Glode

At lunch today one of my group members looked at me and said, "Kathereeeen, you really like sandwiches." I didn't know how to respond to that, so I said, "I do like sandwiches," with a sortof confused look on my face. Then he asked me if I like normal food too. I looked around at the other people at the table, most of whom were eating sandwiches and asked, "What is normal food?" He responded by saying chicken and rice, or basically some meat + rice + vegetables thing. I told him that I do like that kind of food too, but it takes a long time to prepare. He then told me that I could buy already prepared normal food dishes at the cafe on the corner. 

I've been to this cafe many times, but for some reason I had always looked over their normal food section. So, I decided that I should try i for dinner tonight. I bought a meat + rice + vegetables dish and ate it with a fromage frais (French for yogurt -- sortof) for dessert. The meal itself was very good and incredibly filling. I can still feel it sitting in my stomach slowly digesting away. The vegetables were great. The yellow sauce tasted like a mustard-cream concoction and went well with the chunks of pork. The fromage frais though, it was fantastic! It was a little lighter than yogurt I'm used to in the US - it almost had a souffle-esque whipped texture. It came unsweetened, and was actually very delicious plain. However, I wanted to add some of the apricot sauce that came with it. The sauce was a little thinner than a marmalade and also had a very low level of sweetness. Together they made a heavenly dessert experience.

Quite tasty for a microwaved dinner.

After dinner I felt like a nice walk in the park. It has been very warm here for the last week and a half, and I love the warm evenings. In Berkeley, it is never warm at night. That is the biggest drawback of the place. The park across the street is a fantastic place to soak up the summer warmth. I took my kindle with me out to the park and sat by the pond reading the 3rd book in the Game of Thrones series while watching the ducks clean themselves.

A pretty duck giving himself a thorough cleaning.

I think I even spotted a blue heron up in the trees on the other side of the pond. She/he so elegantly glided down through the trees and then decided to hang out on top of a big bush that overlooked the pond.  He probably had a nice view from there.

Do you see him sitting on top of that bush on the left?

I also just learned that the past tense of glide used to be glode, until it morphed into glided or glid. I think I prefer glode. It sounds more elegant than glided. Glided reminds me of slided, and that makes me think of screaming children flinging themselves down slides. I also like that glode and glowed are homophones.