A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 19 July 2022 - T for volcanoes

 Hello lovely ladies. Today is T-Day, but it is also the day that hubby should have had his operation.   Friday afternoon we got a telephone call from the hospital saying that the operation has been cancelled. The tumor has been deemed inoperable! That was a blow! We are now seeing the oncologist on Thursday to see where we go from here. We were both disappointed as hubby had pinned all his hope on this operation. I, being a nurse, knew this was a possibility of course, but I was hoping for a good outcome. We both have a strong faith and we have each other. So we will make it through together.

My postcards for today are both volcanoes. The first one comes from Russia and features two volcanoes in the Kamchatka area:

It was sent to me by Anna, who lives in Zelenograd, which means Green City. It is in the greater Moscow area, 20 km from Moscow center.

Kamchatka is a peninsula in the far east of Russia:

On this map the peninsula is bottom left. 

An interesting anecdote I found:

On 21 May 1865, the American Civil War came to the area: the Confederate States Navy steamer Shenandoah sailed past the southern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula on its way to hunt United States whaling ships in the Sea of Okhotsk. As a commerce raider, the CSS Shenandoah aimed to destroy Union merchant shipping and thus draw off United States Navy ships in pursuit, thereby loosening the US Navy blockade of Confederate coasts. The ship spent almost three weeks in the Sea, destroying only one ship due to the dangerous ice, before moving on to the North Pacific, where it virtually captured or bonded 24 whalers, sinking most of them.

The mountain on the left of the postcard is called Klyuchevskaya Sopka, and on the right is Kamen (which means 'stone'). 

The stamps are very pretty and feature fruit. You can tell by the cancellation stamp that it was posted last year. I know, but I wanted to pair this postcard with the other volcano I have lined up.

The top-right stamp has Bogatyr apples on it. 'Bogatyr' is a group of apple cultivars that ripen in late fall or early winter with a strong acid taste that have been popular in Russia .

This second postcard of course shows the famous Mount Fuji in Japan. This is art by Tsuchiya Koitsu.

Wikipedia tells me:

Tsuchiya Koitsu (土屋光逸) was an important artist in the Shin-hanga movement.  In 1931, at the age of 60, he began work for Shōzaburō Watanabe and his art publishing establishment which also published the work of artists like Kawase Hasui and Yoshida Hiroshi. His later work incorporated light effects to increase the emotional impact of his art.

Born on September 23, 1870, in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan. His birth name was either Koichi or Sahei. He moved to Tokyo at age 15. He first had an apprenticeship for the woodblock carver Matsuzaki, but soon became a student of ukiyo-e master Kiyochika Kobayashi. He worked for Kiyochika for 19 years and lived in his house. He initially published prints made during the First Sino-Japanese War, before developing his skill with dramatic light effects, learned from Kiyochika. Koitsu published through the Watanabe publishing house after Watanabe and Koitsu met at an exhibition commemorating the 17th anniversary of Kiyochika's death.

The postcard was sent to me by Eileen in Harrisburg. She uses beautiful stamps:

Some forever stamps with typical American subjects and a Celebrate! stamp. I love them.

Today is T for Tuesday, hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard and we all bring a drink in our blog. Let me see what I can contribute.

Last Wednesday we drove to Albox, (70 km in the direction of the east coast). For some reason a lot of English ex-pats have settled there and there are English shops, English bars and this English restaurant called Chapman's. They serve a fantastic fish & chips. Their fish is impressive:

Hubby loved it (as did I), and there are a good few drinks in the picture to qualify for the T-Party hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard.

I was having Strongbow cider (hard cider  for those in America), hubby was having ice tea.

What else have we been up to? On Sunday (after church) we went to see our friends Antonia and Eusebio at their ice cream shop. Eusebio makes his own delicious ice cream made with all natural ingredients. I have no photo of  him as he was working flat out in this weather.

We both had an ice cream to eat there and then, and hubby wanted to take some home too.

He chose tutti-frutti (with pistachio in it)

Antonia is filling a tub for him.

There is the tutti-frutti (with the red maraschino cherries) and the white tub next to it to keep it cool while we were still catching up with our friends.

I have a video which shows you the ice cream shop and in which Eusebio explains the process. It's all in Spanish of course, but at least it shows you the shop and the ice cream (and our friends who make it). The other people in the video are the Mayor of Baza and two of his councilors. I hope the link works:

If it is very warm where you are, I hope the sight of all this ice cream has cooled you down a bit.

Happy T-Day all!

Hugs,

Keep smiling,

Lisca

 

A Postcard A Day - Friday 15 July 2022 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely people,

Have you got a lot to smile about? Not much? Then I advise you to actively think and find  those positive things and moments. They are there but sometimes they are overshadowed by the situation. Count your blessings as they say. Find things to be thankful for. 

That's what we do. Today we are thankful that we have finally got a date for hubby's operation. It's going ahead on Tuesday the 19th of July. That is to say: this coming Tuesday. There still is one TAC scan to do this morning, but if that doesn't throw up any problems, we're good to go.

The operation will take place in the main teaching hospital in Granada. We have booked into a nice hotel near the hospital from Sunday night, and he has to be in admission Tuesday at 7:30 in the morning. The operation wil be that same morning. I am both nervous and excited.

My postcard this morning is something funny on a postcard:

This is a building in the city of Prague in the Czech republic. It's called The Dancing House. Of course I went to Wikipedia to get a bit more info:

The Dancing House, or Fred and Ginger, is the nickname given to the Nationale-Nederlanden building on the Rašín Embankment in Prague, Czech Republic. It was designed by the Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunić in cooperation with Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry on a vacant riverfront plot. The building was designed in 1992. The construction was completed four years later in 1996.

Gehry originally called the house Fred and Ginger (after the dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers – the house resembles a pair of dancers) but this nickname is now rarely used. Gehry himself later discarded his own idea, as he was "afraid to import American Hollywood kitsch to Prague".

Here is another picture in better weather:

The "Dancing House" is set on a property of great historical significance. Its site was the location of a house destroyed by the U.S. bombing of Prague in 1945. 

The plot and structure lay decrepit until 1960, when the area was cleared. The neighboring plot was co-owned by the family of Václav Havel, who spent most of his life there. As early as 1986 (during the Communist era), Vlado Milunić, then a respected architect in the Czechoslovak milieu, conceived an idea for a project at the place and discussed it with his neighbour, the then little-known dissident Václav Havel. A few years later, during the Velvet Revolution, Havel became a popular leader and was subsequently elected president of Czechoslovakia. Thanks to his authority, the idea to develop the site grew. Havel eventually decided to have Milunić survey the site, hoping for it to become a cultural center, though this was not the result.

The Dutch insurance company Nationale-Nederlanden (ING Bank from 1991 to 2016) agreed to sponsor the construction of a house on site. The "superbank" chose Milunić as the lead designer and asked him to partner with another world-renowned architect to approach the process. The French architect Jean Nouvel turned down the idea because of the small square footage, but the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry accepted the invitation. Because of the bank's excellent financial state at the time, it was able to offer almost unlimited funding for the project.^[4] Starting with their first meeting in 1992 in Geneva, Gehry and Milunić began to develop Milunić's original idea of a building consisting of two parts, static and dynamic ("yin and yang"), which were to symbolize the transition of Czechoslovakia from a communist regime to a parliamentary democracy.

The famous dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are represented in the structure. A tower made of rock is used to represent Fred. This tower also includes a metal head. A tower made of glass is used to represent Ginger

The stamps are very colorful:

The modern building top left is a transmitter cum hotel.

The hotel and TV transmitter on Ještěd is a building in the shape of a one-part rotating hyperboloid , built between 1966  and 1973  on the top of the Ještěd mountain near  Liberec .

 It is almost 100 meters high with a circular plan with a diameter of 33 meters. Its author is the architect Karel Hubáček , who was assisted with the statics of the building by Zdeněk Patrman and with the equipment of the interior spaces by Otakar Binar. 

Before the construction of the current hotel, a hotel stood on top of the mountain from the mid-19th century, near which another one was built at the beginning of the 20th century, taking into account the interest of tourists. The buildings were made of wood and both burned down in the 1960s.

The other stamp features the Karlstein castle. 

Karlštejn Castle  is a large Gothic castle founded in 1348 by Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor-elect and King of Bohemia. The castle served as a place for safekeeping the Imperial Regalia as well as the Bohemian Crown Jewels, holy relics, and other royal treasures.

The last stamp is a smaller one:

It is the Antonin Dvorak Theatre.

The Antonín Dvořák Theatre is an opera house in Ostrava, Czech Republic, which opened in 1907. Since 1919 it has been one of two permanent venues of the National Moravian Silesian Theatre.

The person that sent this card (Adam), has read my blog and knows I like to research my cards and stamps, so he kindly gave me information on the back of the card so I could look up more details. Thank you Adam!

This week we are tying up loose ends and trying to do as little as possible because of the heat.

I cooked some nice things like Annabel's pasta. 

This is a very old family favorite. Mary Berry created it for her daughter Annabel when she went to university. I've had it for about 25 years (if not longer).

I have it in my personal (old) cook book. Here it is:

I think I've waffled on long enough. Let me get some funnies for you to round it all off and I will see you again next Friday, God willing.

Enjoy your weekend,

Keep smiling,

Hugs,

Lisca

You might have seen some of these before. I have a system but it doesn't always work.

 

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 12 July 2022 - T for beers, a folk tale and Mucha

 

Hello lovely ladies,

It's Tuesday again and this week has really flown by. Hubby is feeling a lot better and I have lots to smile about. Things are on the up. We went to Granada city this week for another scan, then there is one last scan (a TAC) on the 15th and then we hope to hear when the operation will be. Probably at the end of the month.

Another smile this week was this unexpected card from my cousin. She had written some encouraging words for us.

The card is a painting by Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) and is entitled The Zodiac. She bought it when she was in the art museum of The Hague.

The stamp is very unusual. I hadn't seen this one:

Here is a better image (without cancellation):

It is the Lady of Stavoren (from a well known folk tale). 

The folk tale is written on the sheet of stamps and my cousin sent me that as well.

Here is a version in English: 

Now a village of just 1,000 inhabitants, Stavoren was once a wealthy port city in the Dutch province of Friesland but began to decline in the late Middle Ages after a sandbank formed outside the harbour, blocking ships from entering and exiting. Several stories have been told over the years to explain the forming of the sandbank, including the tale of the Lady of Stavoren.

The story, of which more than 27 versions are known, involves an exceedingly rich patrician merchant widow, who desired ever greater riches. She sent a captain of her merchant fleet out in search of the greatest treasure in the world. When he returned with wheat, declaring wheat to be "the most precious thing in the world," as it can feed the hungry, the widow, in her overweening pride and anger at his (as she perceived it) foolishness, let the wheat be thrown overboard into the harbour of Stavoren.

When she was cautioned against this wicked behaviour, being reminded of the fickleness of fate and (despite her wealth and power) of the delicateness of her station, in hubris she took a ring from her finger and cast it into the ocean, declaring that she was as likely to fall into poverty as she was of regaining the ring.

Soon afterwards, during a banquet thrown for her fellow Hanseatic merchant princes, she finds the ring inside a large fish served to her. As this event portended, she lost her wealth, living out her remaining years in destitution, begging for scraps of bread. In divine retribution the port had silted, and the wheat that had been cast overboard now grew in the resulting sandbank that closed the harbour and ruined the city.

A cautionary moral tale. I vaguely remember it from my childhood.

Stavoren is a small town in Friesland (In the north of the Netherlands).

The town of Stavoren has a statue of the widow:

Here is another picture of Stavoren (harbour and statue):

Stavoren is also known for the train derailment of 2010:

Read about it here if you are interested.

We are keeping a low profile these days, waiting for hubby's operation. Today (Monday) we had a telephone consultation booked with the specialist in Granada, but her secretary phoned this morning saying there was no point as she still doesn't have all the results of the various tests. The appointment has now been moved to the 21st of this month. And as there is a 7 day prep before surgery, we don't expect the operation to be before the 28th. Oh well. We keep waiting. 

The silver lining is that, all being well, we will be able to go to Portugal to see one of our sons, who will be holidaying there around that time. Our daughter-in-law has a Portuguese daddy and they have a large family villa on the south coast (Algarve). So that will be out little holiday. Let's hope hubby is well enough to drive all that way. (It's 650 km and will take at least six and a half hours if we drive non-stop, which we don't of course).

We haven't been anywhere, except last weekend to the lake for a baptism (see last Friday's blog). But i did have my photo taken:

To join Elizabeth and Bleubeard's T-Party, I need a drink. We haven't been out this week, so my drink this Tuesday is something I drink at home:

This is German Red of the Steam Brew brand that we buy at the Lidl supermarket. I like it very much. 

Now I know that Elizabeth likes stout. Let me see if I have some in the fridge. (I like stout too).

Yes, there is a can on the top shelf. By the way, you can tell I was a nurse. The habit of always turning the labels towards me is hard to shake.

Here is the stout for Elizabeth. Cheers!

But steady on Elizabeth, this stout is imperial, and so has a higher alcohol content. (In this case 7,5%).

I also spotted an IPA (Indian Pale Ale) in the fridge:

Again, it has this great design (That is why I bought it in the first place). I don't drink a lot of lager or pils, but I have tried this beer and I quite like this one. 

How is IPA different from beer?

IPAs (or Indian Pale Ale) are known for having a higher ABV than most other beer styles. The average ABV or IPA alcohol content is 6%. Although, some sub-styles may be lower (like Session IPAs) and some may be higher (such as Imperial IPAs).

The cans are bigger than usual and the alcohol content is higher, so this beer is strictly for home consumption.

Amongst the T ladies, Jo is the beer connaisseur. I'm sure she will have something to say. Sorry Jo, I wish I could come with you to some of those lovely small breweries that you go to that make unusual beers. But we only have access to supermarket beer here.

That is it from me today. I will bring out a toast to all of your health. Salud!

Happy T-Day,

Hugs,

Lisca