Friday, July 25, 2008

Kitten dinners

I had fried rice and a dish with bean sprouts and tofu remnants. The proficient predator who shared my dining room had a spider and three or four moths. His conversation is limited, but some of the moth grabbing leaps were very entertaining. I am pleased to find he is one of those cats that eats the catch and doesn't just play with it. He's still tiny by normal cat standards, but now a very different mechanism from the kitten of a few weeks ago.
I have the annual stage decoration volunteer exercise tomorrow, so a little distracted. Hopefully all will go well and we will all profit from the event in other ways. It is an all day effort in an air conditioned auditorium run by the prefectural authorities, so a little bit jarring after the 364 days of freedom that make up the rest of my year. There are a lot of rules about what we are not allowed to do on or near the stage. The staff at the hall once tried to turn away someone who had come along to visit me there while I was working on the thing. Where they get off thinking they have the right to restrict my visitor privileges while I am on the premises I do not know. Years of institutional thinking I suppose.
As regards practical work I have been stepping backward into reality, sharpening tools like the plane blades and putting surfaces on to potential timber parts for up coming projects. Valuable, but rather mundane activities.