Using Google Translate

Google Translate has a go at the opening paragraph of my book, Grimhilda!

Two grizzly bears clambered up the walls of Toby’s fort. Above them, a pitiful troop of soldiers tried holding them off by pulling away bits of the fort and dropping them on their heads. Just when it looked as if the bears would climb over the top and eat the men for dinner, one of the desperate soldiers had an idea: ‘Let’s pour honey over the side and distract them!’ It worked admirably. The bears licked the sticky walls and forgot all about being conquerors.

Due orsi grizzly arrampicavano su per le mura di fortificazione di Toby. Sopra di loro, una truppa di soldati pietosa cercò in possesso di loro fuori tirando via bit della fortezza e li cadere sulle loro teste. Proprio quando sembrava che gli orsi sarebbero salite sopra le righe e mangiare gli uomini per la cena, uno dei soldati disperati hanno avuto un'idea: 'Andiamo a versare il miele sul lato e li distraggono!' Ha funzionato egregiamente. Gli orsi leccare le pareti appiccicose e dimenticato tutto di essere conquistatori.

And then translates back into English again...pretty good job! A few grammatical issues that lean more towards Italian than English,,,

Two grizzly bears climbing up the walls of the fortification of Toby. Above them, a troop of soldiers pitiful tried holding them off pulling off bits of the fortress and drop them on their heads. Just when it seemed that the bears would climb over the top and eat people for dinner, one of the soldiers desperate had an idea: 'We're going to pour the honey on the side and distract them!' It worked very well. The bears lick the walls sticky and forgot all about being conquerors.

The doggie-door saga continues

About ten days ago we installed a doggie door in our back door.  We wondered if the dog would ever work out how to get himself out of it, and back in again, in spite of considerable encouragement, treats, undignified pushes from behind and so on.

Well, all that wonderful hard work we did on helping him to discover that he now has an open door policy has paid off, and he trips in and out of it (I don't mean literally) without blinking an eyelid (again, don't be a literalist).  Occasionally he feels he should wait for permission, but we try and avoid giving him that.  He has to be his own man on this matter, and decide that when he wants to go out, he just gets on and goes.

He's had some routines in the past for going out. For instance, if we were in the lounge and he'd been in bed for a while in the other room and decided he needed a late night pee, he'd come in and stare balefully at me until I realised what he wanted.  Then he'd scoot to the back door and dance around in circles until he was let out. He doesn't have this option anymore, although he did try the baleful look thing last night. I ignored it for a while but finally realised that old habits die hard and he needed me to at the very least go to the kitchen and pretend to give him permission while doing something unrelated.

We used to find he was forever wanting in and out while we were making dinner in the kitchen. I don't quite know what the reason for this was, but it was annoying continually having to open the door for him.  Anyway, this issue has gone; if he wants out, he goes out.  And sometimes sits at the backdoor thinking about old times when he had us on a string and we would jump to action as soon as he indicated a need.

I feel as though a little something has been lost in the relationship, but I'm sure there are compensations.  The back door isn't getting scratched for one thing.  The cat hasn't decided that it's a multi-animal door, so she doesn't use it (it's probably beneath her dignity anyway, though how a creature that dumps a large mouse or small rat on the doorstep should consider itself to have dignity I don't know).  Consequently there's no squabbling between the cat and the dog as to whose access it is. And there's no longer the crazy rabies-infested-mad-dog-behaviour when it discovers, on our opening the door, that the cat is sitting just outside it.

Christchurch trip: third post

Yesterday, we got an email from the woman who was coordinating our work in Christchurch.  She listed what we'd achieved while we were there, and it was more than any of us realised, I suspect.  We visited 356 homes (in some cases that meant only that we'd noted the house was still there, or that there was no one at home that day); we delivered firewood to five people; we took baking to quite a few more; at least one lawn was mowed; we invited people to a meal on the Saturday night; some of the team helped pack up a house in preparation for the inside being repaired (it was a house belonging to a couple of people who had a tendency to hoard!); another two took a woman to see her mother who's in a rest home and has Alzheimer's - the woman hadn't been able to do this on her own due to her own health issues; we delivered 60 'snuggle packs' to one particular street; and we made arrangements for around a dozen people to be followed up by the CCR team because of further needs.  That's quite a bit!

On the Saturday morning, in Christchurch, our team was having its usual prayer/discussion/debriefing meeting before we set out for the day.  We'd already done most of what we would contribute during the time, and we were going to be putting on a meal in the evening for some guests.  Originally, Parklands Church had been going to host a 'shindig' (as one person called it) for us, but the person organising it had a nasty fall down some steps (breaking a couple of fingers and badly injuring his knee) and so the idea was put into reverse: we would host the meal instead.  We'd been using Parklands' kitchen facilities for our own meals.

We were expecting some of the leadership team from Parklands (including the guy who'd had the fall), but our own leader had the idea that it would also be good to invite some of those we'd had particular contact with during the week, people from the area where we'd been door-knocking, and people who'd assisted us by providing showers in their homes.  The idea was met with enthusiasm by the team, though personally I was a bit concerned about the logistics - but then I'm a person who likes to have every i dotted, and every t crossed.  The others were a lot more flexible - I learnt a bit about flexibility during the week.

Anyway, various ones headed over to the St Ambrose area again (Aranui and Wainoni) and re-visited some likely guests.  It took a good deal longer to do the rounds of the houses than we expected, but we came away with the possibility of several people attending the meal.  As might be anticipated some of those didn't come in the end, but two women did, and they seemed to enjoy themselves.  One of our team provided the transport for them; they wouldn't have got there otherwise.  All in all we had at least a dozen guests, possibly fifteen.

The meal was a virtual feast.  I mentioned in another post the enthusiasm two of the team in particular brought to cooking and baking.  For this meal, several of the young people got involved as well, and we had a couple of crock-pots of sausages in a sauce, a curry, various roasted vegetables and pumpkin soup.  And there was almost as much pudding or dessert as there was mains: chocolate cheese cake (very rich; quite an indulgent sort of thing!), two choices of ice cream, and more. (The meals we had during the week are blending together in my head a bit, so I can't be as specific as I'd like.)  We even tried to turn some rice that had been left over from a previous meal into a rice pudding (the students in the group had never tried this old-fashioned dessert and weren't desperately keen to start) but something went a bit awry with this.  Perhaps it needed longer in the oven, or needed more milk, or the jam was put in too early.  Suffice to say, it wound up as a left over twice over...

On Sunday morning we completed our time in Christchurch by splitting into two groups.  Five of us went over to St Ambrose's Church and as well as attending their 10 am service, we shared with the congregation a bit of what we'd done during the week.  The other eight stayed at Parklands, and were involved in their service.  

And so home.  The long five/six hour drive back to Dunedin confirmed that I was very tired, even though up until then I was doing pretty well in terms of energy.  When you're doing something different like this, and it requires some rethinking and flexibility (see above), you seem to pull in energy that you might not normally have.  But it catches up on you, of course.  I got home, cleared out the car, had some tea (which my daughter had ready for us) and got in the bath, where I nearly fell asleep while reading.  It might have been a bit of an anticlimax to have drowned in the bath, but so far I've never even dropped a book in the bath, let alone drowned in it....

After-the-sleep-post-Christmas-Dinner Reflections

It's late on Sunday afternoon.   The hordes have gone home or to other Christmas functions with in-laws and the like.   The house is both partly cleaned up and partly not.   The wife is sleeping.  The younger son is recording old Super 8 videos onto his external hard drive via our laptop.   I have driven a guest home, almost on auto-pilot, and have had a snooze.

I enjoy leftover chicken (in an ordinary sandwich, with a bit of salt), of which there was plenty....until I dropped the very large plate (and much-loved plate) on the floor while trying to re-open the fridge.   Broke one of the plate handles, and dropped the chicken (and some pork) all over.   Not a good start to the after-the-sleep-post-Christmas-Dinner period.

In spite of there being a reasonable number of bodies here (16, including ourselves) we still have plenty of food left over.  It's always the same.  Worse, there's always a pile of sweet stuff leftover, quite apart from all the sweet stuff that arrives as presents for one reason or another.  Any hopes we had of losing a bit of weight before going to our son's wedding in the States a week from today have been thoroughly undermined.

For many years, I used to get the latest Dick Francis thriller at Christmas.   Those days have gone, and I miss having that sort of light but entertaining book to read in the after-the-sleep-post-Christmas-Dinner period.  I've got plenty of books around the house, but that almost traditional aspect is something I miss.   I dread to think what's on television - if the last few days are anything to go by - but I do have a DVD that a friend gave me, which I may watch.   I'll see how much energy I've got.