Happy Burns' Day!

Today is the birthday of Robert Burns, which is a very big deal in many parts of the world.

Best wishes to all celebrants, and the first verse of Address to a Haggis to get things started:

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain 'o the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.

Cheers...

Another lens post...

I hate to make a saga of something like putting in contact lenses, but I cannot help but feel that it's affecting my overall sense of well-being.

When putting in the lenses, I have found that they seem to want to stick to my finger more than they do to my eyeball. As I found a simple expedient yesterday for taking them out (two fingers), I tried the same technique when putting them in this morning.

The right lens went in with no problems. The left lens more than made up for it. It took me two or three tries, but I finally got the lens onto the eyeball. The problem was, though, that my vision was fuzzy. I asked Drew to see if the lens had centered itself on the cornea, and he told me it was stuck in a corner.

I returned to the bathroom and eventually doped out that not only was the lens in the corner of my eye, but somehow, it had doubled up on itself.

I should have put the lens away then, but I persisted in trying to put it in, probably past the point of making sense. I finally got the lens in the proper position, but my left eye has been hurting ever since, and I suspect strongly it's because I kept poking it, trying to install the confounded lens.

Anyway, I just took it out, leaving me with just the right lens installed. The feeling of irritation in my left eye had been such as to keep it in the forefront of my consciousness, but not bad enough to make taking it out a high priority. I don't want to have to work tonight with the same feeling in my eyes as last night.

Cheers...

Frustration, thy name is SNiP 11-105-97...

If such a thing can be imagined, the pages I am attempting to translate now are worse than any encountered previously. Or maybe my brain is fried. Or both.

I want to cry, scream, take off for parts unknown...

I am encountering sentences that require me to literally look up every second word. And the percentage of terms that do not appear in any of my dictionaries or online references is increasing. Further, the percentage of sentences that make absolutely no damn sense at all is also on the rise.

Drew is out again tonight, hanging with his friends. It's just as well, as I'm sitting here in the basement office, with eyes burning and temper raging, screaming at the screen every time something new (and bad) pops up on my "radar screen."

I will be so happy when this translation is finished... if it ever finishes, that is. I have been working on one page for the past hour and a half.

Cheers...

Towel status: thrown!

...at least for tonight.

I'm going to go upstairs and vegetate... maybe watch a little teevee.

I haven't been so... angry... in a long time.

Cheers...

Cock-a-leekie soup...

Burns Night Supper recipes

Cock-a-Leekie soup

1 small chicken
8 soaked prunes (stones removed and saved)
100 g bacon (diced)
500 g leeks (washed and thinly sliced)
2 l water
1 teaspoon chopped tarragon
salt and pepper


Method:
Remove the skin from the chicken and place in a large pan, together with the bacon and prune stones.
Cover with water and bring to the boil. Keep covered and simmer for 2 hours.
Strain off the liquid, remove stones and roughly chop the chicken.
Add the chopped chicken, leeks, tarragon, salt and pepper to the liquid and bring to the boil.
Simmer for 20 minutes.
Add prunes at the end of cooking time and serve.

Yikes! I've never had this, but it seems simple enough.

Cheers...