General catching up after Memorial Day

Back again, this time from visiting my parents. Annie the cat stayed home as watch-cat & was very cool & relaxed when I got back, thanks to daily visits from friend Mary. I think Annie prefers to stay home to traveling with me, unfortunately. I had always hoped that she would be ok with traveling, if I took her traveling fairly often, but like most cats, she prefers home-time to being with me & traveling.

More news from Britannica... and I love the daily updates with bits of history in them. I can always hope the hard facts like dates & when things happen will eventually sink in. Timelines are not my forte.

On this day, Ian Fleming's birthday & of course there's hoopla about something or t'other to do with his birthday & various events. I forget what, exactly. Popular culture is apparently not my forte either. For the record, my favorite James Bond is Sean Connery.

Amnesty International was founded on this day, in London, 1961. They also won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977. Cool!

various readings : Gloria Whelan's Yuki & the Thousand Carriers. As always, a beautifully done children's book. I love the way Whelan writes. She has the ability to simplify the story, but her voice comes through beautifully & poetically. The illustrator's work is awesome. I believe this is part of the international series & Whelan does so well with this.

Also a lot of fun, Brennan-Nelson's Willow. This one is the story of a young girl in an art teacher's class. The teacher is very uptight, and Willow, shall we say, is not. She's fun, she's artistic, and her creativity is just bursting out of her. A really fun book, with an irrepressible spirit, much like that of Pippi Longstocking. Both books are from Sleeping Bear Press & are highly recommended.

Next on the cooking front, Gazpacho. If you have favorite recipes, send them my way! But at least for once, I do have a cucumber on hand. Mine tend to get slimy very quickly, so I tend not to buy them much. My grandfather also commented that they smelled like cottonmouth snakes, so that turned me off for a bit. I'm going to try not to think about that aspect of it....