It’s Sunday, and tomorrow at noon I’ll finally be making my way home to Chicago, where the weary traveler will find rest. It’s been a long trip but a good one, and I will return as an emeritus professor, superannuated but optimistic. Meanwhile, life goes in in Dobrzyn, and the Furry Princess of Poland is, as always, peckish:
Hili: Do you really enjoy your breakfast in the company of a hungry cat?
A: But you just ate.
Hili: Only the appetizer.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy naprawdę smakuje ci to śniadanie w towarzystwie głodnego kota?
Ja: Przecież jadłaś?
Hili: Tylko przystawkę.
*******
And the lagniappe: a Leon monologue. In Włocławek, 30 minutes from Dobrzyn, The Dark Tabby is very upset at his fruitless outing. Look at that face!
Leon: Neither mushrooms nor mice…
Such a good photo. The coffee one. Big smile. 😀
Leon’s face is so striking in that shot! Almost has exclamation marks over his eyes.
Awwww look at Leon’s sad cat mouth! I guess you can say he’s non pussed. 🙂
That photo at breakfast is the same here most of the time. And often I have a book so Emma the cat sits on the book.
I see, Hili is taking her job as surveillance officer for all things related to food very serious.
I think the markings above Leon’s eyes look like an extra pair of eyes!
Wow, you’re right! Spooky!
Leon likes fungi?
b&
Is that a Smilodon mug I see before hili?
I don’t know. I got this mug as a gift almost a quarter of a century ago when I was working on a translation of a book (the story about Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals – fiction). There is a drawing of a mammoth and a saber-tooth tiger on the mug.
Smilodon is a genus of “saber-tooth tiger”, as Jerry was presented with recently.
There is a familiarity about the image and the stance of the animal. I can’t put my finger on it, but I think I’ve maybe seen that image before.
Hang on – the “Cave Bear” stuff by ? Jean Aual? Seen them on the bookshelves, but never been tempted quite enough.
Or … no it doesn’t quite fit the description for Greg Bear’s “Darwin’s Radio”Interesting ideas there though.
The Aual stuff has the chronologicall messed up, but very impressive scenery of the Messinian Salinity Crisis, I’m told. Basically, close the straights of Gibralter. Dry the Mediterranean. Dry it to the “bitterns” (potassium salts). Think “Dead Sea” or “Death Valley”, but a couple of thousand km long and kilometers deep. I can’t remember the precise numbers for the Med basin, but I sent a packet of tobacco down one day with the ROV and from 1500-odd metres, it came back more like a brick.
That’s right, Jean Auel. I had plenty of fun (and it paid better than popular science books, which I also translated).
Having expended pretty much all I know of the series (saga) … ach, WTF, I’ll put them on the mental list for next time I go to buy books for an aircraft. They were close enough to the list for long enough.
Well, as much fun as I had translating those books I would rathe not recommend them to adults. Were you 14-15, it would be a perfect read. Adventure, sex, plust plenty of not so bad information about both Cro-magnons and Neanderthals, medicinal plants, animals, climate, way of living. But for an adult? I’m not so sure…
I’m still fascinated by the idea of the Messinian Salinity Crisis landscape. I’ve drilled that stuff. Kilometer-thick beds of salt. Brines concentrated enough that they’d pickle anything unfortunate enough to fall in (I was in the Austrian salt mines for entertainment last year – there’s some wonderfully-preserved archaeology in salt.)
And it was a basin thousands of kilometres long and up to 2 or 3 km deep. That is spectacular scenery. Think of the Taklamakan, but as a hot desert not a cold one. “People go in but do not come out” is one of the more evocative translations I’ve heard for the Taklamakan.
I wonder if Frank Herbert had heard of the Messinian when he invented “Dune” (Arrakis, was the planet’s proper name, IIRC.)