As reported last week, some of the birds had discovered my discarded ponytail and incorporated it into a nest which I found in the ventilation duct in the toilet. I cleaned it out and threw it over the fence again. Lo and behold, it the ponytail nest had been rebuilt. I think I will just have to close the vent and leave it there now.

Friends Richie and Tara donated their old stereo to the house. It does not really fit into the rustic decor, but has lots of bling-bling lights on it, and a tape deck! I brought down my entire cassette tape collection of something like 200 cassettes that I have not been able to listen to for years. Jeroen also brought down a box of his. What a treasure trove of great music and memories, especially the mixed tapes! Nick Hornby does a great bit about the art of making a mixed tape in "High Fidelity." So, some of the memories these tapes conjured up:

* The Eagles - Desperado: Evert time I hear "Doolin Dalton" I am reminded of Doolin, Ireland where I turned 21 and drank my first pint of Guinness. We listened to this album a lot at Heijerhof organic goat farm, and named one of the cats Doolin.
* REM - Murmur, and Out of Time: I first heard REM at my friend Alexandra's in Chicago on my first trip back to the US from Hungary for a friend's wedding around 1991-2. True to her college promises, she had pesto in the fridge for me when I came to visit. She also recommended Robert James Waller's excellent "Bridges of Madison County" to me, saying that I reminded her of the character Robert Kincaid in the book.

* Woody Guthrie - Dust Bowl Ballads, and Legendary
* Best Funk Album in the World - talking about funk music with Scotty Fairmont, drummer with The Fairmonts, hiking around Csorba Lake in Slovakia with the boys. Is there anywhere you can go in Budapest and hear
* good funk music?
* Fungus - a good Dutch band we used to listen to on the farm
* Pussycat - a Dutch band you would recognise if you heard it. Most famous for their song "Mississippi"

* Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
* Frank Zappa - woken up by roommate Balazs and his friend Csaba, I was dragged out of bed one summer evening to go celebrate the Russians leaving Hungary in 1991(?). Frank Zappa was playing on Dozsa Gyorgy Ut, and they pretended all night that they were my bodyguards and I was a VIP.
* Billy Joel - Glass Houses: the first album I ever bought, and it was on 8-track tape. Something Hungary apparently skipped, but I laughed out loud when I saw it in Men in Black.

* Gipsy Kings - my guitar teacher Alex Mclean at the University of Edinburgh opened for them in 1989, though I do not thing I actually heard them until years later. I remember their music playing on a pink and purple train called the Balti Express from Warsaw to Vilnius, with a woman built like a cube walking down the aisle and rocking in time to the music.
* Kinky Friedman - Kinky is not only a talented singer-songwriter, but also not a bad a crime novel writer. My favorite song is "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore."
* George Michael - when Wham came to Bates College in 1990 they could not sell any tickets and resorted to a raffel to win a trip to Hawaii.

I finished one excellent and one very good book reading out in the garden.

Mark Helprin's "Pacific and Other Stories" was a marvel. I had already read excellent novels; "A Winter's Tale," "Refiners Fire," "A Soldier of the Great War," and "Notes from an Antproof Case." My father sent me this book of his short stories, his first book in ten years. I loved Stephen R.

Donaldson's Thomas Covenant fantasy tales as a kid, so picked up this book of his short stories, "Daughter of Regals and Other Stories" and was not disappointed.

The wine of the weekend included an organic St. Laurent 2008 from Burgenland which is one of my new favorite grapes, along with my other new favorite varietal Nero D'Avola, of which we tried a Settesoli 2008 from Sicilia - but I found this bottle lacking.

Jeroen's mom severly cut back the cherry tree last year and was afraid she had killed it, but the picture says it all.

Source: Treehugger's Positive Blog