In which is illustrated the effect of reading José Saramago on my prose style

This day is rushing past so it seems unlikely I'm going to actually write something about anything as I thought, yesterday, I might. No, I'm going to post the above photo taken during yesterday's bicycle ride and then copy out this bit about the perfection that is toast from The History of the Siege of Lisbon that I've just read which strikes me as being something of a plate of shrimp since Scott and I have been in the market for a new toaster; in fact, it was, to some extent, the pursuit of a toaster that took us out yesterday. It was on the return trip that I used the excuse of snapping a photo of Rainier looking quite fine in the distance over the industrial Duwamish River to catch my breath after the stealth ascent that is the low bridge. (Spoiler: we were unsuccessful, as it turns out that there are very few sellers of toasters still in business in downtown Seattle and, additionally, the Lush store at Westlake Center has closed, alas.)

Costa departed, happy to have made such a good start to the day, and Raimundo Silva goes into the kitchen to prepare some coffee with milk and buttered toast. Toasted bread for this man of norms and principles is almost a vice and truly a manifestation of uncontrollable greed, wherein enter multiple sensations, both of vision and touch, as well as of smell and taste, beginning with that gleaming chrome-plated toaster, then the knife cutting slices of bread, the aroma of toasted bread, the butter melting, and finally the mouth-watering taste, so difficult to describe, in one's mouth, on one's palate, tongue and teeth, to which the ineffable dark pellicle sticks, browned yet soft, and once more that aroma, now deep down, the person who invented such a delicacy deserves to be in heaven.
--from p. 46 of José Saramago's novel, The History of the Siege of Lisbon as translated by Giovanni Pontiero

And I'll throw in this link to the definition of "pellicle" since it's not a word I knew and Mr Saramago had something to say about readers who didn't bother to look up words they don't know a few pages earlier.

So, Mr Proof-reader, show us where you found this blunder, this error that escapes us, true, we don't have your vast experience, we sometimes look without seeing, but we can read, we assure you, yes, you're absolutely right, we do not always understand everything, easy to see why, we lack the necessary training, Mr Proof-reader, the necessary training, and besides, we have to admit that we are often too lazy to verify the meaning of a word in the dictionary, with inevitable consequences. --p. 39, ibid.

And then, such being the beauty of living in this modern age, a screen shot of what I see when looking at the definition:

And, just for the record, I note that Bessie and I ended January with just over 200 miles, meaning it would look good for me to reach 2000 cycling miles in 2022 if I were not far too anxious and superstitious and aware of just how lazy I truly am to risk saying such a thing. Not in public. Not without preconditions.