Thanks to everybody who sent me suggestions about the palak paneer yesterday! As unanimously suggested, I reheated it thoroughly for dinner, it tasted great, and I feel fine. I am SO glad I didn't panic and throw it away!

The fête was really fun. I met up with a couple of friends and their kids (including my favorite 5-year-old, who got his face painted to look like a ferocious tiger!), drank strong, milky tea & ate scones with fresh strawberries and cream, and went crazy at the booktable, where paperbacks were sold for 10p apiece (approximately $0.20) and hardbacks for 20p...I bought 9 books in the end, including some good light mystery novels (Agatha Christie and Ellis Peters), a Bernard Cornwell I hadn't read, and a big fat hardcover Social History of Britain from 1066-1945. Woot! And afterwards, Maya got a great walk from a friend that left her panting and happy. So we both had a good Saturday. I even got to Skype with Patrick, which was great - and it was even better than normal because of our shiny new iSight camera (thank you Jenn!!!!), which meant that I got to send him videos of me and of Maya, who was MOST intrigued and confused by the sound of his voice coming out of my laptop! (We figure it's exactly what she's always feared most: one of her parents spent Too Much Time on the computer and finally got eaten by it! Let's hope she doesn't do anything too dangerous in an attempt to free him from his captivity...)

Plus (via Dave Schwartz): what a fantastic Shirley Bassey music video! (The YouTube video version didn't work on my computer yesterday, but I managed to watch it on her MySpace page - it's "Get the Party Started", the first video below her bio.) So much fun! I've never heard her before (except on the James Bond soundtracks, of course) but now I'm really tempted to buy her new CD as perfect, upbeat writing music...

This morning's been pretty quiet so far. I've been reading my new Miss Marple mystery (Nemesis), courtesy of the fête booktable, and cuddling with Maya. I just printed out the first 10 pages of the new/old short story, "The Taste of Sugar", so that I can scribble on the hardcopy and make notes/collages/etc. I might go out with friends to Borders later. And my brother Ben's fabulously angry, funny, and political zombie short story Three Perspectives on the Role of the Anarchists in the Zombie Apocalypse is up now at Afterburn SF!

It's turning into a really nice weekend.