Future Plans

A very dear friend of mine has not long returned from a wonderful overseas trip. Her family gave her the money for an around-the-world air ticket for her 50th birthday, so Jenny was away for four months. We were on the phone for an hour while she told me all about it.

She planned the whole thing herself over the internet, no travel agents involved. The ticket can be bought either on a kilometres travelled basis or continent to continent basis (I think that's what it was). Anyway, Jenny chose the latter which allowed for four internal flights between arriving and leaving Europe and six internal flights in North America. Some of the places she visited included Hong Kong and China, Helsinki and St Petersburg as well as the UK.

In the US, she was looking forward to seeing the Grand Canyon, which she thought was great, but she absolutely loved Las Vegas. I was surprised, but Jenny says it's such a lot of fun and a city of contrasts. In one hotel, the foyer had originals of Impressionist paintings (I think that's what they were), which gives the impression of culture, then, she said, you go on inside and of course, there are all the poker machines, gambling tables, etc. Nothing closes and the lit up buildings at night are amazing, apparently.

I asked her if she went to the Hermitage while she was in St Petersburg...oh yes, she certainly did and said that books, movies and TV just don't do it justice. Apparently it's the most amazing place. She said that the centre of St Petersburg is beautiful but further out, in the suburbs, it's not so pleasant.

So than I asked her if she went to any shows whilst she was in New York...that was also a definite yes. She had a wonderful time, on her own, travelling lightly and taking two memory sticks of photos.

Anyway, she gave me some really good tips and it's given me the idea of doing the same thing next year when I "officially" retire. I'm a bit of a whimp though, I would really like to go with someone else...this doing it alone doesn't really excite me. Apart from the company, it's nice to have someone to plan things with. Anyway, I'll see who I can bulldoze into coming with me.

There are a few places I really want to go to, the main one being Ireland, so I can (hopefully) do some research into my family tree. Then there's Provence, Tuscany, Greece to name some in Europe. In the US...well, the South for a start, and that's as far as I've got.

My cousin has been in South America these past few weeks and has been climbing mountains and all that stuff. She started at Terra del Fuego and worked her way north, visiting Machu Pichu on the way. But I'm not into anything that requires lots of climbing, so if I go to South America, it will be to experience Carnivale or something like that.

So, those are some of my future plans...I figure by writing them down, it just gives them a bit more reality and gives me the motivation to start planning properly. I think four months would be a bit long...I'd do it in two or three shorter stages...say, one trip a year. Jenny went in the northern winter, I'd definitely be going in the northern summer! You know I'm a total wuss when it comes to the cold.

Who knows, you may get an email from me cadging a bed for the night...heheh!

Chicken Soup

I made some chicken soup a couple of days ago. Ratting around through my freezer...no, not after toads...I came across two chicken carcasses I had frozen just for that very reason. They had heaps of meat on and by the time I threw in a little soup mix, all the chopped vegetables I could find, salt and cracked pepper plus, as an afterthought, a can of diced tomatoes, I had a huge pot of soup.

Jane came over and she told me her father, Ken, had a really bad cold and she wanted to know if I had any lemons. No. However, I said I would take him some chicken soup. So the next day (I had made the soup in the evening and it was too hot to handle that night), I took Ken a large container of soup. By then, I was starting to get a sore throat and feeling a bit "heady", too. I stayed and had a cup of coffee with Ken and commiserated with him over his cold, then went home, had some soup for lunch, had a nana nap and woke feeling marginally better. By the next day I was fine and Ken was also a lot better.

Okay, maybe I wasn't going to get any worse than I was and Ken was probably over the worst of his cold and would have been feeling better anyway, but I still think the chicken soup had a lot to do with it. After all, chicken soup is very well known for its healthful properties, so much so that books have been written about it (Canfield & Hansen's Chicken Soup for the Soul books).

Where did this knowledge come from? It's been around for yonks and if anyone's ailing, homemade chicken soup is very beneficial. Who cares where it came from? It works. I don't know where I got it from, it seems as if I have always known this about chicken soup. Whatever, can you think of anything nicer when you're bunged up with a cold or have the shivers and shakes of the flu? I can't...unless it's an open log fire...that's a pretty close second. But the two combined...that's heaven and soooo comforting.

So...homemade chicken soup - good for what ails you and unlike a lot of things that are deemed to be good for you, it tastes delicious.

Oscar's Revolting Gift

That Oscar is going to lose the rest of his lives if he keeps going on the way he is...

I woke about six this morning. His lordship had woken earlier and gone outside and to my knowledge, he hadn't come back in. I would have known, because he usually demands his breakfast. So I wondered out into the kitchen and put the kettle on for my cup of coffee, wondered into the bathroom, had a shower, came out and made my coffee. While I was waiting for it to settle (I have a plunger), I went to make the bed. At this stage it was still quite dark, being overcast, and I could see a dark blob on the carpet underneath the window. I turned on the light and my skin crawled...there was a toad sitting bolt upright, as they do...ugh!

Now the Queensland cane toads are the most revolting creatures ever and they aren't even native to Australia. Some bright spark imported them in to get rid of the cane beetle which can do a lot of damage to the cane fields in north Queensland. Thanks to this idiot the toads found they liked Australia so much they rapidly multiplied, gradually spreading further abroad...they have now been found in northern New South Wales. They have no redeeming features whatsoever, are poisonous to pets, and have been responsible for the demise of a lot of species of frogs. If there are lots of toads, there are very few frogs.

The crows will eat them, they have learnt how to flip the toads over to avoid being squirted by the poison. Magpies will eat them once they are dead and I have heard that red bellied black snakes will also eat them, apparently not affected by the poison.

There are varying ways to kill the toads, the most humane way is catching them in plastic bags and putting them in the freezer. Apparently they go into hibernation mode and of course are eventually frozen. They have to be left in the freezer for a few weeks as, if they aren't left long enough, they come out of hibernation and away they go again.

Anyway, I had to do something about this creature. I thought of the plastic bag trick but the thought of handling it was too much. Besides which, I don't really want to put toads in my freezer. So I grabbed the pan and brush (my mouse catching equipment), scooped the toad up, held it down with the brush and tossed it outside...shudder.

I strongly suspect Oscar of bringing the toad in, as there was no other way for it could get inside. How he wasn't sick is beyond me, but there's nothing wrong with him and he yelled for his breakfast as normal. The exercise must have made him hungrier than usual because he gobbled everything up and got then to stuck into his cat biscuits. Although, he may have been trying to get rid of the taste of toad...whatever, he is now asleep on the bed, totally oblivious to the mayhem he caused my state of wellbeing.

#@*?@!!! cat...!