I Read A Lot

Well I read all three Lord of the Rings books and The Hobbit in the last couple of weeks. Have not had the endurance to pop open The Silmarillion, but maybe sometime soon. Dude, Peter Jackson is a GENIUS. I gotta say, movies > books. Because in the movie, he incorporates stuff Tolkein only put in the Appendices, he mixes up the different chapters within the books so that the stories of Frodo/Sam intermingle with the Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli storyline and Merry/Pippin soryline, where as the books put each all together rather than interspersing chronologically. And the dialogue I feel was improved in the movie, even stuff like the healing of King Theoden and the Arwen/Aragorn relationship being fleshed out. Oh and the Elves coming to help at Helm’s Deep! I thought that was a really important part in the movie but it never happens in the book. Basically, an extremely well done trilogy, Mr. Jackson, hats off to you. The only grumble I’d have is the ending. In the book they go back to the Shire and have one last battle and it explains what happens to everybody until you are satisfied that they lived real lives before the various ends and in the movie there’s like a half an hour of reunions and goodbyes ad nauseum and yet you are still left wanting because they all just go away on a boat. So that’s my only gripe.

I also just finished the second “Twilight” book: New Moon. I am really glad that I don’t have all four books in my possession to read one after the other as though I were chain-smoking because I think I would really, really start to hate Bella. I mean she already annoys me by the end of one book and the only thing that keeps me hanging on is Edward. And Alice and Carlisle. So this book was especially painful because they were missing for 75% of it and I had to make do with trying to like Jacob for pages upon pages (kept flipping forward to find out when the name “Edward” returned to the story – it was a LONG way away). I suppose it’s just that Bella is so OBSESSIVE, like SERIOUSLY obsessive and I just want to slap her and yell, “THERE ARE OTHER THINGS IN LIFE!!!” Even when Edward IS around I want to do this because seeing your high school boyfriend ALL DAY EVERY DAY is weird. I mean, never not together, because he stays in her room at night. It’s like. Well, DUH, when he’s not around you won’t be able to function, you have built YOUR ENTIRE WORLD on him. I dunno, I can’t describe it. I just think there’s a way to get across the all-encompassing, mind-blowing love part of it without her being a whiny little obsessive teenybopper. End rant. Yes, I am going to continue the series. Federico is supposed to send me #3 on the October mail run. I don’t know how many copies of #4 we have, but probably not more than one or two so it’ll be awhile yet before that gets around to me.

I put out mouse poison tonight. I hope those mice die. I’m sure I’ll be sad when I toss their cute little dead bodies outside but seriously, having to put all my food on lockdown, like LOCKDOWN (they eat through Ziplocs and worse – candy bar wrappers…AND the zippable rice sack I had, discovered that hole today). I mean, I have to sleep with my tomato wrapped up in a bandanna in my bed inside my mosquito net with me so that they won’t find it. And every morning I’m cleaning up ridiculous amounts of mouse poo and different wrappers torn to shreds and I’ve just had it. It’s war.

Let’s see, what else is going on? The Secretaire Communautaire told me that if the dude has refused to go do the estimate on the pump at the school then I should just go ahead and fix the other pumps. So I’m going forward on that project. Although at this point the next time I’ll be with a computer and able to write the proposal and get it to Abdoul won’t be until probably Thanksgiving. Or maybe Halloween… Although I guess I could write the proposal on this and then just have to create the budget, format it, and print it out next time I’m at a computer. So yeah. Gonna get started on that.

There are soon going to be people living in the house next door to me. They have built up a whole concession wall (we won’t be able to see each other at all) and cooking and storage rooms and latrines/shower stall thingies so rumor has it there will actually be people living there now. Which I suppose is nice, even though I won’t be able to see them at all. But maybe I’ll get invited to dinner.

Lately my interest in rice or toh and sauce has gone into a nosedive. Tonight I got keke for dinner. She was really happy because I haven’t gotten keke from her in AWHILE. And since it’s cucumber season, there was cucumber on it! But of course my rice lady was pretty much like, “Yo Oumou, WTF?” Who would have thought pounded manioc can taste so good? It’s kinda like tangy sawdust (gotta drink a lot of water with it) and they put Maggi (MSG), salt (as if the Maggi didn’t have enough), peanut oil with some kind of herb or something in it, onion, cucumber (tomatoes if it’s ‘mater season) and a piment/okra mixture. It’s freaking delicious. Sometimes she has fish balls too but I only get those for Yogi. Sometimes I put avocado (avocado season is over, I am sad) or tuna on it. I suppose you could also buy a hard boiled egg from her to slice on it but the eggs in my town have usually been boiled so long ago that they are going bad by the time you get around to buying one so I steer clear. I don’t know why there are no fresh eggs in town when there are so many hard boiled eggs, and eggs stay good longer uncooked. It’s a conundrum.

I’m going to Kindia on Thursday so I’m going to buy a whole crate of eggs. But stop myself from consuming all 30 in like 2 weeks. Because by the end you get really sick of eggs. And then a month later you’re like, “Man I wish I had some eggs!!”

Also I found a clandestine little hut in my town that you have to be really secretive going in and out of where you can buy beer (also, incidentally, the only place I have seen anyone actively cultivating beans). So I am going to make beer battered something sometime soon. Like maybe beer battered onions. YUM. If only I had some Ranch dressing. I wouldn’t drink the beer because it has been sitting hot in that hut for quite awhile. I can’t imagine it being delightful. But maybe if my village someday gets a fridge…