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Weekend without photos?

Did a few things this weekend, but nothing really photo-worthy (except some scanning - see below).

Friday night was Jesus Christ Superstar at the Q. I'd never actually seen this musical before, and my only exposure to it was the John Farnham/Kate Ceberano/Jon Stevens version of 1992 where several singles made it to the charts. I have to say I wasn't too convinced by the interpretation of the story. OK so it was told by Judas' point of view, but I didn't really like the portrayal of Jesus. And if you didn't know the story I reckon you'd be struggling to follow a lot of it. The performance itself was decent enough (for an amateur production - always difficult to decipher lyrics when sung by a chorus unless the singing timing is spot-on) - the girl who played Mary was pretty awesome. But yeah, not the greatest of musicals. Give me Joseph any day ;)

Saturday was breakfast, shopping, cleaning the house and cooking (a reasonably decent veal scallopini which I'll blog about separately one day when I've refined the recipe). DaveO came over after dinner for Buzz, Mario Kart, Singstar and, when his voice gave out, Sports Resort.

Sunday was just pottering around the house, jigsawing, scanning photos, reading news feeds and sorting out thousands of photos. Only 2136 steps so far today - a decent chunk of those from bopping while doing the jigsaw. Also more cooking - a massaman curry, that didn't didn't turn out as well as the last one I did, not sure why. Maybe too much steak/potato/stock and not enough paste.

And suddenly it's the end of the weekend .. *sigh*.

Here's some of the photos I scanned today.

Me and Guy's cat Tutu at Lake Macquarie, March 1997

My first ever "CIA Pic" - some of the hardware supporting CIA in early 1997

Marc Betbeder at 10 hours old - the youngest baby I'd ever seen at that stage. Only surpassed by Violet at 3 hours last year.

The Broadway shopping centre being constructed, as seen from the offices of CIA in 1997. I actually have this photo printed out and stuck to my desk, all these years later!

My bedroom in 1997, showing my new computer desk, which I'm still using at this very moment!

A "snow" trip we did in 1997. Pete's family had a time share in Perisher that we got to go stay at with a group of friends. No lifts were running but we did have some fun tobogganing, and I even found some money under the chairlifts :)

Hypochondria?

Picture the situation:

Small sealed training room. Ten people crowded in. The person sitting next to you is coughing and spluttering and *breathing* all over the place.

Yeah pretty pissed off at the moment. I feel like my throat is a bit sore but don't know if I'm just imagining it. All I know is that if I *do* get sick, it'll be just in time for the weekend.

People suck.

Coast Weekend, June

Went down to the coast for the long weekend.

Sights on the way down..

Climbed that mountain (Majura) the other week

Wind turbines

Cute farm house

Braidwood Poplars

Finally got a photo of this mansion in Lilli Pilli. Noticed it for sale the next day, although couldn't find anything online for it.

Other strenuous activities included..

Eating pizza (a large Big Mama)

and a medium margherita with feta. Leftovers were consumed over the next two days.

Eating chocolates (and drinking beer)

Watching the surf

Walking the Benny

Watching the birdies

Doing a jigsaw

Drinking beer

Going in the spa. Sleeping. Crosswords, kenkens and sudokus. Cooking bacon and eggs. Eating lots of junk food.

And watching the weather change

As usual, a lovely weekend.

Truncated Icosahedra

Last week (or over the weekend?) I made an icosahedron to take to work to demonstrate how my buckyballs are made. Of course I also needed a truncated icosahedron. Took a couple of nights to make it, and finished it tonight. Made from one sheet of A4 paper, cut, folded and glued.

And here it is with the larger one I made years and years ago. It's very delicate so wouldn't survive going to work.

I think our printer needs more toner. Time to buy a new printer? hrmmm

Fifteen minute days

So spent the better part of the weekend doing fifteen minute chunks of various activities.

Mainly: the jigsaw, reading news feeds and tidying.

All you do is set a timer for fifteen minutes, go do the activity, then when it goes off, reset it and go do another one of the activities. Actually achieved quite a lot in the end. Although from the completion state of the jigsaw, the tidiness of the house and the number of unread news items I still have, you'd never know. hrmmm.

So it seems the rapture didn't happen yesterday. Which is hardly surprising, given the Bible is quite clear that noone will be able to predict an actual date. It'll come like a "thief in the night" so best be prepared anyway. Just sayin' :)

You're a Star!!

Ok that's what I said to the sweetie when I handed him this...

Isn't it cute!! :) I suppose the picture doesn't really give you an idea of scale, but it's pretty little, because I made it out of a single piece of paper cut from one A4 sheet of paper. I haven't had a stellated dodecahedron in years. I used to have one hanging in my window at Como. And one painted silver that was totally spectacular. Those ones I had to draw the nets for myself! Gah! Give me the cheat's method of the internet any day ;) If it didn't take like an hour to make them and be so delicate I'd make them as Christmas decorations :) I made it from the net on the first page of this PDF, but you could make a little bigger using the split page version.

The other thing I made on the weekend was my first sonobe model - a simple sonobe cube. I followed this pattern for putting the cube together, although this pattern to fold the sonobe units. There seems to be a couple of different ways to fold them.. hrmm.

Day today was ok. Sorted tax nonsense. Really need to get an accountant methinks. Anyone recommend any good ones in Canberra?

Oh, and nearly forgot .. AMAZING RACE AUSTRALIA!!!!!! SQUEEE :)

Not much else

Other than previously mentioned jigsaws and cooking, didn't do a whole lot extra this weekend (except for breakfast at Black Pepper and shopping yesterday). Put away most of my Toy Story Lego until I ran out baggies. And tetrised all the boxes into two Acer boxes. So a nice quiet weekend at home. Didn't do much walking though, on account of being sick and all.

Been looking at more origami .. there's *soo* much I want to make :)

And looking at recipes too.. wanting to try more things..

Violet Crumble Cheesecake Slice

I happened across this recipe for Violet Crumble Cheesecake Slice during the week and was inspired to make it this weekend.

I decided to make a traditional cheesecake base rather than using the waffles. And I probably added a bit too much "Violet Crumble" on top (I couldn't actually find any real Violet Crumble - I haven't seen the bags of it in forever. I ended up using a brand I'd never heard of, as Crunchie just isn't the same. It was ok, better than Crunchie, but not as good as "real" Violet Crumble).

It turned out well enough, could maybe have been a little firmer. But I did hack the original recipe a bit - I used 500g cream cheese because that was the sized tubs it comes in. Maybe should have used a bit more gelatine?

Unfortunately I won't be able to take this one to work for morning teas. Will just have to work our way through it at home during the week :)

Violet Crumble Cheesecake Slice

Ingredients

Method

Biscuit base:

250g pack Arnotts Nice biscuits, crushed

125g butter, melted

Crush a whole pack of Arnotts Nice biscuits to breadcrumb size

Melt 125g butter

Mix butter into biscuit crumbs

Spread mix onto a lined large baking tray

Refrigerate to set

Filling:

2x 250g packs cream cheese, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla essence

½ cup caster sugar

300mL thickened cream

3tsp gelatine powder

300g Violet Crumble, roughly crushed

Sprinkle the gelatine over 1/4 cup (60ml) of water in a heatproof bowl. Place in a saucepan over simmering water and stir until the gelatine has dissolved. Set aside to cool slightly.

Use an electric beater to beat the cream cheese, vanilla essence and sugar until smooth.

Use clean electric beaters to beat the cream in a small bowl until soft peaks form. Fold the cream into the cream cheese mixture with the gelatine and half the Violet Crumble.

Spoon the cheese mixture into the pan and smooth the surface. Refrigerate for 2 hours or until set. Scatter with the remaining Violet Crumble to serve.

Options and Notes

Adapted from http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/13453/violet%20crumble%20cheesecake%20slice

and http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/23428/kims+cheesecake

Fresh Ingredients Shopping List

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Ingredients in stock

Butter

2x 250g tubs cream cheese

300mL thickened cream

250g Nice Biscuits

Violet crumble

Caster sugar

Vanilla essence

Gelatine powder

Anzac Biscuits

I should have made these on Anzac Day, but didn't actually think of it. Then Lisa posted a pic of hers from last year. So last weekend I had a go at making some.

They were awesome!! Most of them didn't last the weekend. I did hide a few, which I took to work to eat as morning teas all week.

Cause you're hot and you're cold

Quite a pleasant weekend.

Yesterday was just pottering around the house. Didn't do much in the way of housework though. Don't actually know what I really did all day .. hrmmm...

Today was a sleep-in, then out for breakfast/lunch at Black Pepper, then our shopping, and suddenly it's 3pm? Put on dinner for tonight and read news feeds and didn't do much else.

New Masterchef tonight. And kicking myself that I didn't go watch all the rest of the Junior Masterchef episodes that I didn't see - because now the only episodes online are from the two main series and the celebrity one, but not the kids :(

I've been working on my own sort of recipe book (at the moment a series of word documents). Trying to standardise the format and start to actually collect some of the things that we cook to make it easier for menu planning.

And now, just for fun, a few pics from recent weeks...

Some "fairy" bugs flitting around a tree on my walk home. I saw them the first day and thought that would make a good photo. The next day I actually stopped and pulled out my camera. Didn't get any very good pics, this was the best of them.

A cockatoo in flight

A Balloons Aloft balloon - the EU balloon

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