Yeah yeah I know, I've ranted about it before, we're metric here so I really should be using kilojoule's. But hey.

So I've been looking at my calorie intake. Trying to figure out ways to cut it down without changing anything too drastically and sending me into unsustainable shock :) And trying to think up things I could do for smaller lunches (when I love warm food and would rather eat that than a salad any day). But one thing I did decide I could try is to cut my orange juice intake. I drink probably ~400 calories a day in OJ alone!! That's flipping ridiculous. So I'm going to try and cut back a bit and just drink water at lunches for a start and then dinners (with vitamin c tablets instead). We'll see how we go...

Stolen from Neil:

A is for Age: 33
B is for Beer of choice: Maybe Heineken
C is for Career: I'm an IT geek from way back
D is for favourite Drink: Orange juice
E is for Essential item you use everyday: As Neil said, computer (and Blackberry). Probably followed closely by my digital camera, although I don't use that every day)
F is for Favourite song at the moment: Don't really have one
G is for favourite Game: Currently probably poker on the blackberry
H is for Home town: Syd-a-ney
I is for Instruments you play: Recorder badly, keyboard even more badly
J is for favourite Juice: Orange
K is for Kids: No thanks....
L is for Last kiss: Kissing Stu goodbye when he went home on Monday
M is for Marriage: Hopefully this year :)
N is for full Name: Kazza the Blank One
O is for Overnight hospital stays: None
P is for Phobias: Don't really have any clinical phobias
Q is for Quote: Live long and prosper
R is for biggest Regret: prolly shouldn't mention it here heh
S is for Sports: No thanks....
T is for Time you wake up: 6:30 on weekdays
U is for colour of Underwear: Whatever's going, currently a fair amount of purple shades
V is for Vegetable you love: Potato
W is for Worst Habit: um, no comment :)
X is for X-rays you�ve had: One of my chest when I had pneumonia, one of my foot when I broke a metatarsal, one of my teeth when they were looking at my wisdom teeth
Y is for Yummy food you make: My milk/cheese/sour cream potato bake
Z is for Zodiac sign: Leo

So. Where to begin. Gosh.

Well, Friday night the boy arrived and we had a lovely dinner of kangaroo steaks and potato bake. The kangaroo was absolutely delicious, restaurant quality :)

Saturday we went to Luc and Cynthia's for a BBQ lunch. Was lovely to catch up with them, as hadn't seen them in ages. Also managed to get a parking spot in the shopping centre in about one minute, instead of the fifteen I allowed :) After lunch we did some Christmas shopping for the kids, and did a blitz walk-through of Ikea - I was looking for a lamp that I saw there last time, but they didn't have them this time, so that was a bit annoying. We had leftovers (kangaroo, sausage and potato) for dinner, and watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Sunday we trekked over to see Nana at her favourite restaurant. Meal was ok. And Nana shouted us so that was nice .. but only my parents came so didn't get to see any of the uncles.. oh well. Came home via Bunnings and bought a lamp - a bit more expensive and not quite the same as the Ikea one I'd liked, but it works well and now Stu has a decent reading light at my place :) Sunday night I started getting stressed at everything I still needed to do. I baked another batch of cookies, which Stu was suitably impressed with, and packaged them up for the various clans. Also wrapped the remaining presents while watching Carols by Candlelight.

After the carols finished, we went for a drive, and on the tranquil shores of Botany Bay, under city lights, and Christmas fairy lights from an apartment block above, Stu asked me to marry him and be his partner through life. I made him wait the few seconds til Christmas day to answer yes :) (ok so it wasn't quite the family tradition of proposing on New Year's Eve, but we were impatient :) ). We took some photos and I cried, then we came home and went to bed.

We decided not to go to church in the morning, for the simple reason that we wanted to avoid people making a fuss. That and we'd had a late night and we still hadn't packed, watered plants, fed fish, that sort of nonsense. So we did all that and went directly to the parents' for lunch. Mum of course wasn't fooled. She'd been *looking* for a ring. Flipping heck. Well I suppose at least we didn't have to announce it. But they did make the expected fuss. Gave Luc a call to let him and the entire Coates clan know, so that was an easy tell. Then D&Y turned up and they were suitably excited as well :) Much present opening followed. My biggest surprise was Airwolf season 1!! Which I didn't even know was on dvd yet! Then we had lunch (roast pork yumm), but unfortunately we couldn't hang around (which was disappointing because everyone was in a good mood and it was all very pleasant), as we then had to drive down to Yass. Where Annie had done a *delicious* roast turkey roll. More present opening for more kids, and I finally got Stu to open and play with his present heh. Finished the night with a game of scrabble with Rebecca and Alex, which I flipping won, which like so totally never happens - I hate scrabble! Beating Stu was quite bizarre too.

Which leaves us with today. Decided we needed a quiet day, so slept quite late, snuggled, and eventually got out to go get some food just before lunch time. But because we'd had a late breakfast, we went to Starbucks and played a game of chinese chess on their chess/checker table. It took quite a while, cause I'd never played, and all the symbols confused me for a while. But after a few good suggestions of moves from Stu, I ended up removing all his attacking pieces, so he conceded defeat. Totally unexpected outcome, given that we'd checked each other quite a few times during the game, and I was fully expecting to lose, it being my first game and all. Totally bizarre :) Did our food shopping and came home for a very late lunch of a delicious wrap Stu made. Followed by him painting tin soldiers and me working on my Titanic model. Then a late dinner of kangaroo steaks (same sort we had the other night, and just as delicious) and watched Total Recall.

There we go, all caught up. Phewf. :)
Good night! :)

Another Friday, another Christmas party :)

This time I truly came out in front.

Starting with some online game competition, where I won the first one much to my surprise (I *never* do any good at those sorts of games!) I got 91 which apparently was the highest score. Then Monique dropped out of the doubles Fussball, so I took her spot with George, and we won that too! Awesome!! :)

Dinner was at Surgit's Indian. Lots of food. Not bad either, for Indian, heh :) And then at the end of the night a nearly full bottle of white was leftover, so I volunteered to give it a home ;)

Time for bed. Much more alcohol and food to be consumed this weekend... I think I'm gonna die.... hehe

Gosh, I go away for a couple of days and all sorts of stuff happens. Like I get home tonight and start trying to catch up on my blog news feeds and find this, and I'm like *egads* heheh. I went to find my own first commenter, and found I'd missed a few comments over the weekend (cause they normally get emailed to me, but the webserver was having a spac over the weekend and I didn't get the emails, so only just discovered those comments!) Some of the very original blogs I started reading are actually still around which is way cool. JC, CC, and Dennis I started reading in the first few days of my life in the blogosphere and they're still going. I'm pretty sure JC was my first ever commenter, and he was probably the first person I ever commented on too :)

So anyway. Four days of my life not blogged .. does anyone care? Probably not, but hey, this is for my own benefit, not anyone else's :)

Friday was easy day at work. Couple of lazy hours work in the morning followed by our Christmas party, which we had early cause one of the guys is going overseas this week. Ah crap, that reminds me, I'm gonna have to be the one changing tapes for December.. hrmmmmmm. Anyway, party was very pleasant, and then I hopped in my car and trekked down to Canberra.

Saturday was a trek to Belconnen for some shopping, with the evening at Scott and Kerry's with some nice Pakistani food and Monsters Inc.

Sunday was local shopping, and then out to Yass for Stu's birthday cake (the Other Stu :) )

This morning when my alarm went off at 6 I basically burst into tears and it was all I could do to actually get out of bed and go to work. Was positively dreading it. It turned out to be not so bad, I did actually get a couple of things done and kept all the crap-heapers at bay. The dreaded meetings database is still hanging over my head though, but I can avoid that another day, with a meeting with Luc on Wednesday to have another look at it. Tomorrow we upgrade the mail server to 7.0.2.. which has the potential to be messy heh :)

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.

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 :)

Fairly quiet day today (well for the beginning anyway heh). Ran some errands - breakfast, shopping, post office etc, then back here and Annie and Stu and the kids came over for lunch, before just doing some tidying up and some resting.

Then we wandered over to Mishi's for some wonderful food, followed by a new game of Stu's called Condottiere, which Jo won, and followed by a game of Up the River Down the River, aka Oh $#^+, which Damien won. All in all a fun night, even after much talk of Canberra employment musings heh.

So tonight I won the only game of poker on the Blackberry that I haven't won yet - the World Series game - 5000 players and $5 million prize money. I'd made a stack of attempts at it, but my previous best placing was 636. I played a very aggressive game and it paid off. Except that now I feel a bit lost cause I've won everything now heh.

In other news, we had quite a slow day, not helped by lack of sleep last night. We did some food shopping and had lunch out, watched some Star Trek, then watched So I Married an Axe Murderer and ate pepperoni pizza while babysitting Jakey.

OK so this meme has been haunting my feedreader since *July* .. urggh ..
Time to actually do it and clear it out :)
As seen at various locations..

GRUB-OLOGY