Good Morning, All. It is grey and colder here. I have a most unhappy kitty now-a-days. He is used to eating his first helping of breakfast, going outside to survey his kingdom on the patio, coming in to get a second breakfast (we swear he lived with Hobbits in a previous life) and going back outside. Now it is too cool for that and with the garden sleeping for the season not terribly interesting--no frogs, no birds, no foolish moles or other rodents to stalk. Oh, well--seasons pass and he will get more outside time come late spring.

Thank you for your kind words, Jo. I remember your blog--Reading, Ranting, Recipes--fondly. As I read your comment I remembered reading on the profile that you were from South Africa but that totally escaped my mind when I was writing. I thoroughly enjoy your writing and look forward to each post. I am so glad you found a way to keep blogging in China.

I agree, Kay, and would love to see the postage on that junk we get go up. At least a third of the trash we throw out is junk mail advertising. Although I can (and do) make some use of it by shredding some of it for the compost bin, I simply don't have enough room to use all of it and wouldn't miss it if it were gone. We don't even mail our rent check here. We hand deliver it on our last shopping day of the month largely because we like to chat with our landlords. We receive only one bill each month and, if the company would come all the way into the 21st century, we would not get that one. By the time it arrives we have already paid it because we also get the on-line bill. Except for the rent, everything else is paid on-line.