Spent a decent chunk of today (while watching Crackerjack and the Red Bull Air Race in Perth) just dusting down and putting away my Star Destroyer. Dusting is a huge pain, because it's not just dust - it's grime as well. The thing has been completed for two years now, and it's been sitting on my dining room table right next to the kitchen all that time. Which means it's gotten cooking grime on it :( So I have to essentially scrub each piece with a moist cloth and dry it. It's taking more time to disassemble it than to assemble it! Did the body section and one of the wings today.

I also cooked a delicious roast chicken and potato bake, with roast garlic that I finally got right. Made a nice change from a very vegetarian week of food :) Also went for a walk, which I haven't done in a while. Want to lose 5-10 kilos to be in the lower end of normal, instead of the upper end.

Also spent a big chunk of the weekend missing Stu and all the stuff he was getting up to on his weekend. Was missing the very act of him *being*. Hopefully we'll be living together before too long. That'll be nice.

View from Mt Tamborine

Paraglider taking off

View from The Polish Place

Sausage dog!

Sausage dogs looking hopefully at Stu

Mystery cichlids at Chay and David's

ok somewhat lame, but you can see Stu's old house from here.. heh

Brisbane city

Armidale (you can see Arian's house in the original, and the smudge of where Diana's house should be)

Gladesville Bridge

Tomorrow is World Vegan Day.

Needless to say I won't be celebrating it. ;)

I did however go vegetarian tonight, attempting to replicate something Stu and I made on the weekend (I was feeling fooded out after Jake's party and wanted something "healthy").

Ingredients:
* bag of mushrooms, sliced
* a couple of capsicums, preferrably different colours, diced into small pieces
* bit of butter and a big dolloup of mashed garlic
* herbs/spices/salt/pepper to taste
* Bertolli pasta sauce of your choice
* few cups of wholegrain pasta
* handful of shredded tasty (or parmesan) cheese

Fry the mushrooms in butter (or oil), then add the capsicum and garlic. I added a Bull's Horn capsicum to my mix tonight. Cook until it softens a little. Looks good already hey? :)

Bertolli make these lovely pasta sauces which appear to be preservative free. We had Sun Dried Tomato and Sweet Basil on the weekend. Tonight I had Tomato, Parmesan, Parsely and Cracked Pepper.

Add the sauce to the veggies and simmer gently for a while.. looking even better!

While that's happening, cook up some wholegrain pasta (supposed to be better for you heh!). Once that's done, put the pasta in a bowl, topped with the capsicum/mushroom sauce, and a sprinkling of your favourite cheese.

Stu added some chicken stock to his version, which I didn't do. But they both tasted superb :)

This in Stu's local shopping centre.. I wonder how long they'll leave it there...

A Julidochromis transcriptus baby in Stu's tank..

My World Series Poker win .. if only playing real life people were so easy :)

Some mystery flower buds in Stu's garden

The colourful and tasty fish dinner Stu cooked on Sunday night

Means I don't have to go to work tomorrow :)

We had a much better nights sleep last night, but still had a very slow morning. Eventually we wandered out the door and made a pilgramage to the fish shop, via lunch to Office Works and finally home four hours later heh :)

Spent the afternoon doing some general tidying of the house. Dinner was some fish and veggies that were very yummy.

Aside from some Star Trek we also watched Saltimbanco, and the final of The Worst Jobs in History. The finale worstest job was violin string makers - who had to gut sheep to get the intestines... was pretty icky :)

Have also been tackling a hexadecimal sudoku. Resorted to typing everything out in excel, because the squares in the paper are too teeny to fit up to 8 or 9 options for some of them. Am making slow progress on it. I'll be happy if I can complete it - I've only had the patience to complete one other, but that was a 2 star, this is 3 star. And of course if I stuff it up I'll be pretty pissed :)

Well Saturday I bought a betta. (Betta splendens, Siamese Fighting Fish). I took him to work today and put him in the Macquarium with the three guppies. Well he'd been looking a bit listless over the weekend, but perked up when he had some little fishies to chase :) The guppies are quick enough to keep out of his way, so I might keep them together for a while longer.

Then we thought some more about lighting the tank. We were still thinking a lamp mounted over the hole might work, and then one of us had the idea to dig out the little fluorescent light I'd been hoarding for just this purpose. At first I just stuck it over the hole, but it didn't really make a big difference the light levels inside. Then Luc tried sticking it down between the glass and the back of the case. And suddenly the whole tank was bright! It's still not perfect, because the fish are backlit, but it'll do for now :)

My favourite black angel died today :( And most of the guppies Stu brought up on the weekend are dead too :(

/me sad

Cause I was feeling down ...

I finally got around to putting the mosaic of the Hogwart's logo with all the Harry Potter lego.. ok so it was over four weeks ago now.. Stu was the photographer :)

Saw this walking from the carpark at work - a crow raiding a garbage bag, seemingly for a piece of pizza :)

Two inflatable frogs at Josh's party

One of the kribs born in July is growing up fast

Small orchid at my parents' place

V bottles

Latest batch of baby kribs, born on the weekend (they're just little blobs really heh)

Dory fillets with vegetables, cooked by my master chef Stu

A daffodil I had to rescue off the balcony from the wind on the weekend

And so another lovely weekend draws to a close.

This morning we slept late again yayy. By the time we got out the door it was nearly lunch time. But this time we only went a couple of kilometres away to a pet store I haven't ever been to, even tho I live just up the road from it. I got a nifty decoration for my smallest tank - it doesn't have any lighting, so trying to keep plants alive in it is too hard, so fake things will have to do.

Patchy rain all day today. Mostly the rain patches fell over us while we were walking between stores. None from the pet store to the pide place for a pastrami pide for lunch, but then a bit on the way to the coffee shop, not much on the way to the supermarket, but then whole dumploads of it fell while we had the longest walk from the supermarket back to the car. And we didn't have wet weather gear :) oh well.

Quiet afternoon. Stu had a nap in preparation for his late night. We watched an episode of TNG season 3. And all afternoon the lamb slow roasted. And it was good. Was a pre-marinated thing we found in the supermarket. Also had some potatoes and garlic. I didn't actually get to carve the roast. It just disintegrated, so it was a case of take a couple of tong-fulls of meat :)

Then we just watched an episode of "The worst jobs in history", and then the boy left to go home :(:(:(:(

Filled the Macquarium today (I spray painted the inside of it white on the weekend, which makes it a whole lot brighter on the inside). It still could use some more light though. The cool kids do really funky things with lighting, including one tank I saw with this custom-made led board. I don't think I'll do anything that high-tech (unless someone wants to build something for me .. david..? :) ), I'll probably just get a cheap lamp and position it over the handle hole.

I have three guppies in there at the moment, but will probably get a betta next week. Will post some photos soon.