All y'all in the boyband pr0n side of life: this. I have not the words. ^_^ W2 over at Technomancy put the link up, and while i'm thinking, W2, hon, want me to mail you some almond crush as part of a new_years_presentu? They have it at Oriental City, and I'll need to go there and get more AS and sushi soon...

So, anyway, I'm in the country. And I love the country, I really do, but it's very cold and very very dark. Which isn't to say darkness is /bad/, per se: the only problem was that it wasn't just "ooh! i can see the stars!" dark at 5:30pm or so, it was "wait, so /now/ i have to walk from one minor village to another /more/ minor village in the Pitch Black?" dark.

Cue me wandering along, getting blinded by the flame of my lighter and then just by the glow at the end of my cigarette, and trying to remember the route i've walked and ridden along often enough, but Not Without Light. So there was I getting terrified by the sudden black-over-black thing which looms up in front of me and /then/ realising it was a gate, and having to feel around for a stile; and me desperately trying to remember exactly /where/ the bridge was over a certain brook because, um, i /really/ didn't want to fall in. Plus having to walk up the road and not knowing whether my next step would be on horseshit, black ice or a pothole: maybe even some roadkill I could step in or become. Joy. I have a feeling this is the "harpy feels very very /London/" winter.

But the dogs - labradors, three black and one white, all from the same family, and it takes a bit to remember how to tell the black ones apart - and cats - getting old now, the male one's eye is all gummed up and he's not happy - are as adorable as ever, the horses probably also although i haven't been round to say hi to them yet. Instead I've been looking unknowledgeable in discussions of dairy farming. You have to have at least 100 cows to keep a cost-effective dairy farm, you see, and there will always be a few dry ones at any time, and milking takes a good four hours at the best of times, and you have to wash each one down and put iodine on their udders before milking otherwise they get some disease with a name like melanoma only not, and... yeah. And one really can't have a farm without livestock, apparently. And organic fruit-and-vegetable boxes are the way to go. It's amazing the stuff you pick up, it really is.

Er, sorry, I'll just be over here feeling very cold and very rural, then. Tomorrow I... walk the dogs all day and fail to learn my greek! Yay!