Travellin' Penguin

We lost our old cat a couple of weeks ago and of course we were saddened. But yesterday I got news one of my best friends died suddenly. We were just laughing and chatting in a phone conversation on Wednesday and on Thursday she died suddenly after complications from a surgery. I am really heart broken. I’m so happy we had such a fun conversation and made each other laugh on Wednesday. However I am not the type of person to dwell.  I know that life is unforgiving and you must move on with it or be miserable forever. But I don’t need to rush into it just yet.

What makes me happiest besides a secure home? My dogs and cats. I know if I cry they will come to me and place a paw on my arm. I have people in my life that won’t do that. Also my room of books. People who love books will know what I mean by this. I can sit in the room with all my books and I feel peace. It gives me the same peace that being out in nature with my camera gives me. 

What do I do when upset or sad? I rearrange the books on my shelf. I revisit those books that get lost at the back of the shelf I haven’t seen lately. So I did a declutter of several shelves. That led to a new mission.  You have to love a new mission.

Remember it’s winter here. Today was sunny but quite cold and we had gale force winds. After taking the dogs out for only a 30 minute walk I couldn’t wait to get back in the house. Our winds come from the south and south west. Well, what’s south of us? Antarctica. Enough said. It blows cold. No wind? Bearable.

I have a lot of Penguin publisher sets of books. I have a set of the Penguin modern classics. I have a smaller set of Penguin journeys. I have all of the Penguin archive books in the set. I have rummaged through the shelves and put all the Penguin books together. I have the 80 Little Black classics set. Having put them all together on a couple of shelves, they look great. I have the 70s anniversary set of Great Ideas. Have I read them? Sadly not many.

So my mission is this: 

I have all of them scanned into the app BookBuddy. BookBuddy is great. You must pay a nominal charge for it but it’s worth it. Once the books are scanned they can be sorted not only by author and title but by publisher, by keyword often but best of us it will pick a book from the list randomly. 

My project for the rest of this year is to not only read my book club books but to finish the year with only Penguins from the sets. The variety is great fun and I really want to get stuck into them. They are fairly thin so I should be able to read them easily.  The font is good and with my eyesight being what it is I can read the book with a bright light, which I have.

The beginning of the year had me reading block busters. East of Eden, Pachinko and Demon Copperhead to name a few. I feel really flat right now and I don’t feel like much excitement. I’m really sad over the loss of my friend and I’m going to miss her so much.  

We met on a tour in Japan. We had the same cameras, the same lens. Even our birthdays are on the same day. We were truly two peas in a pod. We loved photography. She lived in Sydney. We did a road trip together with our cameras a few years ago along the New South Wales coast.  It was so much fun. I have flown to Sydney a couple of times to spend time with her. We just really clicked and one doesn’t get that very often.

So now I want peace to reflect. I just want to spend time with a couple of really good friends I have here. I don’t want crowds. I don’t want chaos. I want my dogs, my cat in my lap and I want the smell of books in my hands. I also want Mr. P to get home from his family trip in Canada. It will be nice to have everyone back under one roof and our routines. I know, I’m really boring at times. 

I remember as a child growing up in a small town in mid Michigan there was quite a bit of chaos in our home life. I would go to our small local library and sit there and read. It was so much fun to be left loose in a library at a young age to take home up to 12 books for two weeks. It was just a block away so I could walk there whenever I wanted.

I’d finish the books immediately and go back for more. There were old photographs to look at, magazines and those funny old things you hold up to your eyes to look through to see a cardboard photo in 3D. I just can’t remember the name of what they were. I remember sitting at a table in the quiet going through the boxes of old historical photos in 3D. So I know when chaos or sadness hits I spend time with books. 

I will let you know what the first couple of random picks of the Penguins are. Also our August book group read is a Month in the Country by J. L. Carr and although I’ve not read it I’ve always heard good things about it. All the best to you for the week. Stay tuned for the next drum roll. 

This is a different kind of post from my usual but I wanted to share Neil the Seal. My North American friends and family will enjoy seeing him.

We have a gorgeous sunny day but it is about 37F out. I’m glad we have sun. I’m wrapped up in my fuzzy robe with my coffee. I have to tell you about Neil the Seal. He is a very large elephant seal. He evidently lost his mother 5 or 6 years ago as a pup and survived. But every year he comes out of the water and has a big rest on one of our local beaches and does a big moult. The issue is he is big‼️ He attracts a lot of attention. He is a real celebrity here. People from all over visit him. It has become a problem as he needs protection. 

My friend called me last night and was chatting away. She and husband and her two boys who are home on school hols from uni took a drive out to see him.

There are security guards 24/7 keeping an eye on him and tourists and dogs away from him. Everybody seems to be talking about him and he’s in the news a lot. He’ll go back to the sea before long. Personally I wish everyone would just keave him alone. But my veterinarian friend said if he was that bothered he would go back into the water and rest elsewhere. There is a lot of coastline here yet he visits every year.

Enjoy the internet photos. Such an interesting animal.

I just fed the dogs and have sat down here to write a post. The cockatoos are finished for the day and flying around the yard. We are on the flight path to the mountain but it is too cold up there now so they tend to stop and sleep at night in trees around here. 

They visit our bird bath each night for a long drink of water. I really enjoy watching them.  

Mr P is in Canada visiting family for awhile yet so it’s just me and the two dogs, Ollie and Peannie (Peanut) and the two cats, Grizzy and Pickles. 

I spent the afternoon editing some fungi photos I’ve taken over the last year or so. We have a fungi folder to share at our next photo club meeting. Everyone and their brother is out taking photos of fungi in Tasmania every year from autumn into winter. The more rain the more fungi. I’ll share them here.

I had my book group meeting last week. Only a couple of us didn’t care for A Little Trickery by Rosamund Pike. I am surprised so many really enjoyed it. Sometimes I just don’t get it. I was bored to tears with it but it absolutely has a following so who knows what I missed. Not that it matters. I’ve started a very short novella by Robert Louis Stevenson called Oglala. I love the imagery on this little novella. I’m coming up on half way through it. 

Olalla is a Gothic novella by Robert Louis Stevenson about a wounded British army officer who recovers in the isolated home of a noble Spanish family. He falls in love with the mysterious and intelligent Oglala, but gradually discovers that her family is burdened by a dark hereditary curse that threatens both their future and his own.  It has psychological tension, romance and horror. The story explores themes of inherited evil, self-control, fate and the struggle between human instinct and moral choice.

I am enjoying it so far. I chose it because it has been on my Kindle for ages and though I don’t remember downloading this book I thought I’d read some of the back log of kindle books. I remember at one time I did download quite a few old classic books as they are free. So I have a stockpile of them.

The book I’m listening to in the evenings while working on my puzzles is the new one by David Sedaris.  It is called The Land and its People. I’m reading this as David Sedaris is coming to the Theatre Royal again in January to discuss this latest book of his.  He makes me laugh like no other author. He has such a wit and such ridiculously funny stories. I have enjoyed his older books that include so much of his family. But several of his family members have passed away so he has moved on a bit. His parents are both gone and two of his sisters passed away. He is so good at going through his day and then writing about what happened during that day that just makes you laugh. I really like him. 

Well, that is all that is happening around here. As you can see not a lot is happening. There is a book launch coming up at the end of the week that should be interesting. More on that later. 

Have a good week everyone.  

Question of the week:   What type of books make you really laugh. Or do you just not read funny books? Lol.