Roadkill murders!

I am watching the Olympic cycling, more or less as we speak. They go round and round on a little toy track; it is most exciting.

But! I am of course reading as I watch, because a man's got to do something. Multitasks are us. And therefore my mind is not entirely tuned in to the commentary, and therefore I heard the Australian commentator say, "This young man's got a lot of roadkill murders behind him."

And I looked up, blinking; and reran it in my mind, and yes, that was definitely what I'd heard. And I had to take it apart entirely and remake it before it could actually be parsed as "road kilometres".

[Which reminds me, inter alia and à propos: my favouritest-ever sporting comment, also from Olympic cycling but way back, 1980 or thereabouts; might even have been '76. "And that took exactly 11.6 seconds, and the crowd loved every minute of it."]

The Little Chilli that Wasn't

It is most strange. My house is filled with the aromas of beef and vegetable juices. When I go to stir the pot, there are many beans therein; yet when I taste it, there is no chilli burn. Not none.

This is because there are no chillies in it: because it is not a chilli, nor a curry neither. I can stew meat without heat? Who knew?

In fact, it is a cholent. A brisket-and-white-bean cholent, as it happens, which started out as a recipe before I added carrots and red peppers and such. And yes, it's got an egg in it. That's by way of an experiment; the recipe says to hard-boil the egg first before you add it to the pot, but I'm thinking, all those hours in a slow cooker? Surely that's going to cook an egg?

I'll let you know.

Also worth saying, this is entirely shewhomust's fault. She mentioned cholent (in terms of mutton and beans, I think) a couple of weeks ago, and I was hooked.

And the alert among you will have noted that this is Friday. Which has nothing to do with the case.

The only door he cannot open is the door that I have locked

Mac is quite wrenchingly cute, when he's trying to inveigle me into letting him out into the yard.

He sits by the back door and stares up at it. And stares at me, and at it: he is a great believer in the Power of Positive Thinking.

When that avails him nothing, he adds voice.

"Come on, Chaz, you can do this. We did this before, remember? You open the door, and we go out. C'mon, lad, it's really not that hard. I do understand, you're slow, you have trouble dealing with these difficult concepts, but look, I'll help. I'll do the going-out bit. All you need to do is open the door..."

He really does try very hard, poor lamb. And yet? The door remains closed, despite all his faith and works together.