more food, stuff I found interesting, and rats

Good evening.
Tonight I made a culinary masterpiece. Stuffed courgettes with avocado salad and cous cous. Deeelicious. Laura was quite impressed. I was pretty impressed myself actually. It was a recipe I saw in the Standard today (from April 2008) which I adapted quite dramatically to fit what we had in the fridge. Laura says I don’t have to move back to the guest house. Hehe. But hopefully we should all be moving back tomorrow. Can’t wait. Although I am going to insist on the kitchen being scrubbed from top to bottom as soon as possible.
I am now watching the BBC Knowledge program, The Incredible Human Journey. I don’t have the internet at the moment though, so I don’t know when it was made. But they’ve missed out vital Spanish sites in the out of Africa debate. Anyway. Lets not dwell. The woman presenting it is so very posh sometimes, it’s almost annoying. However, she’s now talking to a Palaeolithic archaeologist from America which makes me very glad that’s the field I like the best. More sexy archaeologists like that in England please!

These last couple of days I’ve been spending lots more time paging through newspapers from the beginning of 2008. I’ve found some interesting articles, some on witchcraft in relation to looting; people stole loads of stuff, particularly on the coast, and after a few shop owners put up signs warning of a curse befalling those who kept the stolen goods, they were returned! Brilliant. I think this then led to lots of shops putting up ‘return our stuff or else’ signs, fodder for amusing articles for many days.
Also found was an article in the Property Watch section entitled “In the event of a fire” about how to pick up the pieces when your home is burnt to the ground. It seems that would have been quite a likely situation at the time it was published, which was about the middle of the violence.
One of the things that makes me chuckle/silently scream with despair is the use and abuse of the English language. It’s humourous at times, like when someone has obviously heard a word used, but not pronounced properly, so it’s spelled like it would be said in an African accent, often with hilarious consequences. Or, for example: “Natural calamities such as draughts, they say, have also subdued any violent emotions.” Hehehehehe.
One quote that made me chuckle was from an article entitled ’15 dead, homes set on fire as violence escalates’. “’I lost all my valuables and household goods and I do not know where my wife and two children have fled to’ said Nairangu. And Mr Andrew Kibet said he had lost six cows and two goats.” End of story. I love that it doesn’t end with the tragedy of a man losing his family, oh no, the six cows and two goats finish as the most shocking aspect of the story.
Ah, and my fave quote so far this week is actually one from Woody Allen (but seen in the paper) “Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best.”

I’ve been distracted all day. A lot of what I read mentions elections, although not as much as in earlier months, and whenever it does it reminds me that the elections are on in the UK at the moment. Ooooh. Excitement. I think I’m going to get up early tomorrow morning to see how it’s going, seeing as I am still staying here. And Laura is going to be away tomorrow evening, so I could stay here watching election results after work as well to see how it all fares out as some of them aren’t expected back until 5pm UK time. But I don’t know when Matt is expected back so I don’t know how happy he’d be if I were here lounging about on his sofa watching his tv when he arrived home exhausted from a long flight! Laura said it’s fine for me to stay a bit longer if I want to though. So yeah, if I was distracted today I am likely to be very distracted tomorrow. I was thinking of staying at the BIEA to just write up notes, but there are too many people and distractions around, so I might just wait til it’s closed and then drop the majority of my stuff back there. I’m gonna have a busy weekend, what with all the planning I have to do for Phil’s visit, for costing how much I need to save for Olduvai, and writing myself a research proposal and budget. Hmm, I’ll probably enjoy doing it when I actually get round to it anyway. I’m on a True Blood detox at the moment before I start on the 2nd series. I was letting it overtake my life slightly. I’ve had a lot more cooking time since. And last night I introduced Laura to fantasy films with a nice easy one. We watched The Princess Bride. I might build her up to classics such as Labyrinth and Willow but she hadn’t even heard of the Neverending Story so I don’t hold out much hope. I don’t think she’ll ever come around to sci-fi. In fact, Matt did tell me he hasn’t seen Iron Man because he can’t watch sci-fi with Laura. Sad times.

Ooh, one more thing before I head off to curl up in bed with Sam and Dean (that’s an episode of Supernatural, not two handsome real life young men, sadly). I noticed a really bad smell in the kitchen when I came home today, and I mentioned this to Laura when she got back. So she decided it was coming from the cupboard that everything had to be moved out of last week because of evidence of rats. And opened said cupboard. I was standing over the other side of the room at the time, so could see into the bottom under the shelf, and saw something dark move rather quickly over to the other side, just before Laura started having heard the noise of it scurrying away. Smelly rat alert! We’re not sure why it smells so bad though. Do rat droppings smell? Or do they make nests that are smelly? I’m really not a rat expert. It was amusing, she was banging around as though to try and make it come out, until I asked her what we would do if it came running out of the cupboard. She wasn’t really sure about that one so we just shut the cupboard tightly and left it.

Anyway, although it is still early, I think I’ll go and curl up in bed so I can get up early and it not kill me tomorrow. Night folks!