A Postcard A Day - Friday 14 December 2021 - Friday Smiles

 

Hello lovely ladies, This week has flown by and I find myself on Friday again. Today I want to share this postcard with you. It's a lady drifting in the Dead Sea. 

The Dead Sea is so salty that one cannot sink!

 Dead Sea is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.

The lake's surface is 430.5 metres (1,412 ft) below sea level, making its shores the lowest land-based elevation on Earth. It is 304 m (997 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With a salinity of 342 g/kg, or 34.2% (in2011), it is one of the world's saltiest bodies of water – 9.6 times as salty as the ocean – and has a density of 1.24 kg/litre, which makes swimming similar to floating. This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which plants and animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea's main, northern basin is 50 kilometres (31 mi) long and 15 kilometres (9 mi) wide at its widest point.^[1]

The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean Basin for thousands of years. It was one of the world's first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from asphalt for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilisers. Today, tourists visit the sea on its Israeli, Jordanian and West Bank coastlines. The Palestinian tourism industry has been met with setbacks in developing along the West Bank coast.

The Dead Sea is receding at a swift rate; its surface area today is 605 km² (234 sq mi), having been 1,050 km² (410 sq mi) in 1930. The recession of the Dead Sea has begun causing problems, and multiple canal and pipeline proposals have been made to reduce its recession. One of these proposals is the Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance pipeline project, which would provide water to neighbouring countries and carry brine to the Dead Sea to help stabilise its water level.

The stamp is cute with the young goats. It is one of those new digital stamps.

The sender, Martina, has also stuck a lovely washi tape on the bottom in the shape of letters and postcards. 

Very nice.

Now what has been happening in the K household?

Friday we went to see the surgeon, hoping to get a date for the operation. But the surgeon wasn't convinced this new growth was malignant and ordered a PET scan. So it's good news in a way. But not what we expected. And he is still in pain.

I made real Dutch pea soup.

On Saturday I sorted out my wardrobe as it needed 'culling'. I gave these three items to a friend and the rest I put in a bag for the church charity rack. Then I made 'speculaas', a Dutch biscuit because in the evening we would go and celebrate Sinterklaas with my friend's daughter, who married a Dutchman and their daughter is 4 yrs old, so a beautiful age to still believe in Sinterklaas.

On Sunday morning we went to church and because we were late coming home, I cooked rice in the Remoska, an quick and easy dish. In the afternoon I did some baking and in the evening there was the closure of the photo exhibition. We who are in the committee had a meeting about next year's program.

Monday was a national holiday in Spain (Constitution Day) and I went to help take the photos down and pack everything up.

On Tuesday we went to our favorite restaurant and had lunch. The reason was that we wanted to go to our 'weekend' house to see if we could find my Christmas decorations. I can't find them anywhere. As we always go to Holland for Christmas, the tree plus decorations haven't been used for many years. We didn't find them (and still haven't)

On Wednesday I asked hubby to light the wood burner in the craft room as I wanted to tidy up the stuff I had been using to make Christmas cards. Eventually I did no such thing! I spent the whole morning crafting. I made more cards and enjoyed using tings I hadn't used for a while. I also noticed that all my ink pads had dried out, so that evening I ordered some new ones. 

The weather was awful. It was very stormy (with amber warnings) so I didn't go out at all. There was no need as we had another national holiday. This time it was something called Immaculate Maria, a religious festival.

I sent a Christmas card in the shape of a bauble. It had three parts. One had to stick the parts together to get a bauble which then could be hung in the tree.

Well the first one has arrived and is now hanging in our son's tree in Windsor, England.

I had a kilo of pork sitting in the fridge, and we decided we'd cook it in the BBQ to make pulled pork. I seasoned the meat, and dug up my thermometer and we cooked it in two and a half hours.

I have also found a wreath in a box in the garage. But on our large door it looks rather puny, so I might have to see if I can find a bigger one, or splash out on a florist who will make me one.

That was my week. I'm going to visit Annie at A Stitch In Time with her Friday Smiles.

As per usual, I'll have a few funnies at the end. (And some to think about).

Have a lovely weekend,

Stay safe,

Hugs,

Lisca