Reading, rea-ding, Gosford Park and other things

Yesterday's mammogram went okay, no technical hitches, pinchier than usual, and the reports as far as I can follow them seem okay. 

In the course of their technical updating, the radiology people have gone so transparent that, instead of the usual easy to read paper letter saying dear patient you're fine, the new online portal, they're all portal mad in the medic world, directs me to open the electronic letter. 

This is the letter that also goes to my doctor, full of technical terms and bet-hedging, and is pretty much above my pay grade. I did see the word benign here and there, so I think all's well. And the voicemail from the radiology folks , a high-speed gabble about next year, may also be good news. My own doctor's nurse will call and tell me intelligibly, I expect. Then there will be a letter in the mail.

While I was waiting in my little gown, mercifully nearer my size than last time, when I was given one which I had to hold up on my shoulders, made for a much bigger person, I read this.

By the end of it, I felt like an irritable teenager told to have a good day - "don't tell me what to do! You're not the boss of me!"

The afternoon at the movies was great. GP was as good as ever, and I saw more things in it than before.

I'd forgotten how old it was, too. Great antidote to disturbed nights and body squashing. 

The blogistas who predicted good sleep were so right. Hours and hours, lovely. I woke at six, opened the window to soft rain and birds carolling away. Life's definitely good.

And here's a reading line of thought. Came up earlier today, Josie George, brilliant writer, saying it would be great for her if she could get it everywhere, to assist with her visual reading issues. 

Quite a few people joined in a discussion about the relative usefulness of bolding syllables as a reading assist. To me, a lifelong fast and comprehending reader, the right hand passage was like having someone shouting at me and interrupting my thinking.

But to a lot of people with reading difficulties, it was great, and they were eager to find out where to get it and how to apply it.

Then someone else offered this

This was a terrible idea for folks with synaesthesia, because color carries all kinds of information different from the words, but again other people found it helpful to delineate phrases rather than individual words.

And there were explainers about why the bolding and coloring are obstacles to fast readers

A saccade is a group of simultaneously perceived letters or symbols, and it just means those readers grasp large pieces of text all at once, not bit by bit. 

Your humble blog writer learned to meaningfully grasp entire paragraphs in one pass,  in her final Uni year, when a working knowledge of over three hundred textbooks in both English and French was required to have a hope in the final exams, on which the entire degree depended. 

Anyway, back to now. And here's a new one on me. 

I read this easily at close to normal speed. Turns out that as long as you have first and last letters of the word, the order of letters inside the word isn't as important as you might think. Which I guess is why typos don't  destroy meaning, though they annoy people no end, particularly neat people.

What do you think? This is supposed to be about comprehension rather than speed, though the assist for one reader may completely trip up another.

It's not meant to be taken, in here, anyway, too seriously. Judgment free blogzone, we are. But I'd like to know your experience of these approaches all the same.

Happy day everyone. The swallows arrived back this week, swooping and spiralling and helping us with the mosquito population, lovely little friends. Swallows, not mozzies.

The new seedlings are big enough to see from the second floor  bedroom window now. It's all just very good. And I'm going to learn a new knitting stitch today.

Photo by AC

Saturday, so pizza

I decline to worry today about any damn thing. Biden's taking the evening off, and I'm taking the whole day. 

Not knowing exactly what to have for lunch today, I thought, ah, I have mushrooms and sausage, in the freezer,  that suggests pizza.  So I made a batch of that yogurt dough I made once before, and set to work.  Skinned and chunked the sausages,  lovely hot chicken ones, mushrooms I'd sliced before I froze them, red onions and garlic cooked till nicely almost brown, tomato ketchup and paste mixed as a diy tomato topping, parmesan cheese grated ready.
 

 Here's the dough, kneaded, enought for two pizzas, resting under plastic while I get on with the toppings

Here's the first pizza dough ready to transfer to the sizzling hot castiron pan. I used all three of them for this adventure, and notice my bench scraper in the background. I got two of them, they came in a set, very cheap, from a catalog, and I have had amazing use out of them.  I feel like a carpenter when I use them, too.

Mushrooms sauteing in butter and olive oil, added Thai basil and a sprinkling of flour to make a sauce, sausage browning in the background, onions and garlic in waiting.

First side cooked, then turned over, toppings added, cover clapped on to let it cook about five minutes till everything's done. The second pizza I did likewise, to the point where the toppings are on, the second side still needs to cook, so it will be a fresh pizza when it comes out of the freezer, better than a warmed up one. I even remembered to leave a note to self reminding me what I'd done.

And a great lunch, after which I lay about like a python for a while.

Then tonight's viewing pleasure Gosford Park, which I've seen at least twice, but there are always more things to notice, and the production is beyond brilliant.

Not to mention that the cast is A-list start to finish. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Colin Firth had a walk-on part as an underfootman in this context..and Jennifer Ehle was understudying the housekeeper's assistant.

So there's where we are chez Boud this freezing cold January night.