Rows of owlses,
originally uploaded by synx508.

I forgot to mention this, but it is an important moment. We have lived in this house for nearly 2 years. The owls have lived in tissue-paper cocoons in a series of boxes for many many more.

I have been stalking display cabinets for nearly 2 years. Finally I found one that didn’t cause philb to pull the toddler-face. So I bid. I won it for £15, but I gave them £25 as the husband delivered it to our front room, which was very nice of him.

So, owls now safely contained, although it is a little snug in there, almost as snug as the tissue-paper and box solution, but at least we can see the hundreds of staring eyes.

As I was putting them on the shelves, I kept thinking/singing ‘rows of owlses, are staring down at me’. Apologies to Radiohead: I’ve broken your song forever, in my mind.

new hair,
originally uploaded by Purplekitten.

Deep Purple by Special Effects stains like nothing on earth. I went to get out of the bath this morning when my husband pointed out that I was roughly the colour of Ribena. As this is not a flattering skin tone, I scrubbed once more.

I do like the hair though. Mmmmm purple

I’ve spent most of today re-cataloging my random scattering of books. It was getting to the state where piles of books were everywhere, waiting to be listed (to stop me buying duplicates because I can’t remember if I borrowed it or have it). Me being me, I’ve managed to lose the file that I made last time so I started again.

I use Tellico, which lets me type in ISBN/UPC and retrieve the rest of the detail from Amazon. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now and I think it’s fantastic. I didn’t get on with Alexandria (but I can’t remember why) and I couldn’t be bothered making my own, when Tellico (previously Bookcase) does such a good job.

I’m going to have to learn XSLT it seems, as I don’t like the reports that come out the other end, and they appear to be hackable, but not by mere mortals like me. Something for another day, perhaps. In the meantime, here is the new book list.

Looking again at Alexandria, its output is more along the lines of what I was looking for, plus it’s Ruby, which wins points automatically. I shall give it another try. But not right now. After a day spent hoiking books around, I’m all graunchy around the edges, so I shall now have a bath.