Wednesday, September 06, 2006

It's the little things that make life worth living

Two things made me happy today:

1. I saw a tortoise in the Vondelpark on my way to work. I'm used to seeing wildlife in the form of ducks, dogs, inept rollerbladers, and the occasional parrot, but tortoises? Not so much. This one was quite small, with a dark green shell, and had clearly made it across the (luckily quieter) bike path with some effort, and was heaving him/herself gratefully on to the verge, hoping for a quieter life there.

2. I managed to work a reference to Norwich -- a fine city -- into a piece of research that I was editing, thus promoting this wonderful place to a much wider audience. Hurrah for Norfolk County Council's free Wi-Fi initiative -- even if it didn't seem to cover my hairdresser's salon.

As you can see, it doesn't take much to make me happy.

2 comments:

Beth said...

What's the difference between a turtle and a tortoise, by the way? Is there one or is it purely semantic?

And while I'm at it...
A porpoise and a dolphin?
A serpent and a snake?

Norfolk Dumpling said...

Doesn't a turtle spend part of it's time in the water? A tortoise is land-based. And I thought porpoise was the class of animal that a dolphin belonged to -- there are other types of porpoise, right? But I don't know about serpents and snakes, other than that I don't like 'em.