Vintage Cheddar

In spite of my own reflections and rationalisations, a part of me is not happy with the idea that now and for the rest of my stay in York I have found my Groove and will stay in it. At least that is one way to explain why I decided to have a cheese-and-popcorn night yesterday. Another explanation is that I went shopping when hungry, which everyone knows is rather to be avoided because you end up buying strange things.

The day certainly starded off as planned, rather early at that, with a golf course-oriented run, partially along a new track that shaved off 3 km of last week's. It again struck me how very muddy and wet all the roads are, even the paved ones but especially the footpaths. It really doesn't rain that much I think, but the land takes forever drying out. Some of the explanation can be found in the fallen autumn leaves fouling up the roads, to be sure; another explanation is the clayish ground. I also cannot avoid making a link with the water level in the rivers: I observed on Friday that the Ouse is now higher than I have seen it before, by a difference of a meter and a half at least I think. I already recalled in a previous post that the Ouse is known for flooding, but I imagined that would be especially in spring, and anyway it is impressive to see these dynamics in action.

Morrisons in Christmas mood

After running and rewarding myself with fried eggs and ham, to enforce the habit in the way that I have learned yesterday, I turned back to Friday's unfinished programming job, with the vague idea of taking a minor cycling tour later on. In the back of my mind I knew that wasn't going to happen if I would seriously get going with the programming, and indeed that is the way it turned out. However, my refrigerator was short on several necessities, in fact the price for playing games on Saturday is to shop on Sunday, so I had to go and stock up. No problem in principle (none of your wishy-washy shall-we-allow-shops-to-open-on-Sundays here: in fact, Morrisons was at least as crowded as on Saturdays, meaning very crowded) but I was indeed quite hungry when I decided it was now really time for lunch, so that was the state in which I arrived at the supermarket. This meant that certain food items looked much more inviting than they would otherwise. It occurred to me that one thing I had not yet done here is to organise my own film night with snack food, to wit: popcorn and cheese with lots of ketchup. The microwave popcorn was easily taken care of, for cheese I could make do with mature Cheddar, and in fact upon inspection they had even tastier-sounding variations so I left with a chunk of Devilishly Divine Vintage Cheddar - yay!

Best excuse for an easy chair

If all this doesn't sound inviting to you and you think me rather weird for considering this a proper meal: I don't blame you, in fact I mostly agree; but once in a while I rather like spending my evenings hanging in an easy chair, watching some movies in the home environment and gradually filling up with junk food. This particular evening, on the other hand, I have to say it didn't work out. Especially lacking in my apartment is anything resembling an easy chair: the piece of furniture that poses as a couch is awkardly positioned and not comfortable at all. For watching movies I only have my laptop screen which is on the small side for this purpose. I had selected August Rush which has been recommended to me by someone after I had told I am a fan of musical movies, and I definitely liked the lead actor, Freddie Highmore, playing alongside Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland (a must-see!) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; but it simply wasn't working for me, after 20 minutes I was completely irritated and stopped it. I rather consumed the rest of my cheese re-re-reading some of Brother Cadfael's adventures - not only my main source of knowledge on Benedictine habits, but beautifully written, not to mention impossibly romantic and incredibly slow. The book is quite falling apart.

All in all, one evening down the drain. Have to try something else next time.