Exciting condo updates

1. Fastest way to kill a chummy conversation around the new firepit: casually make reference to child sexual abuse. (Totally not my fault! Someone else brought up The interpretation of dreams. Or maybe someone else brought up the interpretation of dreams and I brought up The interpretation of dreams so it still is kinda my fault.)
2. Crazy Neighbour has been spotted on her porch but still seems not to have interacted with anyone since the Great Tree Massacre of 2009. My thirst for drama goes unslaked!
3. That buzzing we heard whenever we tried to open the microwave door? Turns out it translates to "Buy a new microwave." As long as we don't go for stainless (which neither of us gives a rat's ass about anyway), it'll cost less than a new circuit board even before figuring in time and labour. (Ignoring the the $130 it took to find this out, of course.) Oh, well; another excuse to visit the wonderland of Abt Electronics.
   
   Excursus: What is it with people calling "Abt" "ABT"? When even repairmen are doing it, you know employees at the store must be saying it, too. Does it just not look anything like a name unless you're German?
4. The neighbour's daughter had a slumber party last night. Six teenaged girls, which means there was enough noise for thirty ordinary adults. At least outside of the occasional lulls when they were all texting furiously.
5. Our oregano is blooming. Is there any culinary use for oregano blossoms? I'm assuming we should trim them before they go to seed, since the last thing we need in our plot is more damn oregano. The presence of blooms won't affect the taste of the leaves, will it?

Phear the phlat books!

Earlier today I walked past a pile of un- and partly-read books stacked on the shelf, so I tried the page 100 test on all of them. To my delight, each began with a complete paragraph, so I present them here for your amusement. Votes on which contains the most pretentious prose will be tabulated and summarised pour moi. Also, anyone who can successfully identity all five volumes will have my undying respect. (Google away; I don't think even half of them are online yet.)

1. It was Shrovetide. Nastasya Petrovna and I had managed, only just, to obtain tickets for an evening performance at the theatre. It was a performance of Esmeralda which she had long wanted to see. The show went very well and, in accordance with Russian custom, ended very late. The night was a fine one, and Nastasya Petrovna and I walked home together. As we went, I noticed that my distiller's wife was in a very reflective state of mind, and that many of her replies were non sequiturs.

2. He was young and plump and had a nose like a duckling, his round, peasant's face emerged from his stiff ecclesiastical collar, and he dropped his eyes.

3. The attractive coast road swings across the headland to Myrtleville, a tiny but much-favoured beach now surrounded by little villas. Among the older houses is the former Mirmar, built by Sir John Trant and originally known as the 'Cottage on the Rocks'. As a member of the diplomatic corps Sir John travelled widely, accompanied by his daughter Clarissa whose Journal of Clarissa Trant recounts her various experiences as well as giving a glimpse of life in this small and once relatively isolated cover.

4. Christopher was thrilled by the austerity of Edward's tone. He was also chilled--more so than he would admit to himself. Did he already know that he would never take the street to that café?

5. That year of her return to Dublin and the years following--1911 and 1912--were years of terrible misery for the poor, not merely of Dublin but the United Kingdom. In England, where national politics readily assimilated these economic problems, everything passed off more or less smoothly, but what started in Dublin as a series of Labour troubles ended in a revolution. That merger between socialism and nationalism she was to symbolize when she fought, in 1916, with the Citizen Army under the flag of the Plough and the Stars.

Is it any wonder I haven't made more progress in devouring new acquisitions to my library?