Assorted randomness (featuring a surprising amount of cake)

Today marks 11 years since I joined Bookcrossing. Not that I’ve done a huge amount of bookcrossing in the last year or three – I got out of the habit with the earthquakes and never really got back to it. Not having any other active bookcrossers in the area doesn’t help much either. I’d blame the loss of the wonderful St Christophers three books for a dollar table, but that’s not really an excuse, given the three boxes of unregistered books still sitting under my desk…
Anyway, today I did release some books – 11 in fact, in honour of 11 years of Bookcrossing. All cat themed, of course 🙂

  1. Time for Paws by Barbara Maguire
  2. The Master Cat by David Garnett
  3. Making Rounds with Oscar by David Dosa
  4. 101 Cataclysms by Rachael Hale
  5. The New Cat Handbook by Ulrike Muller
  6. Der Kleine Entspannungscoach
  7. Yoga für Katzen by Traudl and Walter Reiner
  8. The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell by Lilian Jackson Braun
  9. I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume
  10. There Are No Ordinary Cats by Rachael Hale
  11. The New Yorker Book of Cat Cartoons

And one (The New Cat Handbook) even got caught, before I’d made it home to make release notes!
I ended up releasing all of them in Deans Bush.  My original plan was to start there, release a few books, then wander down to Hagley Park and into town, dropping books along the way.  But the farmers market was still going when I got to Deans Bush, so I thought I’d grab a nice loaf of bread while I was there, to have for dinner tonight with some soup I’ve got sitting in the fridge.  But of course, farmers markets don’t work like that – while searching for the bread stall you have to walk past all the other stalls selling assorted wonderfulness, so before I knew it I was weighed down with a bag of peaches, a bag of tomatoes, a couple of little savouries, a slice of cake (in my defence, it was a Cakes by Anna cake – totally impossible to walk past!)… oh yeah, and the loaf of bread I’d actually planned to buy.  So I had to quickly release the rest of my books to make room in my bag for all those goodies 🙂
Still, at least I managed to release some books for a change, and it was a very pleasant way to spend the morning.  And will make for an even more pleasant evening, feasting on all that lot 🙂


My boss’s baby finally arrived yesterday morning, nearly two weeks late (so I could have taken my time getting the quilt finished after all!), so I’m now the acting manager for the next few weeks while he’s on parental leave.  I had been feeling kind of nervous about the impending responsibility, but I was actually feeling pretty relaxed about it yesterday – though maybe that’s just because of the general feeling of relief around the office, after spending two weeks with the boss getting more and more tense and leaping for the phone every time it rang 🙂
I’m sure there’ll be sufficient crises over the next few weeks to keep me busy though – with the anniversary coming up on the 22nd we’ve got a few big projects that we’re trying to get finished in time to do a big release for that day, and of course they’re all dependent on other people to sign off on various things at critical stages, so I’m expecting I’ll be having to earn my new pay band pretty soon making sure that all goes smoothly.
In the meantime, I intend to usher in the new regime by baking some cake or something tomorrow to take in for morning tea on Monday.


In sad news, Browsers is closing 🙁  The building is being demolished (not earthquake damage, by the sounds of it – the building owner just wants to build something new on the site), so the cafe has to go, and its owner says she doesn’t want to reopen anywhere else. Where will I get my fix of lemon cake* now???
Hmm, perhaps it’s a good thing we don’t have bookcrossing meetups in Christchurch any more – it seems like every place we’ve ever had a meetup gets demolished.
(*Ok, so cake seems to be the theme of today’s entry.  I’m not obsessed with cake, really!)


Parsnips seems to have started a feud with the next door’s cat.  She’s normally pretty relaxed about other cats, but there’s a big black and white cat next door that she really can’t stand.  Every time she sees it in the garden her fur goes up and she starts hissing, and there’s been more than a few fights when they’ve met at the fence line (I’m amazed at her bravery, given that the other cat is twice her size!).  Even seeing it through the frosted glass of the front door is enough to get her agitated.
No idea what it is about that cat that gets her so agitated, but I hope they manage to sort out their differences – the last thing I need is her to get injured.
(See, not a single mention of cake in this section! …except for just then…)

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One Comment

  1. I followed the link to Cakes by Anna and the excellent photography makes them look mouth wateringly delicious. No wonder you couldn’t resist.
    Farmers’ markets should really be called Temptation Rows – impossible to leave one empty handed. Luckily there are none near here I did get into temptation at the Martinborough Fair the previous weekend but these fairs are only held twice per year, on the 1st Saturday in February and March. Trying to resist the thought of going next month – and I didn’t buy one cake. They always sell a delicious potato based Rosti completely irrestible so Daughterfan and I had one each and we also had pricey whitebait fritters, equally yummy!

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