Travellin' Penguin

Posted on December 20, 2020 by TravellinPenguin

Although a stock photo, this is what it looked like.

Another week has passed and I can’t believe Christmas is at the end of this week. I have had a quiet week at home though I finally got to get out yesterday for a brief woodland walk with Ollie and my camera and tripod. I have also been reading all week. I have noticed my concentration is returning and I can actually tune into a book now for more than 30 minutes at a time.

Throw in some cooking in our lovely kitchen and the week rounded out nicely.

The range hood was installed over our stove top Friday. We still have the flooring to be installed and the ceiling to be painted. The painting will happen Monday but I think the flooring has to wait until January.

The other night I made a big pan of enchilladas. I used one of those El Paso kits that have the tortillas and two packets of sauce but then added the cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, avocado and sour cream at the end. Splash a little tabasco sauce across the top and it was very good. I cooked the first 25 years of our marriage and Mr. Penguin cooked the last 25 years of our marriage. August will be the 50 year mark. Now we are both cooking. It has been fun. Twenty five years was a good break.

The books I continue to read are The Gifts of Reading, a series of essays about gifting and receiving books. I’ve read one essay a day. I am now heading towards the finish line. Edited by Robert MacFarlane I am enjoying it very much and one essay a day is just right.

I have finally settled into the mystery that is Ann Cleeves “Vera” book called The Darkest Evening. I am loving the snowy setting of the winter scenes around Newcastle, England. I’ve not read a Cleeves book before and I must say I’m enjoying it.

I am also listening to My Life in France by Julia Child read by Kimberly Farr. I would not recommend this book to vegans or vegetarians as Julia Child was a serious carnivore. I can picture her sitting down, tucking into geese, pheasants and all manner of meat, with blood dripping down her chin. She was a very eccentric woman and quite arrogant at times. However she did know her French cooking. There is a great deal of reading recipes in French so if you cannot understand French you miss a bit. She seems to assume almost everyone would know what she is talking about. However I enjoy her recollection of the people she met, the school of Le Cordon Bleu she attended and the many cafes and restaurants with vivid descriptions. Much of her book involves the description of how she wrote her book French Cooking for Americans that took several years and needed to be revised many times over. She recounted one episode where she sat down and cooked two whole geese, two different ways, then sat down and ate both of them in order to write up a correct description of the recipe. Mind you, she was a large woman, height wise and large boned but to eat two geese at one sitting was a bit much for me to comprehend.

I have learned a great deal about her and overall am enjoying it. I should be finished with this book before too long. It is a bit longer than I think it needs be but then I think that about a lot of books.

I will now leave you with some photography I did in the reserve behind our house and finished up in our backyard. Ollie and I were standing deep in brush and leaf litter focusing on a mossy tree that had fallen and suddenly Ollie gave a deep growl. I could only think “snake” and hurried back to the main trail. I still don’t know what he was growling at but I’d had enough and went home. We only have three varieties of snakes in Tasmania but all three are very poisonous.

I hope you enjoy the three photos I did settle on in the end. Until next week.

I hope all of you have a lovely Christmas, whether in lockdown or not. Remember, it won’t always be this way and next year MUST bring better times.

Harold and Maude

Posted on December 17, 2020 by TravellinPenguin

I saw this film absolutely ages ago. I never forgot it and have seen it a couple of times since. I always loved the actress Ruth Gordon who plays the 79 year old woman in this story and Bud Cort (also in Brewster McCloud which I didn’t care for) as the 19 year old boy. Ruth Gordon is the American version of the Australian Ruth Cracknell. I could see both women in these roles but that’s a personal opinion.

The story goes (Wikipedia)- Nineteen-year-old Harold Chasen is obsessed with death. He fakes suicides to shock his self-obsessed mother, drives a hearse, and attends funerals of complete strangers. Seventy-nine-year-old Maude Chardin, on the other hand, adores life. She liberates trees from city sidewalks and transplants them to the forest, paints smiles on the faces of church statues, and “borrows” cars to remind their owners that life is fleeting— here today, gone tomorrow! A chance meeting between the two turns into a madcap, whirlwind romance, and Harold learns that life is worth living, and how to play the banjo. Harold and Maude started as Colin Higgins’s master’s thesis at UCLA film school before being made into the 1971 film directed by Hal Ashby. The quirky, dark comedy gained a loyal cult following, and in 1997 it was selected for inclusion on the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress. Higgins’s novelization was released with the original film but has been out of print for more than thirty years. Fans who have seen the movie dozens of times will find this a valuable companion, as it gives fresh elements to watch for and answers many of the film’s unresolved questions.

The book was originally published in 1971 by Colin Higgins. It is really more of a novella at only 144 pages. At the time it wasn’t well received and faded into obscurity and out of print. At the same time the film arrived which also didn’t do well initially but soon after had more of a cult following especially from university students. I probably saw this film originally in the 1970s too while in university.

What strikes me about this book is how much I enjoyed the black humour and much of it is quite black. But the characters are very likeable and the book does answer some questions that are left behind by the film.

As far as the film goes it would definitely be in my all time top ten favourites of my life. I didn’t know there was a book until only recently when I came upon it accidentally on a Kindle. Nostalgia reared its head and I needed to read it. I know I will reread this book again. I enjoyed it that much.

Simply Sunday

A Quiet Simple Sunday

Posted on December 13, 2020 by TravellinPenguin

Photo of cockatoo Kevin is mine. Other three photos are from stock photos.

We have a lovely warm Sunday happening here. It seems quite still. The windows are open and I can hear our local neighbourhood birds twittering quietly away. I know all the pairs of birds around our yard. We have Mr and Mrs Blackbird. They are good workers and always busy doing one thing or another. We had bachelor Wattle Bird but this summer he got married and they can be seen in the birdbath quite often though he also bathes in the eaves of the house over the porch. He sure likes his baths. I haven’t seen her much lately so she may be busy with eggs or chicks. Then we have a new pair of magpies. We’ve never had magpies here before as we are up towards the base of Mt. Wellington and it has been too cold. In 30 plus years I’ve not seen them but they have now moved in. They have spent the past two weeks rolling around on the neighbour’s yard mating. Everyday they are cavorting in the grass. Surely she’ll lay some eggs soon. They moved in on the plovers who had a family of five chicks of which four survived. They are now enjoying an empty nest for awhile.

Then we have Kevin. Kevin is a dorky cockatoo that we believe was an escapee from a backyard aviary at one time and though he does stay with the flock much of the time he’ll often be found on our front porch screaming for a few sunflower seeds if we don’t put them out. He doesn’t get them a lot because I don’t want him to become dependent on us for food as these birds can live well over 100 years. If Kevin sees us in the yard he’ll fly by and give us the “eye”. It is not uncommon for him to sit on our porch railing and look in the lounge room window looking for us.

You can see I have a lot of time on my hands now.

Today I spent some time choosing some books to work my way through. I chose one Audible, one E-book, one Fiction and one Non Fiction. A couple I’ve begun, the others not yet.

I played around with the design of my blog a bit and now I’m sharing the books I chose to dig into. Once again 2021 is the year of the TBR shelves. I didn’t do that well this year so must buckle down next year. Here we go.