1) All I really want to do today is sit here and eat cheese. There are pros and cons to that.
2) Last night a friend came over for dinner to explain heat pumps to me — thank goodness, as I missed that course in mechanical engineering . . . and all those other engineering courses. Reviewing the only proposal I’ve received so far, the vendor a) overestimated my square footage by over 40%, b) did not specify removal of the existing furnace, and c) proved that I’m going to have to learn a new vocabulary to comprehend what is being shared. I am clearly going to have to go into Hotel Contract Review Mode from my days at ye Instytytte to be sure that nothing is overlooked.
2a) Once again, I have a reason to be grateful for the many, many people in my life who know more than I do and are willing to share their knowledge with me.
2b) Very successful menu: poached salmon (I must remember to put it on the stove and forget about it more often), “Scottish” risotto, Italian comfort food using Scots-identified ingredients like whiskey and dill (and smoked salmon, which I omitted this time); and boiled asparagus. My guest brought orange marmalade cakes, which were amazingly good served warm.
3) Finally finished the second volume of Chips Channon’s diaries, all 1,000+ pages of it, covering 1938-1943. If he wasn’t swanning about with the Duchess of Kent or dining with the great hostesses Emerald Cunard, Laura Corrigan, and Mrs. Greville, he was “frolicking” with his brother-in-law, taking Turkish baths with half of Parliament, or pining for his lover in India.
3a) Unread books stack up like firewood in this house, and I’ve now started on one I picked up someplace last year: Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler, by Anne Nelson. A very different sort of WWII story from Chips’s!