oh, this was from last weekend, the poached pears with caramelised wine sauce.. delish!!


So the weekend started with dinner at the Hog's Breath cafe with Damien.  Much was discussed but primarily our honeymoon and his love life :)

Didn't do a whole lot yesterday, and then went out to dinner at Scott and Kerry's where much roast vegetation and a bit of chicken was enjoyed.

Today we went out to Gunning for lunch to celebrate Annie's birthday. 

So quite a pleasant weekend.  Even did a bit of tidying, and worked on our honeymoon photos a bit. 

Do I have to go back to work now?

• big kids entertained with fireworks
• shopping done
• walked around the neighbourhood
• cooked a scrumptious roast chicken
• Stu cooked a fantastic curry, with even better pears in a white wine/sugar sauce for dessert
• washed the sheets as a result of an early morning very messy nose bleed
• macquarium cleaned out and re-filled (with white gravel; note to self: a 4cm thick layer of polystyrene needs a lot of weighing down)
• watched Million Dollar Baby
• had subsequent weird dreams about having to accommodate dead-beat people in our house and not being able to stand it
• watched some of "The Triumph of the Nerds" and rather enjoyed it (even if it is twelve years old now)
• taught Stu to play Carcassonne with the game we got as a wedding present
• narrowed down a short-list of photos from the honeymoon to send to people with thankyou notes
• more flight photos located on Google Earth
• upgraded Java and installed windows updates
  

My little weather pixie has been offline since the weekend.  On Monday I found out about a fire/explosion in a big data centre in Texas.  Checked with all nettools, and sure enough, the weather pixie site is hosted there.  So have been following the progress ever since.

All I have to say is ... ooops!!
(and hey, it could happen to anyone.. so all sympathies to them!)

Consolidated some of our fish tanks on the weekend.  We're down to ten, from fourteen (!)

We put a killi akura in with some guppies, but the little bastard terrorised my poor guppies, so now all the guppies are together in one tank and he has his own tank :(

And my beautiful crowntail betta finally died :(:(  Poor little dude.  I'd had him eighteen months, which is ok for bettas (and don't know how old he was when I got him).

Went and saw Little Squishy on the weekend.  Nearly four weeks old.

Did the Earth Hour thing again last night.  Well sort of.  Forgot til about 8:20, oops :)

Just turned off lights, leaving on the computers to see by. Also turned off all the fish tank stuff for an hour, which had the effect of putting the timers back an hour a week early, so at least I won't have to reset those next weekend!

So is it true that candles produce more greenhouse gases than low-energy light bulbs?  That'd be funny in a tragic sort of a way ..!  (we didn't use any candles)

It's been in my head for a long time that "numbers" in food are bad.  After talking with Ali on Saturday, reading recent articles like "Don't eat anything that doesn't rot", and constant barrages from FlyLady/Leanne about sticking to the outsides of supermarkets, we're now trying very hard to avoid food with numbers in the ingredients.

So in our entire shopping trip yesterday, only three things had numbers in them - a box of breakfast cereal, some hummous and some soy ice cream.  One is obviously a luxury, one borderline, and one which will take a bit more research to find preservative-free alternatives.  Admittedly we didn't look too closely at the cereal options.

From all of that, as well as some things out of the pantry, after two nights of cooking we have a weeks worth of leftovers to tide us over til at least the weekend, probably longer.

Really must figure out how to blog from my Blackberry...

So Friday we tidied house and did fishy-type things before heading for the Big Smoke. 

Stopped in Goulburn for lunch, and got an alternative view of the Big Merino.  And strangely enough this was the only photo I took all weekend!  How unlike me! :)


Dropped in on D&Y, and even remembered to take my toaster oven, which me little brother fixed for me... he rocks!  Had afternoon tea there before heading to my parents'.  Dropped off my Lego cake-topper and picked up pinking shears and had a very Stu-unfriendly dinner which he suffered over for the next day or so :(

Then headed up to J&G's where much wii-ing was to be had.

Needed to point out that Sydney roads are horrendously bad.  The physical state of them that is.  The car rattled and bumped like you wouldn't believe. Had forgotten how awful some Sydney roads are.

Saturday we went on a shopping mission to Bondi Junction.  Stu got the hiking shoes he was after.  I tried on some too, but they didn't have as good arch support as my runners, so didn't get any.  We even ran into John, which was pretty cool.. as I thought it might have been nice to have lunch with him but it was all too hard by the time I thought of it.  Oh well.

In the evening Ralph and Ali and Luc and Liz came over with various kidlets and George did a massive roast in three ovens!  We played Emporer-Scum as that was the easiest game that scaled well to eight people.  I went from middle to third to fifth to Scum, then back to third.  Stu went out as Emporer :)

After the others left, we played more wii, and had wii-shoulder the next day to prove it :)

On Sunday I went to church with J&G while Stu recovered.  Then a quiet afternoon.  Stu went and visited Tim and Dave and Dave gave us a jackstone!  Which are devilish little things to make.  I went with J&G to A&M's where much wine was drunk and food eaten. 

And then sadly it was time to come home.  I lost it going past the airport.  I *miss* Sydney, and Sunday night dinners, and my friends and living next to the airport.  *sigh*  Managed to stay awake til Sutton Forest, but after that I collapsed and didn't regain consciousness till our street.

Today was spent recovering and tidying and shopping and honeymoon planning.

And have to go back to work tomorrow :(

Borrowed Annie's exercise bike on the weekend.  At an average of 15km/h and only about 150 calories burnt, I don't expect rapid or huge weight loss... but a couple of kilos in the next six weeks might be nice...

Since I moved to Canberra, I've noticed that it's been wetter than usual.  It basically never rains in Canberra, but the past few months it's rained quite a bit.  I was talking to my boss about it one day, and he said oh see for me this is normal - when he moved to Canberra twenty years ago it was like this too.  I remembered back twenty years.  The 1988-1989 La Niña.  Where for the first six months of the year it rained on at least one weekend day just about every weekend.  (I remember because I kept a weather diary that year, and probably still have the diary somewhere).  So I realised it was probably another La Niña year this year.  Wikipedia confirms this. 

So the year we decide to get married, it's more than likely that it'll rain on our wedding day....