Prediction for this Saturday

Frederick Wentworth is getting excited.

And it take a lot to get a gentleman mouse excited.

Confessions: I love Mondays

Today I have a day off babysitting.  That means I can study and write all day in the comfort of my own office chair, on my own laptop, without having to stop and wipe a runny nose, break up a fist fight, or turn the volume down on the TV.

I think I'm going to feel a little forlorn.  As I was trying to fall asleep last night (I'm always trying to fall asleep - insomniac - but that can be another post), I was considering a week begun without two little boys.  That's the think about babysitting for 4 and 1/2 hours on a Monday.  Starts the week of with a bang...literally.  The door banging, the toilet seat banging, a little head banging on the steps - subsequent screaming...and the week is rolling.  Bring it on.

I was trying to fall asleep, wondering what I should do to start off a week without a round of babysitting, when I remembered one small fact about my current existence.  Two little boys are not the only thing I'm babysitting. In fact, humans are not the only thing I'm babysitting.

Thanks to Sid

So, I've been tracking page views in the convenient statistical section powered by Blogger.

Day, month, week... I can even find out how many posts have been viewed throughout all time.

(Don't know what I'm talking about, but realise you are intrigued?  Get a blog.  I'll follow you.)

It's fascinating to actually see in numerals how many people are reading The Mouse Files.  It shocks me every time.

Convenient Mouse Files Statistics...

• Most of you are from Australia   yay! 
• You tend to use Internet Explorer   booo
• The overwhelming majority of you crash in on Windows   the rest are Apple geeks 
• The Mouse Files has had 10 page views from Slovenia.  That's....interesting   Hi, if you're from Slovenia!
• The Mouse Files has appeared on an iPad 13 times.   I still don't understand iPads...oversized iPods?
• And if I didn't know that there was a special reader in Fiji, I'd be wondering why the islanders had iPads.

But the most overwhelming statistic of all can be summed up thus:

WWW: Lilliputian

On the first day of spring - September 2011 - I took the following photos:

These green parcels appeared on the previously bare branches practically overnight.

A word comes to mind...

Exposure - September 11

I'm working on another paper at the moment.

It happens to be about Muslim v. Western interpretations of September 11... an exercise in comparing how observers of historical events tend to put their own 'spin' on things... or something like that.

When I picked this topic it did not register that this year marks ten years since the attacks.  Over the last few days I've had so many possibly sources to pool through, as everyone rolls out another editorial, or pictorial essay, or historical reflection - it's been overwhelming to say the least.

Today I found my favourite piece of the whole lot in the New York Times Sunday Review.  It's just one photograph and a description, and I thought I'd share.

Adventures in Omelette: potato, chives & chilli

There is something quite earthy about this omelette adventure.

Here we have a potato still covered in the dirt it was pulled from, a bunch of chives just picked from the garden, and a chilli dried by my nonna.

I was getting very hungry at around 12:00, so I decided work an omelette around potato.  My mother always feeds me potatoes when I'm very hungry.  They fill all corners of the stomach.

WWW: Piquancy

Whenever I write a description of myself, like the little blurb in the 'About Me' section (which I deleted, hah.), or if I find myself filling out one of those generic questionnaires (in which I could never tell the difference between 'Hobbies' and 'Past times'), or maybe I'm writing out an imaginary letter to an imaginary pen pal...in Italian.

So, whenever I'm drumming my brain for things I actually like to do as opposed to things I just do...  I always put 'shopping'.

Mi piace fare lo shopping (qualche volte con gli amici).*

Yes, the Italian word for shopping is the same as the English.  No, that is not because Italians were not innovative enough to come up with their own word.  No, that is not because Italians don't even like to shop, and hence why have their own word for it?  No.

There are actually several Italian translations of our English verb 'shop' (because, in reality, Italians are some of the best shoppers in the world.  Oh yeah.)  It all depends on what type of shopping you are doing, what your looking for how, how driven you are going to be, and how much yelling at store keepers you are going to do.  But that's another post.

I have a theory as to why the English word 'shopping' stays the English word 'shopping' in languages other than English.  It's a baby word.  

Stay with me.

Saturday at the Soccer

My Dad and my brother play on the same soccer team.

Adventures in Omelette: spinach & tomato

I eat a lot of eggs.

Maybe about six a week, depending on how I feel.  They're one of my main sources of protein, and since I'm a skinny little twig who is perpetually underweight (genetic fast metabolism), I like fit more and more in.

Scrambled, poached, hard boiled in a salad, sometimes soft boiled with 'soldiers'.

Lately I've had an omelette craze.  How many types of omelettes can their be?  We always used to make plain omelettes with a sprinkle of parsely, and chow them down with stirfry or salad.

One day in the hazy past, I ate brunch in a little cafe in Healseville.  There were about three things on the menu which I could eat, and I chose omelette.  I though, surely they won't serve up two eggs in circular form without dressing them up a bit?

When the plate arrived, my omelette horizons suddenly stretched out before me.  The sky would be the limit when it came to dressing up the previously boring omelette.  I'm not going to tell you what was in that omelette because I can't actually remember.  I think it was cheese and mushrooms.

Now, back in the present.  Omelette creation of the day involves the following suspects: