Friday, June 28, 2013

Catching Up is Hard to Do

It has been a while since I posted anything or read my blog list.  Maybe two weeks?  So today was catch up day on reading and am maybe half done.

Dad and Daughter
My daughter Ky was here for 10 full days, arriving on Saturday June 8 and leaving Thursday June 20.  We had a wonderful visit.  We did nothing but be - in the same room, or the same house or the same yard or on the same dog-walk.

She was exhausted and slept a great deal, which she needed.  Being in the 5th year of a PhD program (Victorian Literature) at University of Victoria, BC  is a pretty heavy schedule, working on her dissertation, teaching an upper level English class each semester and speaking at three major conferences since January pretty much wore her out. This last conference was in Venice which is why she came to visit.  Rome Kyiv return was pretty cheap.

The conferences are sort of marketing tools for would be academics as they are attended by fairly senior people in the field, sort of like major league scouts, I guess. We put her on the train to Kyiv Wednesday evening June 20th to catch her 5:30 am flight to Rome.

Masha, Dasha and Andrei
If you are interested all of Ky's pictures from her time in Ukraine are posted HERE on Flikr

While Ky was here we did go to visit my newest Step-granddaughter Dasha who is two months old now.  She was for her monthly check up and has gained 1 kg each months so is doing quite good.

Masha stayed with us for a few days while Ky was here.  She had a cold and her mom didn't want Dasha to catch it.  She left the same time as Ky so it seemed pretty quiet for a few days.

Once Ky was gone, I gritted my teeth and finished a report I had been working on for some time.  A feasibility study on growing stinging nettles for fibre.  Nettles are a very ancient fibre crop in northern Europe, eventually replaced by hemp and flax, then imported cotton fibre. Stinging nettle also has a great many uses in cosmetics, herbal nutrition, folk medicine and actual medicine.  You can look it up. It is good for everything except emergency toilet paper.

That finished, I am ready to start another project in Greece for the  same parent company I do work for in Turkey.  That should take me the summer, some of it in Greece, even.

8 comments:

  1. We went through Ky's pictures a couple days ago. Very beautiful pictures. Tanya's flowers are amazing and Ky is a great photographer. We liked seeing the Dasha and Masha pictures with the family. Masha looks like the proud big sister.

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    1. Ky really does take good photos. Masha loves her little sister so much; it makes me smile to see them.

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  2. My cousin's wife was cleaning her turtle tank and had to move the 8' turtles to the bathtub.

    8' turtles? How big is her goddamn bathtub?

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  3. Supposed to be 8" turtles. 8' - scary thought

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  4. Good to see a good and recent picture of you.

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  5. Glad to hear about the great visit with Ky. Your projects sound interesting and working in Greece is a benefit in itself, methinks. Good luck!

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    1. We will see if I can duplicate the work I did in Turkey. Two different countries; two different cultures.

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