Feels like a really long day .. although I didn't actually *do* anything...!
Did a little bit of work in the morning before an all-official-like morning tea with the big boss. Ate far too much yummy food there. Because then we had a farewell lunch, which of course I wasn't hungry for.. oops! Had a couple of beers and a salad I couldn't actually get through - tragic really. So that went for ages, then we went to JB Hi-Fi and Windy bought Abba Singstar. I was going to go home at that point, but Stu wasn't up for coming to get me, so decided we should go play Windy's new Singstar :) So we did :) Did pretty much the entire Abba disc, except for a couple of the ones that have parts - which are evil! Also did some of his other ones. We ended up singing for about two and a half hours - oops!
Then had some dinner and a few beers while singing along with The Sound of Music ;)
At least, most of it.. we decided to call it a night after the wedding, as we were getting tired and the movie still had like an hour to go. They should *totally* do a Sound of Music Singstar ;)
So all up quite a fun day :)
Last night a couple of Chris' and families and Neil and I went over to Windy's for a fondue night. It was a lot of fun but I ate and drank entirely too much! Mainly ate too much - was still feeling bloated at 4am .. whoops :)
After we were completely stuffed silly a few of us played Singstar, which was also a lot of fun, but it meant rather a late night. Stu bailed and went to bed, so had to get a lift home - thanks Chris!
Beginnings of the cheese fondues
Starting to melt
Windy stirring the fondue - nice strings on the swiss one!
Let the dipping begin! The Leicester didn't really go stringy unfortunately
Chocolate fondue!! So much yummy food, it was evil!
Windy has a Trekkie uniform!!
Have got pretty much what will be my final cut of "highlight" photos, although I may still add a few more in. Almost fifteen hundred photos - eep! Having a slide night on Saturday, which is always a good way to force you to do these things :) Still need to pull out food, hotel, Engrish and man hole cover photos for separate "albums".
Went to the markets today and picked up a bunch of fresh food.
Then proceeded to roast a bunch of it.
Including a nice piece of pork. Which had a nice skin on it. Which turned into one of the best pieces of crackling I've ever done! The whole thing was crunchy! Soooo good!
Also did a completely evil potato bake, and Stu cooked a frittata (sp?) (but that was ready a bit too late and I'd already eaten too much by that point so didn't actually have any of it tonight), as well as some turnips and carrots that he'd grown himself in the garden.
That and some red wine and it was an awesome dinner :)
Had to go shopping tonight. Practically no food in the house. Not even detergent for the dishwasher (disaster! ;) ).
Pretty average day otherwise. Made something work that now frees me up to do some other things I've been putting off while make aformentioned thing work.
Perl/captchas still broken. If I knew what to look for I'd be trying to figure out how to use the previous version of perl that was installed. Or make it use different libraries. Or something like that. But since I don't know exactly what's wrong or how perl is setup (and no access to log files) it makes it a bit trickier...
On the weekend we thought we'd give Coles shop at home a go.
We weren't really sure what we were doing, so just thought we'd stock up on some of our staples and non-perishable stuff.
Good points:
- can shop at own pace, from home, no crowds, online - the way we like to deal with people (or not ;) )
- pricing shows price per unit on different products, and you can sort by that too. This is actually really cool and saves having to calculate it in the shop
Bad points:
- you can't read product labels. All you get is a picture. So you can't see the ingredients, which means we have to stick with what we know
- too many plastic bags! (ten for this shop - cause can't use green bags obviously) Far too many bags than we'd ever get through.
- fresh stuff came cold but don't know how much I'd trust things like ice cream
- we still need to do fruit and veg shopping every week (but can go to the markets for that)
- can't just browse and see what's available easily
So we may do it from time to time, but we'll need to build up a repertoire of "safe" food, and better plan the shops so don't forget things and have to go to the supermarket anyway!
So me little brother was in town tonight so him and Shane and Chris and us decided to meet at Central Cafe.
Except it was closed!?!?!?
Apparently for renovations but seriously, WTF???!!?
So we wandered up the road to the Golden Ocean Chinese Restaurant. Where even after we'd all turned up, it was still a good half an hour before we got *any* service. It was so epic fail it wasn't funny. The food was average, but definitely won't ever be going back!
(and the national emblem, but that's food too ;) )
This is for Chay.. this was dinner I cooked last night. Bunged some pasta in to boil. Cut up some big portabella mushrooms and fried them in butter. Tossed a punnet of mini roma tomatoes (cut in two and mashed a little in the pot) into a saucepan along with a big dollop of garlic and some store-bought pasta sauce. Mix, top with cheese, heat up some garlic bread if desired..
Went for a walk this arvo. Lovely thing about Canberra is having kangaroos on your doorstep..
Scott and Kerry and Jake came over tonight. They brought a mini roast and even their own oven, which looked pretty funky, and was very bright..
Apart from that didn't do too much today aside from house work, hurrah!
This post may be classified as 'TMI', read at own risk ;)
So last night around 2:15am, I woke up with diarrhoea-like bowel cramps. Which was a little odd, because I would normally get those in the morning after a night of drinking and only when I got vertical. But I'd eaten relatively well yesterday, even got plenty of greenery. So went off to the loo. And then my eyes started itching. And then my lips got tingly. And my nose blocked up. It was similar to the feeling I get in my face after I throw up. It was pretty intense. Stu said it sounded like a histamine reaction. But I have no idea what from. I don't have any food allergies that I know about. And this was six hours after eating. Is this normal? Anyone else had anything like this..?
Well we had plans. We were going to do food shopping. We were going to go to the book fair. We were going to go out to dinner.
In the end we only went out to dinner. The rest of the day I spent fighting with Google Maps to get our itinerary finalised and maps organised for printing. Also had a look at the online JR trip finder thingie and got a whole stack of possible train trips organised. Only to find that JR changed their fares and timetables in March, but the utility said it had data from December. Doh! So the trains I've looked up might not be right.
Dinner was nice. We met up with Helen and Ian at the Asian Cafe in town. The initial service was a little slow, but once they took our order the food came very fast. And it was really really good too. We got five things and they were all excellent. But then tried to find somewhere to buy ice cream for dessert. Walked all around Civic but nothing was open (although we probably could have gotten something at Cafe Essen or My Cafe).
And so ends another weekend. A week of frantic work ahead of me ....
