Intermission

As you'll have noticed, if you still care, I've got a bit behind on the photo processing and indeed pretty much everything else lately, apart from the novel, which is going swimmingly. So this note is primarily to demonstrate the fact I'm still alive. Also to provide some excellent news in that Rachel's latest scan remains clear (now seven years out of chemo)!

Now imagine for a moment that you're Pamela Anderson's agent. Is it an act of extreme cynicism, or in actual fact some kind of mad genius, that would cause you to set your star-vehicle sit-com in a bookshop, just so you could title the series "Stacked"? Meanwhile Ronald Reagan has been voted the greatest American of all time. And Dubya made the top ten. Perhaps you have some alternative suggestions? I was thinking Mark Twain, as I believe he was rather fond of cats.

Now, one of the many things I didn't expect to learn about when I moved to Oregon was tea. This was blind prejudice of course, since I actually knew nothing at all about tea, despite having consumed a guesstimated 10 000 cups of PG in my lifetime. All this was before I discovered the Tao of Tea. Obviously everyone's heard of green tea and black tea, but who knew about white tea and red tea? After a bit of experimentation and some very helpful advice from the resident tea gurus, I've discovered a particular penchant for second-flush darjeeling and assam varietals. Sometimes I even go a little bonkers and blend the two together... that's life on the edge, eh?

With regards to the novel, I am now half-way towards my completely arbitrary word-count target of 80 000. I'm not actually sure if I'm half-way through the story or not, nor indeed whether this is at all relevant. But it really is a most rewarding diversion and I would heartily recommend it to anyone else without anything better to do.

Road-trip photos to follow shortly, I promise!