my dear mother is always late.

except this once when i'd have liked her to combine two things for me (one of which is half a year overdue), and thought 'right, no rush, i'll ring her tomorrow and let her know'.

naturally this time she rings me first, and tells me that <long overdue thing> has been taken care of...

...but the local weather sucked nevertheless: still 86% humidity at 2100.

Today is also the day on which I gave in (to a recommendation by a friend) and spent $249 on a Rowenta DH4120 dehumidifier (on special/clearance at Hardly Normal, RRP $590 or so). It's now been running since 1730 and I just emptied out 4l of water, and the relative humidity inside is now 68%, not qute perfect yet but not as dripping wet as earlier.

We'll see how the thing does over the next few days, especially whether it's big enough to handle the 200m^3 of my place.

so it's finally 19115.

(source: dunno, but i'm pretty sure it's a cartoon by Gerhard Haderer)

the weather here has been pretty lousy almost continually since 24.12., except (what a surprise!) for this week's work days. none of my vacation plans worked out at all, but christmas itself was very nice - conny and andrew (oh, and we mustn't forget maxi!) visited.

that's what we did on the 24th, before starting our late-arvo cooking session:

the pooch didn't exactly appreciate being left with this here babysitter while conny and andrew went to the gym; maxi was very worried and insisted on sitting on my lap.

note to self: for the next attempt to make gherkins in brine i'll have to find a better method for keeping them dunked below the surface... three ended up poking out this time, rotted and wrecked the whole batch.

and that's about it for now. keep calm, move on, nothing to see here.