Otanmäki

So I wrote about downsizing last year, mostly with reference (or reverence) to my book collection. I got asked a couple of weeks ago why I stopped reading? What happened was that Google put a dagger into the heart of Goodreads and I have not found a platform yet that I like for posting them. Ghost says that I should create a book review template within their tool, but I am still working on the paywall. Priorities. Here is what is going over to Sunrise Books next week:

Lifeboat Earth / Stanley Schmidt - Great
Get Off The Unicorn / Anne McCaffrey - Good
Star Winds / Barrington Bailey - OK
Kilo Class / Patrick Robinson - Excellent
Nimitz Class / Patrick Robinson - Excellent (launched his career)
HSM Unseen / Patrick Robinson - Great
Ensign Flandry / Poul Anderson - Good
Slant / Greg Bear - OK
The Door Into Summer / Robert Heinlein - Very dated
Wanderer / Sterling Hayden - Yes, that Sterling Hayden
The Starmen Of Llyrdis / Leigh Bracket - OK
The Mutiny On Board HSM Bounty - William Bligh - Yes, that William Bligh
Corsair - Dudley Pope - Good
Star Bridge / Jack Williamson - Good
Admiral / Dudley Pope - Great
The Deep Range / Arthur C. Clarke - Good
Priam's Lens / Jack Chalker - Good
The Dream Millenium / James White - Great
Hospital Station / James White - Good
Wing Leader / J. Johnson - An actual account of the Battle of Britain - Good
Man Plus / Frederik Pohl - Great (this became that movie The Titan)
Farnham's Freehold - Robert Heinlein - Excellent (the original survivalist)
Ambush At Osirak / Herbert Crowder - Great
Moving Mars / Greg Bear - Excellent
Wave Rider / Hilbert Schenck - Great (but change your name buddy)
Starfire / Paul Preuss - Great
Quarterdeck / Julian Stockwin - Good but not quite Alexander Kent
The Admiral's Daughter / Julian Stockwin - Same old, same old
This Immortal / Roger Zelazny - Won the Hugo, I'm not sure why. It's OK.
Barracuda / Michael DiMercurio - Great
China Sea / David Poyer - Great
The Foundation Books / Isaac Asimov - Nine books in total, results may vary
Earth Ship & Starsong / Ethan Shedley - Good
The Eagle Has Landed / Jack Higgins - Great (reviewed this a few months ago)
The Ringworld Engineers / Larry Niven - Beat that dead horse Lawrence!
All My Sins Remembered / Joe Haldeman - Good
Farthest Star / Frederik Pohl - Great
Attack Of The Seawolf / Michael DiMercurio - Good
Hatteras Blue / DC Poyer - Great
Forever Man / Gordon Dickson - Good but a real stretch on the science
Cachalot / Alan Dean Foster - It should have won the Hugo but The Fountains Of Paradise came out in 1980 and Clarke, quite deservedly, snatched it away.
A World Out Of Time / Larry Niven - Great
Venus / Ben Bova - Good
The Complete Venus Equilateral / George O. Smith - Excellent stuff!
Beyond This Horizon / Robert Heinlein - Dated but good
Ambulance Ship / James White - Great
The Survival Game / Colin Kapp - Excellent, I wish this guy had written more!

So, that's it. It looks like this batch started July 17, 2025. Fifty-five books in fifteen months or about one every eight days. You would think with the downtime I had this spring, my average would have been higher but when I get horizontal, book in hand, surrounded by snuggling little dogs, I sometimes close my eyes (for just a moment) to rest them. These days when I tell SWMBO I am going to go and read for an hour, she just rolls her pretty little hazel eyes at me. I live in a paradise.

We Are Watching

I'm not sure why a lot of shows these days can only generate one or two seasons of good episode ideas before they fall into an all to familiar pattern. Whether they fire all the big money writers and directors 0r the existing ones just run out of new ideas, it's a mystery. The beginning of the end is usually when they start with flashbacks to previous seasons or long musical montages with someone walking down a beach or picking their nose. It even happened to West Wing in the final season. God! So, this week, I am sorry to report:
Unforgettable on Netflix (Season Two) - They kept Jane Curtin, who I like. All the rest of the supporting cast was dropped for a flashier New York based homicide team. They also put Carrie Wells in a short skirt most of the time. Writing went straight to Baywatchland. Don't bother.
Slow Horses on Apple - I gave them a pass for Season Three which spent half the season with two agents (each with a Baretta and nine bullets) hold off a twenty man MI-6 wet team with helicopters, bazookas, automatic weapons, rocket launchers and hand grenades. So I would continue to highly recommend Seasons One, Two, Four and Five. Season Six once again goes off the rails by turning the Horses into the stupidest intelligence agents in history as apparently, the writers, could not think of any other way to drive the plot forward. Also, don't bother.

Our Optimum Week

I spent the whole week (once again) resisting the urge to buy meat. As a result, our food budget line for October came in at $600. I can see air gaps in both freezers and attempt to ignore the packing dates as I defrost stuff. I also immediately hide the packaging as "snoopy" sometimes pokes around to see what I am feeding her? We can't be having that now can we?

I did the gigantic cookie run and we are stocked again. Five boxes makes 90 cookies, repackaged in ziplock bags of six and in the freezer. I was at Angelinos for a veal on a bun and thought about buying some nice looking macadamia nut cookies at the checkout. Six of them for $12. My six packs in the freezer cost $1.67 each. Suck it.

Overall continuity for Zehrs at $150, 30% back in points on Perfume at Shoppers. Flying anywhere? 10% back on Air Canada gift cards. I haven't seen that one before. Here's your list:

Mussel Madness - There used to be a bar up near Steeles & Bathurst that had this contraption right on the bar for steaming mussels. I was all shiny (their favourite colour in Binbrook) and swivelled. You put a pound of mussels, some sauce in the top and turned a valve. Steam came flowing up from the nether regions, then the whole contraption swivelled to dump them on a platter right in front of you. It was served by the pound and you simply had to pick either the red (Marinara) sauce or the white (French) sauce. They are in your list this week and I have re-created the two broths for your steaming pleasure ....
1) Scrub the mussels vigorously with a bristle brush
2) Big flat pan with a lid, make your sauce
Marinara - Quickly saute 6 cloves of garlic and some red pepper flakes in olive oil. Add a cup of white wine and a can of crushed tomatoes. Simmer for 10. Salt and pepper to taste!
French - Quickly saute in olive oil and a big dollop of butter, 1 clove of garlic, a finely chopped small onion or a big shallot and the spring of your choice. Terragon, rosemary, thyme, they all work. Add a cup of white wine and 1/2 cup of chicken stock. Simmer for ten, then add a 1/4 cup of cream. Salt and pepper to taste.
3) Once your sauce is ready, crank the heat and throw in your mussels (the cold mussels will stop your simmer). When it comes back to a boil, drop the heat to simmer, cover ane cook for seven minutes.
4) Strain it reserving about half the sauce to drizzle over everything. Serve it with a big fat slice of buttered Calabrese bread for dipping.

... and finally

There's a little mining village in Finland called Otanmäki. Suddenly, inexplicably, it was overrun by the local wolf population. "What is going on" thinks the 837 residents. Wolves by nature run a hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction when they see humans. It turns out that Google has a new strategy before conducting an environmental assessment for a 13 billion dollar data centre: Clear cut the whole site first! What a concept. You reduce 1300 acres of pristine arboreal forest into a mudflat of rotting stumps and stagnant pools, then tell regulators "think how nice this will look when we clean it all up?" QUEUE THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE. Mmmm?

In the MitchzKitchen tagline, I promise to be a contrarian from time to time. Here goes:

• Have you ever been to Finland? Me neither. Sara Chafak notwithstanding, there is nothing to see in Finland. Nothing. The whole frigging country is buried sixty feet deep in conifer trees. 22 billion of them. They say to make an omelette, you have to break a few eggs. In Finland, if you want to take a shit, you have to cut a tree down to find a place to squat! Why is the world press worried about a few thousand trees in Finland?
• The townsfolk say they don't want an AI data centre? The townsfolk? It's a mining town! The town exists because they found Ilmenite (makes titanium) and Vanadium (makes batteries) there. Otherwise no one would dream of living there. Now we all know that mining companies are renowned for championing environmental causes? Right? Anyone? Here's a picture of present day Otanmäki. Finland:

• While we are on the subject of displacing trees, what have they been doing with the tailings from the mining operations for the last seventy years. Oh look:

Lastly, I have always been a proponent of putting stuff far away from populations centres. That's why CP rail moved their intermodal hub and mainline way north of Hwy #7 in the 60's. Those developers that built entire cities right up against the tracks 30 years later (Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Markham & Brampton). ... screw them. They built Pearson Airport in the frigging middle of nowhere (Malton) at the end of WW2. Now, homeowners in Mississauga complain about runway expansion and flight paths. Screw them too. I think Google made a pretty reasonable decision to build a 13 billion dollar AI data centre where they will supply their own water, their own power and minimize the impact that one of these behemoths can cause for the people who ultimately use their services. NIMBY's who are piling on to make them out to be a bad guy here need to look at a map of Finland. Otanmäki is in the middle of frigging nowhere. It is in no ones backyard!

Mitch & Maddie & Milo