An observer in the snowy mountains of Hokkaido describes sledding, hanging upside down from branches, and ‘parachuting’.

The first episode of Full Circle, the Michael Palin travel series, which I’ve never seen.

I needed soil conditioner, other shoppers loaded their carts (the big Costco-sized ones) with mulch, citrus trees, manure, rosebushes, lawn food. No mantises.

Many people out working in their yards, mowing grass, pulling weeds, smiling. We stopped so I could take pictures of the Joseph’s Coat roses now in full bloom. My companion spotted the owner, and we learned that he inherited the roses from the previous owner, who did some hybridizing as a hobby.

There were bees, but the wind made it difficult to get a good shot.

Friday I made two batches of chocolate pudding. Many people feel that pudding is not for grownups, but it ranks high on my list of comfort foods. And now at least one of my sons probably thinks it’s the perfect thing to have right after one of those multi-hour programmer interviews, especially when the CEO pops in, asks a question, and the mind goes blank.

Maybe it was the large amount of gravy ingested during my dinner, but I fell asleep several times during Spiderman 2. Molina’s robot arms were mesmerizing, and the flying effects were great, but the rest of the movie seemed to move in slow motion.

The other choice was I, Robot. I’m sure I would have been wide awake had I gotten The Grudge. But this was going to be a dinner video, and I have my limits.

At the checkout, the tiny woman in front of me kept insisting I go ahead of her, which I declined. She had a fistful of lottery tickets, and seemed embarrassed, finally telling me that she would be taking a lot of time. I shook my head, wondering if she had won big. But that was not the case.

Last night I cooked up some link sausages and made cream gravy once again. Two containers of vegetable soup were thawed out and heated up, but they turned out to be watery. I though seriously of eating just the bowl of gravy by itself, warm, rich, and incredibly creamy.

Friday I tried making a raspberry cream cheese cake, which would involve swirling dabs of raspberry jam into the batter. The recipe did not call for milk or any other liquid, and seemed too close to cookie batter to work as a decent cake. Since I had no connection, I couldn’t check a similar recipe. I called a son at work, who found that another recipe called for buttermilk. I added a little, then a bit more. The batter still wasn’t pourable, but seemed more cakelike. It worked out okay, but the sour cream frosting did not.

That’s a long, long time. It forced me to
(a) clean part of the house
(b) deal with the ant problem in a bathroom
(c) cook more than I really wanted to
(d) go through a large pile of newspapers I hadn’t read
(e) realize that I need a backup connection since I had to miss a whole day’s work