Some things you just know will not end well

Two cats, one sunshine:



Five minutes later, the next time I happened by, there was just one cat. So it goes, in this house.

On the other hand, some things you do just know will end well:



This is my workstation for the afternoon. It would be a better thing if the smoke only came out of the chimney, rather than leaking through every seam, but hey. So long as there's smoke. Nil Combustibus Pro Fumo, as we say in my generation. Inside there, as well as the necessary fire, is a big hunk of pork shoulder, slathered with a mix of ketchup and apple cider vinegar and salt and pepper and fennel and cayenne. It's going to smoke slowly until evening, when it will be juicily cooked and aromatic and tasty. There may be other things grilled alongside. There will certainly be sesame seed buns, for those are rising in the kitchen as we speak. I had thoughts of making a plum frangipane tart for afters, but that might remain no more than a thought. It's often the way with desserts. It is a lovely thought - and that's what counts, right? Right...?

In other news, I would quite like to know why the Shotwell photo manager has suddenly stopped organising my pix by date, or apparently at all. We'll always have Flickr, but nevertheless...

A question! Of vocabulary!

Is there a single word that describes both sides of a master/servant relationship? I need an adjective that will contrast with "familial"; at the moment I'm using "seigneurial", but that's little more than a placeholder, because it seems to be monodirectional. The lord's attitude might be seigneurial, but I need a word that will also encompass the pageboy's. As it were. No actual pageboys will be harmed in the making of this image.

The news that never was

So: it transpires that Spock's cousin is not going to narrate my novel Dispossession.

You may by now be saying "Yeah, so what? He's not going to be narrating my novel either, how is this news?" - and of course you're right, except that he - Jeff Nimoy, that is - had in fact been commissioned to do the work, only now they've decided they'd rather have an English voice instead. Which I find hard to argue with thematically, because, y'know, English writer of English character - but still. Spock's cousin. Geek points to the max. I cannot hide a little disappointment. (Besides, he was asking me how to pronounce stuff and everything. We were practically mates.)