nonamedufus

A couple of weeks ago I told you about my Finnish friend Ziva. She sent me a package of 3 different kinds of candy from her homeland as a gift. Well, Mrs D and I finally worked up the courage to try these little wonders. Hey, we like sweets just like the next person - sweets being the operative word. Alas, what Ziva sent me weren't sweet. Ziva's house. Now Ziva, who lives in a tiny little house in a quiet little Turku neighbourhood in Finland, went to a lot of trouble to buy these candies, package them up and ship them to me from Finland. I'm sure she has better things to spend her money on. It was so thoughtful of her the least I could do is eat what she sent me. I knew we were in for a spot of trouble when I couldn't even open the packages. They were well sealed and I had to forage for a pair of scissors to get at the goodies. Mrs D and I poured ourselves a glass of water each before we started so as to rinse our palette throughout our little taste test...

There I was yesterday patiently waiting by the mailbox for Indigo Roth to send me my "I Survived 30 Minus 2 Days of Writing" challenge T-shirt. It didn't arrive. But what did arrive was a candy care package from that wicked Finnish wench Ziva. That's right. I got a surprise in the mail all the way from the distant shores of Finland. I guess she wanted to send me a Valentine's present. Who knew Valentine's in Finland was March 12th? Ah, well, better late than never. You'll recall I poked fun at Ziva and Nicky and their imaginary(?) up close and personal relationship during said challenge here and here . Well it seems Ziva really got off on those posts...in a manner of speaking...and sent me a little gift to show her appreciation. Three little gifts actually. I have a little box of Leijona. A bag of Salmiakki. And another bag containing Tyrkisk Peber - The Original. Who knew there were imitations? Of course I'm not the first to receive such ...

We have some pretty odd discussions in my household from time to time. Take, for example, the discussion we had over dinner the other night. Mrs. D had pulled together another culinary masterpiece beginning with an appetizer of bacon-wrapped scallops, followed by tilapia fish over whipped potatoes and asparagus. It was the asparagus that got us started. Now Mrs D is quite environmentally conscious and is a big proponent of the "buy local" school of grocery shopping. Otherwise, she says, you screw with the carbon footprint. How so? Well, she says, if you truck in potatoes from Mexico you mess up the environment. To which I reply, "Oh and the local farmers use donkeys to cart their goods to market?" Anyway, Mrs D said the asparagus was the first vegetable of the season. I said if asparagus was the first vegetable then it should be spelled aasparagus. I got a blank look. "You know," I said "Like in the phone book, if you want to be first you ad...

So the Cardinals are conclaving in Rome. Not sure "conclaving" is a word, but it suits my purpose. In other words they're gathering to choose a new Pope. And Canada even has a papal candidate, eh? The Catholic Church is beset by problems. It really needs an image update. Wouldn't that be a great reality show? I can see it now "Papal Makeover". Although I'm not sure anything can bring the image of the church into modern day. But with such story lines as sexual abuse and a men-only hierarchy it might be an interesting show to watch. Hey it seemed to work for Dan Brown and Angels and Demons . And it seems to be working for some editorial cartoonists...

No, that title's not a misprint. I'm not a bibliophile. Dictionary.com describes a bibliophile as: a person who loves or collects books, especially as examples of fine or unusual printing, binding, or the like. For someone who downloads the majority of their books to read on their iPad,  I kind of miss out on the print and binding and so on. No, "bibliofile" is something new for me. I intend to share with you, on a monthly basis, the books I've been reading. So it's my biblio file. Get it? Last month, February, saw me zip through 7 books. Not a bad feat when at the same time I was writing a daily post to keep up with the writing challenge hosted by Nicky and Mike at We Work For Cheese . Here they are in the order in which I read them: Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan Raylan Givens 3-Book Collection - Elmore Leonard The Moving Target - Ross MacDonald Live By Night - Denis Lehane True North - A Life in the Music Business - Bernie F...