Soapy success

The soap was turned out of its mould on the weekend, and looks to be OK. It is a greenish colour from the green tea, and is still quite soft. I have tidied up some of the blocks, and squashed the scrapings into a ball which we are using in the shower now. I always test my soap for a while before letting anyone else have any. I shall leave this lot to "cure" and harden for another week before sending off the twenty bars ordered from the US.


The weather is glorious, although sticky and humid. I got to Coogee Beach yesterday for a surf and snorkel. The waves were quite big for Coogee, but there was lots of kelp in the water and tossed on the sand. It didn't make for pleasant body surfing - too scratchy to be tumbled over vast mats of kelp. The snorkelling up the north end was pretty clear, and there were lots of very small striped fish with yellow fins. Also a school of about a dozen bigger fish. Very satisfying swim. I adore lying on the sand reading. Yesterday's read was The Mamo Murders, a vintage Hawaiian mystery by Juanita Sheridan.

Back home the mangoes are hanging heavy in the tree, and getting riper. We are blessed with a large tree in our courtyard, as well as a lime tree which has also fruited well this year. It seems so exotic to have such wonderful fruit in a small inner city garden. The mangoes often reach weights over a kilo each.




Majic Moments

Majic went to obedience again on Saturday and was a little star. He walked quite nicely on the lead, sat and stayed when told, and did a good job of lying down on command. We have been practicing at home. The trainers voted him Most Improved of our little group. He is gradually getting socialised too, getting used to being around other dogs. But at home for our regular walks he is still pulling, and I have bought an ebook with a technique to try. I have been trying it, and it does seem to help. We will continue with it. Majic and I go for quite long walks at least twice a day.


Technomoment

The downloading of the ebook was in pdf format, and I thought I might put it on my Rocket eBook. This eBook just pre-dated the widespread adoption of pdf as a standard document format. It works fine with html and with txt, and has its own proprietary .rb format. So I saved the bought book as text, and transferred it across with a minimum of fuss. Yes, the eBook still works. Then I thought I would investigate whether there are any pdf to .rb converters, and yes, there are. I downloaded the free version and it does seem to work. Any better than just saving to text? If I paid the $12 would it do a good job on the images too? I will think about this one. It makes me happy to read stuff on the eBook.