think!

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Thanks! Didn't get too much done today, for various reasons. Tomorrow!

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There is always tomorrow! It is one of the great things about time. ;-)

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Unfortunately eventually the weather will get too frosty to plant things -- but it seems very mild at the moment.

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It was rather nippy as I cycled home tonight, and felt as if we might get frost tonight. But then the sky was almost clear, so I would expect the temperature to drop a lot over night. The forecast seems to be for more rain tomorrow evening, so then it shouldn't be so cold...

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And over here in the New World, I shall also sign off, move my dog a bit and slide into bed!

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So sorry! I was going to make a few more comments yesterday and then something came in between and I forgot.

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I kept getting caught up in interesting discussions...

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That tends to happen on occasions like this one.

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wiseheart really does throw the best virtual birthday parties!

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bk_forever

Zebra finch icon! Oh, that brings back memories, I used to breed them. Or try to breed them anyway. They never seemed to like who I paired them with so I didn't get many chicks.

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But it's nice to know they had a mind of their own.

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bk_forever

It is. I was just probably the most unsuccessful breeder ever, lol! That was long ago though, the aviary is long gone.

They're great little birds, so full of character. I loved watching them flitting around, and I love the sound they make. Happy, busy little birds.

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Fortunately, I am thinking of it now!

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You are setting a very good example for us!

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I'm sure you've contributed many more comments than I have.

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Making it to page three is the least we can do today!

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I believe we can make it!

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It is a glorious day here, with beautiful sunshine. There was a bit of a chill in the air as I cycled to work though, and I saw the most glorious ivy on a building having turned a vibrant red, so it is most definitely autumn. How are other people fairing for weather?

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Here is something I realized I don't know about a lot of you? What sort of place do you live, in a flat or a house, in a small town, big city or quite isolated in the countryside?

I live in a semi-detached house in relatively new mixed housing estate, on the outskirts of a smallish city; it takes me about half-an-hour to cycle to work. From there it is maybe a 15 minute walk to the city centre.

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I am in Boston, Massachusetts, and I live in a building style that is unique to the New England region called a triple-decker or three-decker. There are a number of variations, but the original idea was that the owner lived on one floor and rented the other two for income. As is usual, we have a built-in china cabinet with drawers below, and a small stained glass window high up in the bowed wall of the dining. Closets are small -- Victorian factory workers had not so much stuff to put away! And there are porches front and back, high ceilings (helps with cooling in summer) and tall windows all around. And although the houses are built close together, there's usually at least bit of space between them, enough for light and air to come in.

When we moved here, at the beginning of the century (it's so fun to say that!), many were being sold off and converted to condos. That was the arrangement in both our previous homes. Our current buidling is completely owned by the landlady -- she grew up here -- so we are pretty sure we don't have to worry about that this time!

Read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-decker

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They look beautiful, and nothing like UK buildings! Is the one you live in wood-framed?

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Yes it is. I think the triple-deckers are always wood frame, although a number of them have asbestos shingles on the outside. The major variations include being 3 units, like ours, or a "double-bow" which has two units on each floor.

The part that sticks out on the side can have different shapes, as well. I found an online photo of the first place we rented: notice how the "tower" part to the side is like a half-hexagon, with straight walls.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/17-Victoria-St-UNIT-1-Dorchester-MA-02125/63710358_zpid/

In our current home (can't find a good real estate site photo), that part is round, like the silos of my childhood in the US Midwest! So, the front portion of our front room is curved. Nice for letting light in, but a bit challenging for arranging furniture inside! Fortunately, the low bookcases built by The Beloved (my husband) for our first flat fit into the curved spaces, so it's quite cozy.

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Ah, it looks like Wikipedia got it wrong (not for the first time). The hexagonal tower part is lovely -- some of the terraces in our nearest town have hexagonal or circular towers on the end terrace building, but I've never been inside one. I can see it would be a challenge for furniture fitting though!

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I agree with

espresso_addict, your triple-deckers look lovely! I assume you like living in them, too, since I conclude from your comment that you have chosen to move to a new one when you had to move from the old ones.

One of my main gripes with flats in the UK is that they so very rarely have balconies; in Sweden, where I grew up, most flats will have a balcony, and it is practically unheard of that anything built this century doesn't have one. Out of the flats I have lived in and visited in the UK very few have balconies. It is actually one of the reasons I bought a house when I moved here rather than a flat; one of my must-haves for my new home was some outdoor space, either in the form of a balcony or a garden. I had never actually had a garden of my own before, so I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy it. As it turns out, I love having a garden, so I am most pleased with going with a house, but I still feel sorry for the people living in flats and not getting any outdoor space of their own!

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I agree with you about the pleasures of a bit of outdoor space. These designs emerged around the turn of the previous century and were, as I understand, influenced by emerging thinking about the importance of fresh air and light for one's health.

I share your love of a garden. Alas! the pine trees in back make the soil unreceptive. We had some pots of plants this year, and I'm thinking to try some raised beds for shade plants next year.

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I have been mostly growing (new) things in pots; my garden had well-established bushes of different sorts and heights along the borders when I moved in and I thought it prudent to see what they were like for at least a year before I started digging things up. I have had reasonable success with my strawberries, and my tomatoes are doing wonderfully with lots of fruit. My attempt at radishes, ended up with greenery and flowers, and very little root and my lettuce keeps getting eaten by the slugs. I do have two beautiful mini sun flowers in a pot though, which make me smile each time I go out in the garden to get my bike to cycle off to work.

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I really wish you can stay for as long as you want to, this time. These seem to be lovely buildings in which to live.

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I am in Los Angeles, California, in a house built in the 1939, just outside the city.

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We are quite spread-out it seems, with a fair bit of variation in different types of homes.

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I like older homes, although they do need work - but I have a decent size front and backyard, which was very important when I bought the house (I had dogs at the time and they needed a yard).

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In principle, I like older homes, too, but I am very pleased with the low level of maintenance required for my newish house in practice!

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I have to admit, the low maintenance of a newer home is tempting. But newer homes are generally built further from my work, and I would rather have a shorter commute time.

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Commute time is indeed important! When I was looking at houses, that was one of the primary cut-offs; they had to be within a reasonable cycling distance from work.

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At the moment I'm in a cottage, part 17th-century half-timbered, part 18th-century brick, part modern extension. We're in a tiny hamlet in agricultural land (mainly cattle pasture but the field opposite is arable), a mile from a decent-sized village and about six miles from the nearest town. The nearest city is perhaps 45 miles away.

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That sounds very idyllic, but I suppose also like it could get quite isolated. I love your description of your cottage; while my house from this century is definitely convenient (and crucially: in my price range!) it doesn't have much in the way of character. It is well planned, though and has a (relatively) large kitchen, with enough room for a decent sized dining table, so I am very happy with it. And given how much I hate moving, I am unlikely to do so again in the nearish future!

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It's not always very convenient! Most of the rooms in the old parts of the house are quite small, very low ceilinged and, in the half-timbered bit, very draughty (despite huge amounts of building work trying to plug all the holes). Luckily the kitchen is in the modern part and is large, so that is quite convenient. I do like having a large kitchen, not particularly to cook in but as a social room.

We are moving either this year or early next year, having already bought our next house. Not looking forward to all the hassle of the move one little bit.

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Are you moving far? Or is it mostly to get a different house? I do hate moving! My new colleagues were quite surprised at my determination to buy a house to move into for when I started my new job here in Belfast a year and a half ago, suggesting I could rent somewhere for six months or a year, to work out where I really wanted to live. I was having none of it! Partly that was because I was fed-up of living in rented accommodation, but also I really didn't want to move again...

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We're moving several hundred miles and a ferry trip -- to the Isle of Mull. (I've added you on my personal filter so you should be able to read my post about it, if you're interested.)

How long are you staying in Belfast? Is it a three year position or have you got tenure?

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It looks gorgeous! One of my mother's cousins lives on the Isle of Arran, and when I spent six months in Glasgow during my Ph.D. I had the good fortune of being able to visit a couple of times. Your house looks quite similar, up to the peak behind it! Their house has a view of Goat Fell (highest peak on Arran) in one direction and the sea in the other.

My position here in Belfast is permanent, though I have to get through probation which is a three-year period. I had my first probationary meeting this spring, and I think I am on-track; there were definitely no major complaints about what I was doing. The one thing that was brought up was that I should go to more conferences; as it happened I managed to go to one -- giving an invited talk no less! -- within a month of that meeting. And I definitely want to go to more conferences, anyway, so that isn't a hardship...

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I hadn't realised you had spent time in Glasgow -- it will be our nearest major city. I've actually never been on Arran, for some reason; it's supposed to be lovely. I've always wanted to live somewhere between mountains and the sea, and now we actually get to do it!

Going to more conferences doesn't sound like much of a hardship. Do you get funds to attend?

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I loved staying in Glasgow; especially coming there from Uppsala which is on the plains, I was so pleased with the not-flatness of it. The people there were really friendly as well, and I lived in a (private) student halls right next to the Forth and Clyde canal. My walk to the university took me past both the river Kelvin, and the building on campus that Lord Kelvin worked in, ending in the Kelvin building. It is funny to see how Belfast tries to claim him, as having been born here, after having spent time at University of Glasgow, which I think has the much better claim...

I did get a small start-up fund from the University, as a new lecturer, that I can spend on whatever makes sense for my research. Other than that, I am expected to apply for grants to fund my research, which includes going to conferences. So, in principle the university pays; at least I am not expected to pay for conferences myself, out of my own money.

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Some of the country immediately north of Glasgow is very beautiful and rugged; it's always a shock having driven through Glasgow on the various motorways coming out the far side and finding it so quickly becomes rugged. I nearly did a PhD in Glasgow but my other half of the time couldn't get a job there.

Cambridge claims Kelvin too!

I suppose one of the disadvantages of having a permanent position is that you need to apply for your own research grants, and also justify what you spend the money on! I imagine equipment in your field is large and expensive.

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I think the advantage of not having to move every two or three years, more than outweigh the disadvantages; having to apply for my own research grants is indeed one of them. Though it is also one of the advantages, in that I get to choose what I work on -- so long as I can convince so grant awarding body to give me the money to do so... Equipment is indeed expensive in solid state physics; this is one of the ways I am very lucky to be at Queen's, because we have (since long before I started) a very good collaboration with Seagate (who have a factory in Derry/Londonderry); a part of this is that they have donated a number of pieces of equipment to us that they no longer wanted/needed. Indeed, the two most important bits of kit for my research came from Seagate.

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The three-year research project is brutal if you'd like to settle down somewhere. Many of the people I knew got out after their first or second post-doc, often to have children.

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There is also a (non-official) limit to have many post-docs you can actually do; since your salary as a post-doc is determined by a scale where you move up a step for every year of working experience you have, after a few three-year contracts you are just too expensive to be afforded on another one...

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Ah, that makes sense.

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I meant to respond to the Kelvin bit, as well, but got side-tracked with funding woes... Oh well, it will have to be another comment; hopefully

wiseheart will forgive my wasteful ways! ;-)

Do I take it from your comment about Kelvin that you studies in Cambridge? You saying that you have a BA in Natural Sciences, made me think this was likely; one of my colleagues here at Queen's did his degrees at Cambridge and he has mentioned how you don't actually apply for a specific science subject, but rather do natural sciences with some specialisation. I think this is a more sensible way to do university courses; students often don't know what to expect from a university degree in say physics, so giving them the ability to change their minds without having to start over seems very useful to me.

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Indeed! Cambridge admits all science students to the NatSci tripos; in my day you had to do three subjects plus various choices of maths in the first year, three subjects in the second year (one of which could be maths), and then a single subject in the final year. A lot of people I know started out intending to read either physics or chemistry, and ended up reading whatever they'd taken as their third subject -- usually geology or some form of biology.

I certainly was never advised at school of the level of maths knowledge that was necessary to get anywhere in physical chemistry (which was what interested me). It was obvious that chemistry was not going to work by the end of the first week, when my inability to do partial differential equations made my supervisor despair of me!

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I do find the UK A-level system very strange where you can study science subjects without taking maths; it seems like a serious fraud to me, because there are very few opportunities of doing anything further with a science A-level without maths. That is quite beside the fact that even if universities will admit you without the maths A-level, you will have to do serious maths to progress in the subject! I usually try to explain it by saying maths is the language in which we express science.

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Well, speaking of when I did A-levels, it was uncommon to do sciences without at least AO maths. The most common patterns among my science-studying friends were three sciences plus AO maths among medics or biologists; chemistry, biology & maths/stats among biologists; or physics, chemistry, maths & further maths among physicists/mathematicians. What annoyed me is that no-one bothered telling me that A'level physics (in my day & with the syllabus we did) was a waste of time -- it was completely trivial -- while missing out on doing further maths effectively prevented me from studying university-level chemistry.

I'm not sure quite how true your statement is for biomedicine -- whilst the mathematically illiterate will struggle, there are many niches with little maths much beyond O'level. Also I worked in my vacations in a QC chemical lab where most of the permanent employees had no maths qualifications; the various spectrometers that measured the results were all completely automated.

I've been thinking about maths is the language in which we express science and I think it explains why I became increasingly disenchanted with hard sciences -- I don't find mathematical descriptions at all satisfying unless I can get some sense (at least occasionally) of how the system really is (for some sense of 'really is'). At A'level, the qualitative descriptions gave me occasional numinous feelings that I understood how (parts of) the universe really worked. Whereas, say particle spin, as far as I understand it, has no physical meaning -- it's just a convenient fiction; that didn't feel satisfying.

Sorry this is long, I've been mulling this over all day!

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Long comments are good!

I do think it is still true that most people who do an A-level science subject such as physics or chemistry will also take maths, but since it isn't a requirement, the science subject will be taught as if the students aren't taking maths. At least in physics, this leaves it at mostly a show-and-tell sort of level, rather than giving the students proper understanding of how and why things work. I also think it gives them a very incorrect impression of what university level science is going to be like; the first year, one-third of the courses our physics students do are maths, and another third are (sort of) disguised-maths in the form of computational physics, with only a third being straight up physics. There was a similar level of maths for the first year students in Materials when I was at Imperial, and they too were often surprised by it...

I do recognize that there are niches of science where you can get by without maths, but I usually think they would actually do better if they had a deeper mathematical understanding. While you can use a spectrometer, to take your example, and just take the data it spits out, you will be better able to understand what it means if you understand the working principles and the data analysis that goes on in the 'black box', and that generally means understanding some maths. It isn't necessarily the 'hard core' algebra and calculus, but being able to understand statistics is extremely useful for any discipline that deals in large data sets...

Improving the mathematical literacy of the populous in general, is a topic close to my heart, and it upsets me that we fail people so badly in this. A lot of maths is just a compact way of expressing complex ideas, and being able to understand it allows you to see the underlying principles more clearly.

Sorry, I get quite worked up about this topic, as you may have noticed!

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It's something I feel strongly about too, as you may have noticed.

I hadn't thought about the effect on the syllabus of not requiring maths. Certainly the subject I took was off-puttingly noddy: by far the easiest of the four A'levels I took. Is 16-18 year level physics more interesting in Sweden?

I'd agree that almost everyone would do better with more mathematical understanding.

A lot of maths is just a compact way of expressing complex ideas, and being able to understand it allows you to see the underlying principles more clearly.

Hmm. I'm not sure I agree 100% with this. I think there are several ways of understanding systems, and reducing complex behaviour to equations is, I think, sometimes a substitute for, rather than an aid to, understanding the actual mechanism(s) involved.

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I live in one of the outer districts of the capitol, on the second floor of a ten-storey concrete monstrosity. In the olden days, here there was a village of its own, wich you can still see on some of the small side streets.

Traffic is very good: we have got three tram lines and two bus lines on the next street behind the building and one bus line on the one in front of the building, but nothing in our actual street. So we have a quiet little lane in which we live and excellent connections in both parallel streets.

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That sounds very convenient, and the second floor is good -- not too far to walk up stairs!

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Well, you, me and Mr EA have sailed by on the tram when we went out to that supermarket with the lovely little café near the entrance, so you know where it is. :)

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Ah, so that's where you live!

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A mere two tram stops from there, yes.

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I don't think we're going to be able to visit again for a while, sadly -- all holidays cancelled till we get back to having a single house again.

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Sounds like you have managed to get the best of both worlds: quite, but still with good transport links. It is very important, I think, to have the latter, so that one doesn't feel to cut-off from the world.

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Oh, yes. I work near my home, so I rarely get into the city proper, but I need the knowledge that I could do so easily if I wanted.

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I am going to make another top-level comment to wish

wiseheart a happy off-line birthday party! May it be a great success, with lots of fun discussions, and not too tiring clearing up afterwards!

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My house is at the corner of a row of five, with a railway crossing and a path to the platform of a nearby station at the other side.

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That sounds lovely! Do you find the sound of the trains going by a pleasant noise, as I do with my railway line, or a nuisance? I think it helps that trains don't run much more often than 3 an hour in each direction, and only that often during rush-hour. In the evenings and on Sundays there is only one train an hour in each direction, which makes it less useful as a form of communication...

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Most of the time I don't even hear the trains. There are 4 an hour in both directions, except in the evenings and on Sundays, when there are only 3 an hour. But because they're either just departing from the nearby station or slowing down on approach, they are not going fast and therefore not particularly noisy. The most irritating thing used to be the warning signal of the crossing, until they toned it down a bit after complaints by the neighbourhood. One street was functioning as a kind of ear trumpet - with an opera singer living at the end... (He seems to have been the one who sabotaged the signal bell on occasion, but I don't know this officially, of course.)

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I am the same with the trains here; mostly I don't notice them. The occasional train does blow its whistle when it goes past -- there are some trains that don't stop at my little station, most notably the Belfast to Dublin trains -- and that I do usually hear no matter where in the house I am or if the windows/doors are open. The 'normal' trains, I usually have to keep an ear out for to notice. They have never disturbed me, especially at night. But then my bedroom window faces away from the train line, and when I lived in London my bedroom looked out across a busy main road towards a hospital with an Accidents and Emergency departments. So ambulances would come past with their sirens on, and even that didn't disturb my sleep. I could usually tune all the traffic noises out to the point where I didn't notice them, except on those days that were so warm that I opened the windows on both sides of the flat to try to cool it down.

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'My' trains rarely whistle, except when some idiot crosses the railway when they're already approaching. That always scares the hell out of me, because it's so unusual.
I don't think I could sleep through sirens, though - they're much more unpredictable than trains passing by according to schedule.

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I think the main reason I could sleep through the sirens was the good quality of the double glazing; it was one of the selling points of the flat when I was looking, that the landlord was in the process of putting double glazing in. However, I mostly thought of it in terms of heat economy and thermal comfort, but having had the all the windows open on some nights after incredibly hot summer days to try to cool the flat down enough to sleep in, I realized they were very effective at sound isolation as well.

I am not quite sure why some of 'my' trains whistle; it is generally the through-trains, but not all of them do it. We haven't got any level crossings near here, so I don't think it is people trying to cross when the train is approaching; it could be people standing too close to the platform edge, though.

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Aha, double glazing!. I've got that too in most rooms; that's probably why the trains don't bother me too much. Very effective.

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Even after living in the UK for eight years, it is still strange to me that 'double glazing' would be something to brag about in an estate agent advert. In Sweden, double glazing is the minimum standard you would expect; a number of the flats I lived in while a student had triple glazing. Other things you would expect to see prominently featured in estate agent adverts would be if the some of the glass panes had special coatings to reduce glare or heat loss.

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