23 April 2011

Squid for my sister

I'm posting a picture for my sister who has a special place in her heart for squid.  Especially big huge squid with eyes like jawbreakers!  Like this one, which a fisherman caught on a hook in the Adriatic Sea past Porec, and which then made its way to my kitchen.  This fellow was about as long as my arm and weighed about 2kg before I dressed him for dinner.  The suctions on his tentacles kept sticking to the cutting board and to my hands...de-suctioning them from my hands produced this weird SHLOOP noise.  As per usual, we ate every last morsel of this meal before I remembered that I needed to take a photo :-(  But trust me, it was very yummy :-)
Note to sister:  you can double click on the photo for a huge close-up view.

Second note:  next time you're swimming in the sea and you think that's seaweed brushing up against your ankle...think again!


08 April 2011

Channeling my inner Nancy Drew

I've been going over lots of the fiction I've written over the years and I've noticed that everything eventually turns into a mystery.  You might think there's nothing wrong with this, and you'd be right.  Mysteries are great to read and I myself have enjoyed reading countless mysteries in my lifetime.  The weird thing is that I never set out to write a mystery.  I start out with something completely different in mind, and somewhere along the line BAMMO!  A mystery emerges.

Think of it this way.  Imagine that every time you get in the car, you end up at the dry-cleaners.  Even if you intend to drive to the grocery store, or to work, or the dentist's office or the emergency room at the hospital.  You end up at the dry-cleaners.  And unless you are living in a Stephen King novel, at some point you'd get a little weirded-out.  Yes?  So, I'm a little weirded-out about it. 

Come to think of it though, I did spend an inordinate amount of my childhood with Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, The Three Investigators, and my most favourite of all:  Encylopedia Brown!  I even thought about an awesome TV series where Nancy Drew and Encylopedia Brown grow up, get married and have kids who are...(get ready for it) crime-solving teenagers! 

So, I guess I should just recognize the pattern, and go with it.  I'm going to take my current work-in-progress (working title:  The Hypatia Curse...but don't worry, that won't be the real title ;-)  and turn it into a true mystery.  But no angels or werewolves or psychics or vampires.  Okay, maybe one vampire and one psychic.  We'll see how it goes.

I feel better already.  Whew!  Mystery solved.

01 April 2011

Cherry countdown begins.


The cherry tree behind our building blossomed last week!  As you can see in my picture, the cherry has white blossoms.  Thousands of them.  And in just 30 days, the tree will be covered in dark red, sweet, fat, huge, juicy cherries.