oh, by the way, it's daylight savings

I wish someone had mentioned that to me on Saturday night. I suppose I just should have known, as some people do “just know”. Apparently it was in the paper on Saturday (which, of course, I don’t have much occasion to read). Kaan said he knew but forgot to tell me (which he often does). He also forgot to change his clock, so we were both rather surprised we realized it. I was supposed to meet some friends to go to the market at 11. As none of the clocks in the house had been changed, I got up and made ready for the day. I strolled into the café, sat down for some tea, and then realized I was running late. I hurriedly drank my tea and stood to leave, when I noticed the clock was only showing 5 till 10 (9:55). I called Kaan over, and we took turns looking between the clock, our cell phones, and each other. We finally determined it was, indeed, almost ten.

At this point, since I was supposed to meet some friends—perhaps they were just as clueless as I was—I decided to mosey on down the street toward our meeting point. I would wait for ten or fifteen minutes and, if they didn’t show, declare they were far more aware of the world than I was and return to the café. Luckily, my friend Niels came meandering by at exactly that time (especially fortunate as he was one of those whom I was going to meet!). We had a good chuckle at being so confused by the clocks and, with our newly discovered extra hour, decided to have breakfast. We did meet up with the other two friends at 11 and had a lovely jaunt through the market.

I like the market. There are lots of vegetables. I’m going to start cooking more as soon as I get some spices. Most of the spices that are readily available are things like mint and red pepper flakes. While I enjoy both of those tastes quite a lot, when a recipe calls for cumin, I don’t think either would be a proper substitute. So I’m tentatively scheduling a trip to the spice bazaar. I ought to make a list of what spices to buy. So far I’ve got cumin and cinnamon. Maybe also something like curry powder (or whatever makes up curry powder, since it itself is not a spice, but rather a mixture of spices. I didn’t know this previously.).

Apparently I’m feeling rather parenthetical today. I haven’t been sleeping very well because Kaan is sort of a bed-hog. For many years I slept on a twin mattress, so I don’t need that much space. However, he’s a pro at finding the prefect spot in just exactly the middle of the bed, so I get rather squished. My vocabulary doesn’t include things like “squished”, so I’m not sure how properly to tell him to pick a side and stick to it. As it happens, I get the house to myself during the day, so I have plenty of opportunities to nap. Perhaps soon I’ll become the newest siesta convert. We shall see.

The newest trend chez nous is Spider Solitaire. I could play this game for literally hours. When Kaan gets home from work, it’s among the first things he does. He’s gotten quite good. And since I didn’t actually –play- the game for the first year I used the application—the hint button can solve the entire puzzle for you—I was really impressed that he picked it up so quickly. He still doesn’t get one or two ideas (like wanting to win the game with the lowest number of moves), but he’s having fun and that’s enough for me.

Also, we’re both feeling the beginnings of a(nother) cold. Let’s hope it isn’t the flu formerly known as swine!