Blueberries!

Hey Flisties. Shaw's was having an amazing sale on blueberries (buy one, get two free). I'm giving one pint to my mum, but that still leaves me with two pints of blueberries. The catch is I don't like fresh blueberries. I'm looking for recipes other than just muffins and cake.

I pose this question for you: What is your favourite thing to make from blueberries. Bonus points if you can also post a recipe for me.

Tiiired

I really didn't need as much coffee as I had today. I'd really like to go to bed, but I'm wide awake and my shoulder is aching from slowly starting to use it again today after a week of forced rest. It doesn't help that's been damp all day and it just started raining. At least it held off most of the day.

I spent most of my day working on Ze Website. I really am a cave troll especially when a) it's hot out and b) I can't drive myself anywhere good and Steven's doing stuff. I really did need to do work on it, though, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I shall also be doing that tomorrow.

I am going to see Tool tomorrow. That was my early birthday pressie for myself. I hope they're as awesome as they've been purported to be and I hope it doesn't rain.

Sweet. X-Files are on. I love when Mulder periodically actually sounds like he's a Mass native.

Anyhow, when Steven got home, I demanded he take me to the beach because I was sticky and frustrated. The tide had just started coming back in, so we shooed the gulls away and claimed a patch of sand before we went in for a quick dip. The currents seem to have shifted a bit and the water isn't as warm as it was a couple weeks ago. There actually was a bit of a rip tide when we were leaving, which struck me as really unusual for a harbour that's as sheltered as Wessagusset.

I gave up on swimming a lot quicker than Steven in favour of poking through the tide pools. He chose to wade a little deeper and get eaten by crabs. I'm not sure what he's so delicious, but he's been pinched by so many crabs this year. He actually had one trying to climb his leg while he was wading. He's seriously like the Pied Piper of crustaceans. He managed to have a good half dozen little hermit crabs pesting his toes while I had none.

I found a recently molted green crab and a tonne of hermit crabs. I also found two pieces of bone on the shore, which I brought home. I'm trying to figure out what they're from. It looked like they've been in the water quite some time, though one longer than the other. I'll eventually get around to taking pictures of them. They're somewhat larger than the marrowbones you can buy for pets. One of them is round and one of them is longer and flatter, like a rib bone, which is what I guess it is. Neither appears to have been cut, which makes me think they're not from someone's boatside barbeque. They also appear to have a lot of space for marrow and they're fairly light. Steven's making me leave them outside until they dry out totally. I'll probably give them a scrub in a bleach solution, anyway, before I do anything more with them. Steven had a good idea of doing quasi-scrimshaw with them. The flatter one is just begging for a nice sloop or something on it.

The highlight of the day, however, was finding an intact thorny skate. I saw a good crowd of gulls hanging around the water, so I headed down to investigate. The skate must've just barely kicked it, because it was totally intact, including the eyes. They wash up at Wessagusset pretty readily, but usually after being dinner and a couple days worth of leftovers. This one was perfect.

Of course I didn't have my camera.

I waded out so I could drag it to shore to show Steven who was somewhat unenthused. I even demanded he touch it so he could feel the rudimentary denticles, as well as the teeth. The eyes were fascinating. They weren't even clouded over, so you could see the frilled bits (not a very scientific term) which look a bit like this. In process of checking it out, I also managed to dislodge a very cranky green crab who was enjoying a meal.

I would've take it home, but Steven told me it was the dead skate or him and while the dead skate was really, really cool, Steven's a lot more entertaining and won't start rotting on a warm day and attract flies. As the saying goes, there are always more skates in the sea. Next time, hopefully, I'll have my camera. I ended up leaving it on the rocks for the gulls. Alas, the little bastards aren't appreciative.

We came home for dinner and watched telly for a bit because deciding it was a little too warm to sit around here. We headed back to the beach at 10:30. Wessagusset has a neat little floating dock for the kiddies, but it's also really cool because you can literally sit out in 10' - 15' deep water. We took out coffees and plunked ourselves down to watch the boats. The current was pretty strong tonight and coming in from two different directions, so for a bit, it felt like we were rocking in a circle. The swells were also pretty good sized and it was unbelievably relaxing to just sit and roll with the water. I still felt like I was rocking when we left. I could have sat there for hours, but we ended up just staying a bit more than an hour since my bladder pretty much demand bathroom or death.

We watched the end of the Simpsons and then caught up on what we'd missed on Le Tour today. I haven't been as viligant watching this year as I have in the past. A lot of it has to do with the move. We're still in Box City, but I'm hoping to get a little more done this week-end. I've been wearing approximately the same six things for three weeks now and I'm more than a little sick of washing stuff in the sink because I have no idea where any of my clothes are. Ashley found a hidden stash of recently bought knickers and some tees and I managed to find a few more thank tops, so I'm good till the week-end.

I also found a stash of bras/tops which do not fit, including a great tankini top that I paid $80 for originally. If anyone's interested, I might list them for sale here before I do the eBay thing.

The dozen roses Steven bought me are still living. They're blooming quite nicely by the front window. My lilies out from are blooming too. My rose bush, however, needs a good prune and I may end up getting some coffee grounds from Starbucks to see if that helps it. From what I can tell, the soil here is fairly alkaline.

I really hate Bindi Irwin. Steven's friend Rich and I were discussing that she's creepy, though not Burger King creepy. I think she's a little below Dakota Fanning creepy as well. I can't believe she got her own show because her father was idiot enough to harass sting rays. Yes, fluke accident, blah blah blah, but it was a stupid thing to be doing, especially ripping the spine out of his chest. Since, you know, gaping, gushing wounds are far easier to survive when nothing's blocking then up.

I'm sure I offended someone with that, so I preemptively apologize that I was speaking ill of the dead, even though I bet he'll get a Darwin for his actions.

I think that's my cue to bop off to bed. I love Planet Earth, but it's the deserts ep and I don't care enough about that to stay up till 4am to watch all of it.