Wagamama have once again Done The Thing, by which I mean: the reliable Always Food For Alexes thing they've been doing for the last little while has rotated back off their menu.

The thing I tried instead today was sufficiently food for me to finish the rice but not sufficiently food for me to finish all of the toppings; I am suspicious of pho in "a clear yuzu broth" (which is not the same thing as "I won't try it").

(This is a Thing they have now done Twice, the first time about 15 years ago, and YES I AM HOLDING A GRUDGE.)

... have I done the "oh no, why has my pen stopped working, did I break it :(" dance only to realise that in fact, no, THE PEN IS EMPTY. (Once because my first attempt at filling it was apparently fairly inept unless I have massively misjudged how much ink it lays down, which given that it's a Pelikan is not totally implausible, but would still be... surprising.)

On the upside I think I might have worked out why a different pen seems particularly prone to evaporation and drying out. I am not sure how fixable it is, but I do at least have a workaround! (I think the inner cap is a bit reluctant to settle into place; it shouldn't be, but wiggling the pen a bit once capped seems to be helping...)

(This is such a ridiculous hobby.)

Celebrating. My 35^th birthday! With a picnic at the allotment (and the allotment fox, and a slow worm, and THE WOODPECKERS); and birthday cake courtesy of my mother. :)

Reading. Finished The Ladies of Grace Adieu, Susanna Clarke, and enjoyed myself so doing!

Then What An Owl Knows, Jennifer Ackerman, showed back up from the library. I am making better progress this time and continue to enjoy Owl Facts.

I have made 0 progress on any of the books on pain, and The Silence Factory (Bridget Collins) has jumped to the top of my read-next list courtesy of getting to the front of the holds queue much sooner than I'd expected to...

Writing. PIP submission got to Good Enough by very early Friday morning. That has been most of my make-words-go brain this week, shockingly.

Playing. I Love Hue: I am Infuriatingly Stuck, presumably at more or less the point I got Infuriatingly Stuck last time. I am more-or-less at the point where I am going to just restart the level and hope I get luckier on my second attempt, but that is never a particularly satisfactory!

Cooking. Choy sum with oyster mushroom sauce, garlic, and peanuts: didn't really get the point of the peanutty topping; unlikely to bother with again. White miso ramen with asparagus and tofu: I was extremely dubious about this based on reading the recipe, and somewhat to my surprise wound up actually really liking the broth; not a high priority for eating in-season asparagus in future, though. Bay, rye and hazelnut cake with poached rhubarb: Y E S, especially using the poaching syrup as a drizzle!

Eating. A made me Saturday brunch waffles, and conveniently we had leftover picnic strawberries and some cream that needed using up, so I got fancy strawberries-and-Chantilly-cream waffles as a Birthday Treat :)

Also had a cream tea at Wimpole early on Sunday afternoon, and curry from a restaurant in Cottenham following Terrible Further Sunday Afternoon Adventures. Some of my mother's bread; birthday cake courtesy of my mother also; also also lentil moussaka ditto :)

Exploring. Visited Home Farm at Wimpole Hall, where we scritched piglets and observed a variety of rare breed hens, rare breed ducks, chicks and ducklings ditto, The Horses, The Rabbits, The Bogat Goats incl. Baby Goats, and we waved to the donkeys, in addition to being very pleased about the various swift-ish things and sparrows making their way in and out of the barns.

Also spent an afternoon sat at the junction of the A10 and Landbeach Road, for terrible hobby purposes, and relatedly a little bit of time poking around the even-more-immediate vicinity of the NEW SITE for Admin: the LRP, aaand also drove past the house we are not even remotely going to buy just to sort of wist at it.

Making & mending. Sawed some wood! All of the bits for railway sleeper raised bed #1 are now in position and I've filled it; but on reflection I deemed the 180mm screws Too Short so am awaiting delivery of some 300mm for Final Assembly. (Whereupon I get to decide to do it all again for bed #2...)

Growing. First broad beans will be ready for harvest any day now (and in fact if we wanted to eat some immature pods I could have the first handful already). Peas are starting to flower! Strawberries are extremely Set Fruit and might even start ripening at some point soonish!

I am extremely excited about how happy the raspberries are looking.

Have sown all of my remaining elderly quinoa seed, which I am not expecting to do much of anything, and will be pleasantly surprised if it does; having one final go at getting any viable plants out of the pineapple physalis seeds I bought at the beginning of the season; have been Donated some Moneymaker tomatoes and a basil plant from my mother; really really need to get the cucumbers started, but Not Quite Yet.

Have started putting squash various outside. Need to finish prepping beds for them to actually go into.

Oh! And the tomatoes are also going out! Annoyingly I lost track of which were Orange Banana and which were Blue Fire so I'm not entirely sure I'm going to actually manage planting up a rainbow of the things, but -- fingers crossed, eh?

Observing. IN ADDITION TO the excellent allotment wildlife and the Creatures at Home Farm, we enjoyed various plantings around Wimpole (including the incredibly striking Very Tall Straight-Stemmed Ferns), and while Doing A Traffic Survey At The A10/Landbeach Road Junction saw also: lambs! corvids harassing a red kite! more swift-y things! goldfinches??? wild rabbits, to A's delight. Some geese, honking merrily away to themselves.

It has been a particularly good week for Creatures. :)

Late this afternoon or, well, early this evening, getting a very late start on a flying visit to my parents (I have been fed birthday cake), my train of thought was abruptly completely derailed when I finally worked out what was going on with the the individual loitering on the grass outside our block.

They were walking their lizard.

Or, more accurately, their lizard (possibly an iguana???), complete with harness and lead, had plonked itself firmly in a very bright patch of sunshine and was making it very clear (tail curled up and everything!) that it liked this basking spot, thank you, and had no intention of going anywhere.

The human tried at one point to gently encourage it to contemplate moving. The lizard, without moving at all, became visibly heavier.

The human, resigned, returned their attention to the phone in the hand that wasn't holding the lead.