Run away life

Have you ever had one of those weeks where life has taken control and you find yourself on a roller coaster going up and down, round the corners and through the tunnel of turmoil?

The last seven days have been like that for me. I’ve been travelling for work, organised a photo shoot for work, I’ve been on the radio, I’ve added to my fur family, I’ve had a house guest and I sold a bed on eBay.

On Friday I went to Port Macquarie for work. Flew there in the morning gave a half hour presentation and then climbed on a prop for the trip home at 5pm. It was a 12 hour day, (four in airports, one and three quarters on aeroplanes, driving driving to and from airports, two and three quarters sat in a management meeting listening to gumph about road building and my half hour) all for half an hour in front of the room showing some slides and doing a bit of talking. Daft beyond believe, but I did get to pop into Cassegrain Wines on the way back to the airport.

Last Wednesday night I was on the radio. Yes, actual radio. Ok, so it was community radio with a radius of 10 yards, but radio none the less. I was on the Uncle Mike and Mama Carol Show on Flame FM 100.9 (or Auburn and Bankstown Regional Radio as it’s know while the licence request goes through). Uncle Mike was off watching rugby (State of Origin, a big thing for those in NSW or QLD) so I got to fill in. Carol drove the control centre while we chatted, played songs, did Bing Bong (read out Overheards for the free commuter newspaper) and generally brought the whole community into disarray. It was an absolute hoot. At the end of it, I was offered my own show. Mad!

I added three chickens to my fur family at the weekend. I wanted some for a while, they are cheap and easy to keep and they give you eggs. Plus, as an added bonus in my house they keep the cats entertained. Oren has decided they are better than TV. She sits and watches them for hours. She follows them around as they walk around the pen. Cara is interested, but as they are outside and prefers being inside, in the warm, she takes a quick look on her way back in after toilet breaks. Puss has seen it all before and simply ignores them as he does with anything he deems not worthy of his attentions.

My house guest arrived on Sunday, but the prep had caused a minor frenzy of activity. Cleaning, making up his room, going to IKEA to purchase a duvet and pillows (thanks goodness for the ‘As-Is’ bin, saved $40 on the pillows). I also made bread. Then as a last minute thing, I decided to use the lemons bombarding my back lawn, by making lemonade. I had no idea it was so easy to make what is essentially a lemon cordial/squash. I made much more than the recipe suggested due the overflowing bowl of lemons and by the end of it I had three bottles of lemon squash for the price of a bag of sugar.

I sold a bed on eBay. Those of you that know me well will know of my general distaste for eBay. But, as I had a double bed cluttering up the hallway, I decided to bite the bullet and get rid of it. The guy that brought it came to pick it up in Sunday night. He had hired a van and hadn’t taken the sizes provided into account when hiring, so he had to dismantle it in my driveway, using my tools. Idiot! It was dark, I was busy, I left him too it. My house guest N. was kind enough to sort out the boys with the bed. My distaste for this selling medium comes from this sort of stoopidity that comes with folks wanting a bargain. I have yet to have a reasonable selling experience.

The photo shoot for work turned out OK, but the start of the day wasn’t looking too hopeful. It was raining heavily and it was supposed to be an outdoorsy shoot. We had hired talent for the day, a photographer and organised a construction site to be available. It had to be done the day it was booked for. We managed to get a couple of breaks in the weather where it wasn’t throwing buckets over us, but we still needed to put plastic bags over the flash units and an umbrella over the photographer.

I have a message for the planet. Please stop, I would like to get off for just a short break.

It's just a name

I had a dream last night about something that got me to thinking this morning about names. I can’t remember the dream, but I pretty sure it involved someone knocking on my door. Of course someone may actually have knocked on my real door, but seeing as it was still dark at the time, I’ll consider it a dream and not a desperate plea of help. Anywho...back to my point...

Many years ago I saw Disney’s 101 Dalmatians. Apart from Cruella deVil being one of the scariest villains ever, I always recall seeing the scene where Roger and Anita walk through the park and see all the dogs that look like their owners. The long coated Afghan cantering with a lanky hippy, the bulldog with a pumped up fighter and the small fluffy with a well dressed girl in pink with ribbons. Like for like is what they were saying, I think.

So the name thing can also be like for like. I know a Mr. Gumm, he’s a dentist. He wasn’t my surgeon, but Mr. Andrew Bone worked in the same building as my orthopaedic doctor. Mr. Kidney is a nephrologist on the list of specialists that my Doctor looked at when she was looking for a consultant for me. A guy I worked with was called Mr. Trainer; he’s the Learning and Development Manager and was a school teacher.

The same goes for addresses...I live on Rope Crescent, those that know me, know I have a passion for knots.

Can you imagine though, standing in an elevator, ascending to the 13th floor and noticing that the maintenance company for said lift, lists their address as Ricketty Street

Muffin stuffin'

A couple months ago I did a bread baking class. I got me to thinking…I like cooking and I’m not terrible at it.

So after spending a day in the kitchen last weekend, kneading dough and making a Lamb Shank Casserole for dinner, I decided to make savoury muffins on Tuesday. My first attempt at this recipe turned out a bit flat, I was copying it from the book 'The Baking Bible', but I misread so I used plain flour instead of self-raising. I also used tomato paste (as the book tells you too). The result was a bit stodgy, but tasty, so I decided to fiddle with the recipe and make it my own. This a quick dish that could be rustled up for those surprise guests that just 'pop in'. I give you:

Pesto and Cheese Muffins

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 10-15 minutes

Ingredients
2 cups of self-raising flour
½ tsp of salt and pepper (mixed)
1 egg
¾ cup of water
1.5 cups of grated cheese (I used Vintage Cheddar)
¼ cup of pesto

Method
Pre-grease your muffin trays.
Put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, gently combine with a folk.
Add the egg and water and combine with folk until all the ingredients are together. Mixture will be firm but sticky.
Spoon the approximately half the mixture into then tins.
Add one teaspoon of pesto to the top of the mixture.
Add the other half of the mixture to cover the pesto. Too much pesto and the top will not stick to the bottom and seal the pesto in.
Sprinkle a little grated cheese to the top of the muffin (I used Parmesan).

Place in the preheated oven (200degrees) and bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.


Eat while warm and you'll eat them all. Eat the following day and you'll be able to pace yourself, but barely :-)

As an afterthought I decided you could pretty much use any pasta pesto for this recipe. I have a nice roasted capsicum (pepper), cashew and chilli paste in the cupboard, I may try that next.

Tick Tock

In the last 24 hours I have pulled two ticks off Oren (for those just joining us, Oren is my second feline child). One was attached to her lacrimal punctum (the bit a human would put eyeliner on) and one on her lip. They were both small, but they were paralysis ticks, and they are renowned for being nasty little buggers. While the native wildlife can sustain many at a time, imported critters, such as cats, dogs, sheep and cows, tend to have a nasty experience with them and often die.

She is two and half now and these are the first ticks I’ve ever found on her. It means I have to search her daily now to ensure she gets no more and if she does, get them off as soon as possible.

I may even need to keep an eye on Cara (first canine child). While she doesn’t spend any extended time outside, she so small, if she was to pick one up I’m sure it wouldn’t take long to have an effect on her.

Puss (first feline child) used to get a lot of them when I lived a little further north and he was more of an outside explorer. Now he’s nearly 12 and a tad arthritic, I’m not so worried about him, but there was a time he nearly died for tick poisoning, so I’m very aware of the dangers of not finding them quickly.

I found him lying on his side, half under the bed, breathing laboured. I rushed him to the vet, it took us half an hour of searching before we found the offender. It was a female, engorged to the size of my little finger nail, sucking the blood from the inside of his lip. The size of the sucker, she would have been there about five days, it's more than likely his continued exposure that meant that he surrived as long as he did with one attached. He had a dose of anti-venom, but it was still touch and go for a while. He vomited pure green, fitted, spasmed and drew the blood of the vet. I cried at the thought of losing him. He had a two day stay at Auntie Anna’s (the vet) I had a large bill.

I’ll be body searching my kids daily from here on out.

1st April, again?

I was on the train travelling to work when this email popped up on my phone. It's from the office manager where I work. I really did have to stifle a snort of laughter upon reading it.

I came into work this morning with the intention of finding out what the term ‘planking’ amongst social networkers means. This was prompted for 2 reasons:

• About 50% of our Corporate Office personnel are young and I feel the need to remain in touch with the ‘lingo’.

• Media vehicles are concerned about the increased number of personal injuries and deaths reported in the past week.

For those of you who don’t know, some rather interesting sites define ‘planking’ as the ‘ART’ (???)of challenging our body physically by trying to balance it on or between objects and it appears that the more extreme the idea the better.

I have been made aware that ‘planking’ is being practised in our own office.

Please be advised that ‘planking’ at work goes against our ‘safety above all else’ value and the practice is unacceptable.

I'm definitely gonna stick to Teapotting after this email, it scared me off being a planker. :-)

The Joy of Honey

At the request of my current housemate, I made dessert. I didn’t have anything fancy in the cupboard, but thanks to the recipe on the side of the Kellogg’s Cornflakes I was able to rustle up a treat or four.

I had Cornflakes, honey, butter and sugar, but I didn’t have cup cake cases, so I rolled out a few ramekins. It meant I had supersize Honey joys and only four, rather than 16.

They were yummy, crisp and buttery :)


Kellogg's Honey Joys

Ingredients
90g margarine or butter (I picked butter:-)
1/3 cup sugar (I went half/half white and raw)
1 tbsp honey
4 cups of Kellogg's Cornflakes

Method
Preheat oven to 150 degrees.
Melt butter/marg sugar and honey in saucepan until frothy.
Add Kellogg's Cornflakes and mix well.
Spoon into paper cupcake cases.
Bake in slow oven for 10 minutes
Allow to cool.


I'll keep working on my food photography :-)

It's not our policy

Yesterday I misplaced my fortnightly train ticket. I searched all my bags including Cara's and to no avail. Gone. I have no idea how, it's a total mystery.

I did however have the receipt in my wallet. $62 (that converts to US$65.86, 40UKPounds, 5,716 Kenyan Shillings, 10,267 Nigerian Naira and 187.66 Turkmenistan New Manats)

After being sent to the Station Master by the ticket seller I was told my ticket was considered lost as if it where cash.

'If you lost a fifty dollar note you wouldn't expect it to be replaced' he told me.

I immediately came back with, ‘If I lost $50 I wouldn’t have a receipt’.

‘It’s not our policy to replace tickets based on a receipt’.

After a little sweet talk from me, he very kindly gave me a blue replacement ticket until the 23rd (same as the lost ticket). But I still walked out of the office thinking how ridiculous it is to give receipts but them to mean nothing. Every other business in the world has to honour the receipt, why not Rail Corp?

Stranger things have happened

I confess, I can’t think of many, but I’m sure they have.

The weather has turned cold in Sydney. Those of you that live here will know what I speak off, those that reside in other, far flung place, may not. On average Sydney gets seven days of temperatures below five degrees overnight in Winter. We’re still in Autumn and we have clocked up nearly two week of frosts. FROST! In Sydney. It’s almost unheard of.

Now, I’m not really one to complain about the weather, I like cold days with sunshine. Not too keen on wind or rain, but those lovely crisp days when the sun shines and the flowers still smile, make my heart sing. Thanks to a southerly coming up from Antarctica we’re getting those kind of days.

When I moved in November I moved my belonging into a house with a real fireplace. One you put logs in. I was told when I took up residence that it was in good working order, I found out on February, that it wasn’t. The baffle (the think steel plate just below the chimney hole) was melted through and it was missing several insulation bricks. After much tooing and frowing, the Landlord finally decreed that they would pay for the repairs. Of course, this was just as every man and his dog also wanted their chimneys and fireplaces serviced. So I’m on a list...he’s coming on 21st May.

The cold snap has been here for a few weeks now and the house was becoming as cold inside as outside. It was inhumane, to me, my housemate S and the animals. When you can see your breath inside, it’s too cold. So I lit the fire.

After three days the baffle snapped in half and fell out.

Fan heaters didn’t do a bad job for a couple of days, then the temperature dropped again. On Saturday, I’d had enough of not being able to feel my fingers so I lit the fire. Baffle and bricks be damned...I needed heat.

The smell of the wood, the heat that filled the room, the gentle roar and the glow in the house brought out the domestic goddess. I baked bread, I cooked lamb shanks and I felt like making biscuits. I never really want to cook. I’m sure it was the influence of the real fire burning in the corner. Maybe it’s a primal instinct to make home and nest. Maybe, and I think this may be it, it was the years of a real fire as a child when we’d spend time in the kitchen in the colder months (most of the year in the UK) baking cakes, Muv made a mean Victoria Sponge, making sweeties (rum truffle or clotted cream fudge anyone?), Yum Yum Pie, Bread and Butter pudding and all manner of other goodies. Muv was a regular Barbara Good. There was always a cake in the cupboard.

The bread has gone and due to lack of ingredients the only sweet treat I could make was Honey Joys. I had sugar, butter, honey and cornflakes in the cupboard, but as I didn’t have any paper cases I made giant ones in pate ramekins. It was a bit of fun.

I’ve been out and purchased baking things...almonds, castor and icing sugar, vanilla essence, condensed milk, and a couple of things to try a Jamie Oliver recipe. I’m even thinking of doing what Julie Powell did, but unlike her, rather than a book of savouries’ and general Frenchieness, I thought I'd work my way through the Baking Bible.

Wiring

Why is it when we a presented with a circle we work clockwise?

A picture: Start at the top, move to the right and work your way around the bottom and back up the left side until you reach the top again.

A Cricket Oval: walk to the left and work your way around. If you were being watched from above, you’d be going clockwise. I tried walking to the right, but it felt strange.

I don’t know about you, but I also look at images in clockwise. What’s the first thing you notice about this image?



Then where did you look?

It’s just a theory of mine, but it could just be me. Feel free to debunk this generalist view if you like.

The Printed Word

I watched a movie last night. It was released in 1998. You may have heard of it, it called ‘You’ve got Mail’ and it stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

For those that have been living under a rock for 13 years and may not have seen it, it’s about two people who meet online and fall in love despite not knowing each others names, meanwhile in the real world they do know each other and only ever really exchange cutting remarks as they are competitors in business. She own a small book store that specialises in children’s books and service (she knows all of her customer’s names), he a mulit-millionaire that own a chain of book superstores that offer books at a cheap price, but little in the way of service or knowledge about books (think Borders). Of course, as with all romantic comedies, it turns out well in the end.

Apart from the sound of dial-up internet, which I had almost forgotten, the movie got me thinking about books and where they are heading.

I’m sure when Nora Ephron devised the tale, she had no idea that in 2011 book superstores would be closing because people had stopped buy books made from paper and had switched to electronic tomes. No everybody of course. I still love the feel of the paper and board in my hands, the smell of the ink on freshly pulped wood. I know it’s frightfully un-PC of me, but I like books.

I enjoy spending time fossicking the shelves of second hand book shops for that illusive find. Being surrounded by the mustiness of the years of thumbing the pages have seen. The paper of varying thickness; tissue thin in wartime to save resources, sturdy and wrinkle free in the 60s when nothing needed to be saved, including love. Foxy spots of yellow on the pages and inscriptions of congratulations, happy birthday and ownership; you read more than just the story in print. Sometimes you find added bonuses between the pages; a theatre ticket, a train ticket or postcard. These items tell you even more about the previous owner.

With an electronic book you can make notations and highlight interesting passages, you can turn the pages and you can, or course, read it. But you can’t feel it, smell it, and love it. You can’t take care not to crack the spine, you can’t inscribe it as a gift and you can’t pass it on.

I hope books don’t disappear in my lifetime, after all where would the girl of the world be without pearls of wisdom like ‘Linda Learns to Type’ by Patirica Baldwin written in 1961. What will the world do without tales of young ladies aspiring to be private secretaries?

ANTM

America's Next Top Model cycle 15 has started screening in Australia.

That's all I have to say about that :-)


The beautiful, and educational Miss Tyra Banks