U.S.: It's been a beautiful day!

Today was a grand and beautiful day. Clear blue sky. Sweetly wafting breezes. Temperatures with a suggestion of coolness, or should I say coolth? I've always wanted to say 'coolth,' as opposed to 'warmth.' Only thing is, 'coolth' sounds like I have a serious lisp, even though it is a word. At least, I think it is.

Anyway, I got a new page design done today. Still the same site that I'm doing various looks for. This one I really like. CSS drives it all, and there's a tad of HTML. I've been tempted to use some Flash; you know how it goes, get some glitz, some movement, some action. But updating a Flash page is more time consuming than doing the same for one with CSS and stuff. Besides, I don't know if I want the hassle of trying to get Flash working with PHP and MySQL.

Here's what I did with it. Went into Photoshop and reworked the logo added a gradient layer which I changed with a clouds filter. That effectively got rid of the gradient altogether, but who cares. Organized all the layers so that only the primary words of the logo rest atop the filtered layer. What I wanted to do was create an otherworldly heavenly touch, and the cloud filtered layer, when placed over all the others but the huge text logo, does that. Whooo-hooo!

Anyway, enough of that geeky stuff. To get back to the day, I went biking alongside the river -- more like a very wide canal -- and through the park. There are lots of ducks and a couple of cranes in the park. As I swept by them, I couldn't help thinking, "meat on the wing." Yeah, I'm a proud, card-carrying member of PETA. People Eating Tasty Animals. Happily for the ducks, they're still rather small; so I wasn't all that much tempted to run them down to catch one. Imagine the excitement of doing that in the park. I wonder if I'd have got a ticket?

There's nothing like a good, hot curried duck. Cut up the duck, season it with a touch of cilantro -- it smells and tastes just like shaddeau benne, so it must belong to that family; add garamasala, cayenne, onions, black pepper, pressed garlic, and curry. Let all of that soak in for a while. Then cook the duck in a cast-iron pot.

You've got to heat the oil first, then add a clove or two of garlic to flavor the oil. Make a curry paste from a tablespoon of curry with a touch of water, and when the garlic is thoroughly burnt, add the curry paste, then add the seasoned duck. Stir it around in the mix, cover it for a bit, then add some water.

Man, I wish I'd grabbed one of those ducks!