On Top of the World

I’ve tried skinning my site… not with any designs I’ve created (yet), but just ones I had already. So if you’re sick of the black template, you can always go back to the poppy one I used to have a while ago. If you find a problem, let me know. And then I’ll cry quietly for a couple of minutes. But after that I’ll try to fix it.

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A few days ago we got home from work and there was a message on the answering machine. It was from a guy called Sam, thanking us for our help that day after the accident, and saying that even though we might have thought it wasn’t much, he really appreciated it.

As far as we could recall, we hadn’t come to the aid of anyone involved in an accident that day, so we figured it was just a wrong number and let it drift to the back of our minds.

Yesterday when M got home, there was a package that had been delivered via express post. It was a box of chocolates, with a card thanking us again for our help. Obviously the guy hadn’t called the wrong number, as the package had our names and address on it, but there was still a mistake somewhere.

M rang the guy today and found out that he wasn’t sure exactly who had helped him, so he’d made a guess based on where he had the accident. We thought it might have been the people up the road who helped (the ones whose mail we get all the time), so when we went for a walk today, we took the chocolates up there. Noone was home, so we still don’t know if they were the ones who helped, and in the meantime we”re stuck with a box of chocolates that we’re too paranoid to eat because we’re worried they’ve been poisoned (even though they’re still sealed in plastic). Mmmm forbidden chocolate.

My car’s stuffed again so I’m stuck at home until someone comes to have a look at it. So what better thing to do than blog I say.

Yesterday I did some baking. We had a packet of M&M’s bits (the kind you bake into stuff) in the cupboard, so I decided to make the recipe for chocolate chip cookies that was on the pack.

OK, so here’s what the packet said the biscuits should look like…

And here’s how they actually turned out…

Ummm… yyyeeaahhhh. It’s just as well I told you which was the photo of the ones on the packet, right? :/ I tell myself that what’s important is how they taste. Unfortunately they’re a bit average, so I lost on all counts. But there are stacks of choc chips, so the cookie bit is really only there to hold the choc chips together I think. That’s my kind of choc chip cookie!

M plays badminton on Tuesday nights, and he usually gets some takeaway for dinner first. So tonight we called into McDonald’s on the way home, and since I’ve been fairly successful with my weight loss attempts in the last few months, I thought I’d try one of their lean beef burgers. Well, it was absolutely shithouse. The bun was stale, and the pattie had the consistency and flavour of cardboard. The sauce was pretty gross too. And the chips we got (hey, I can’t be good all the time!) were overcooked and cold. On the whole, dinner sucked.

I was going to go for a walk when I got home, but it’s dark a little after 6 at this time of year, so I thought I’d better not, although I am feeling guilty for not going. Maybe I won’t be kidnapped if I just do a short walk? Ah whatever, I’ll go tomorrow.

Last Saturday, M replaced the vent on our roof that allowed water to get into the ceiling, causing it to leak. Our house is on two levels, with a T shape on the bottom, but the top level only covering the ‘horizontal’ part of the T. We’ve got a balcony on the top level along that horizontal bit, with a barrier blocking off the ‘vertical’ bit. The vent is on the vertical bit, so M had to go over the barrier to get to it.

I was out there to make sure that everything was going ok, and I left the door open. Fairly soon, my cat wandered out onto the balcony, and I was happy to let him have a look around, knowing that he wouldn’t try to jump down. What I didn’t count on was him wriggling under the fence and going onto the ‘| ‘ bit where the vent is. He was walking along the edge, and it sort of gave me the willies to see him peeking over it. M grabbed him and chucked him back over to me, and I quickly shut him inside. I have a few photos of his foray into previously unchartered territory:

From left:i) A little too close to the edge for my liking ii) Dammit, get back here! iii) Bad luck, boy.

I must say that the cocoa-dusted truffles that came in one of those eggs absolutely KICK ARSE. Any thoughts I had of going off chocolate were totally blown away when I tried one of those. Mmmm.

I finally got my new phone yesterday, after ordering it three weeks ago. That was a long damn wait. It’s the Samsung D500, and I’m really happy with it. I haven’t read the manual yet (all programmers know that noone reads documentation anyway), so I’ve just been stuffing around with it myself. I guess I should read it in case there are some cool things that can be done that I haven’t discovered, but meh. Playing is far more fun than reading!

I said I was going off chocolate a bit, but some things are just too good to resist, right?

The good thing about the end of Easter is that all the leftover chocolate is so cheap. If we’d bought this stuff before Easter it would have cost $74 (the one in the middle was originally $40 - if you’re going to pay that much it’d better be DAMN GOOD), but today we got it for the bargain price of $18. Yes, I know that if we’d bought the same weight just in blocks of chocolate that it would have cost a lot less, but stop being such a party pooper.

So now we can be chocolate tossers and make ourselves a coffee on our espresso coffee machine and have a cocoa-coated truffle to go with it. Aaah the simple things, eh?

I LOVE MEXICAN FOOD.

We went out for dinner last night with some friends, and since the place we had orginally planned on going to was closed (at least, we got voicemail every time we rang to make a booking), we decided on Mexican instead. So even though I’d been looking forward to having risotto at the original place, having enchiladas at the Mexican place was a welcome substitute.

I love the restaurant we went to. M and I go there fairly often, because they have great food, and the prices are quite reasonable too. I love the smell of it as well, you walk in and straight away you can smell food cooking. I don’t know exactly what the smell is, but I think it’s a combination of tortillas and cheese and other stuff. They seem to have a limited collection of CDs, because they’re usually playing the same music every time we go there, but that’s ok because I have a favourite song, and listen out for it every time I go. They didn’t play it a couple of times ago, but they did last night. It’s just a peppy-sounding song, even though I have no idea what they’re actually singing about. But I assume it’s something good, because you wouldn’t write a happy melody to go with depressing words, would you?

We started off with a combination dips, which had frijoles, guacamole, salsa, and a divine cheese dip that I could happily drink out of the container without the need for corn chips. Mmmm.

Then came the enchiladas. I had two chicken enchiladas, frijoles and rice. Last time I only had one enchilada, but since the serve was quite small, I thought I could easily forgo some rice to have the yumminess of an extra enchilada, in not that much bigger a serve. I was wrong. I got two jumbo enchiladas, and a huge serve of the rice and frijoles - definitely not in proportion to the one-enchilada serve. But that’s ok, because I LOVE enchiladas, and particularly the sauce they use. The sauce is something else that I could just drink out of the container, except it would probably make me sick after a while.

I don’t know how authentic the sauce actually is, but I don’t care. That is what Mexican food has to taste like, and against which all Mexican food is compared. So if I ever get to Mexico, they’d better use that same sauce, else I’ll be mighty disappointed!

We had a nice lunch at The Greedy Goose today. The Greedy Goose is one of the restaurants in the TV show, My Restaurant Rules, which is a reality show where competitors from Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth open a restaurant, and one by one they’re voted out of the game, with the last people standing getting to keep their restaurant.

We decided to go for lunch today because we figured there’d be less of a queue (you’re not allowed to book), and not too much chance of there being any TV cameras around. Fortunately we were right on both counts, so we could eat without feeling too self-conscious. None of the entrées really grabbed me, so I decided to have a main and a dessert instead. It’s been so long since I’ve had a dessert at a restaurant, because usually by the time I’ve had the entrée and main, I’m stuffed. So I got to enjoy a beef filet wrapped in prosciutto for my main, and a yummy chocolate mousse for dessert. Needless to say, I am feeling absolutely stuffed now.

I think I’m going off chocolate. There’s one sentence I never thought I’d type - all my life I’ve made an automatic beeline for the most chocolatey dessert/cake on offer, but I’m just not that into it any more. I’m finding now that I prefer a fruity-tasting dessert, with chocolate being an accent rather than the main thing. My chocolate mousse today was excellent, but towards the end it just felt like too much chocolate. Wash my mouth out! As M says, maybe my tastebuds are ‘maturing’… either that, or they’re becoming as much of an old fart as the rest of me.

It’s 2005 (for some of us, anyway) already! M and I had a great night last night, and we’re both feeling a touch under the weather today, but nothing too bad. We went to the Casino - the restaurants and cafes there all had a different theme, and the restaurant we went to was done up in the Bollywood theme, with an Indian buffet and all drinks. I love Indian food.

They had people dressed up as The Kumars, walking around and chatting to the guests, and on one trip to the buffet I got accosted by the grandmother, who proceeded to load my plate up, telling me that I have to produce 10 children one day and so I have to be fed up well.

I was indeed fed up well - I was absolutely stuffed by the end, and the amount of wine we drank ensured that I was feeling happily fuzzy. We stayed there until about 12:15, then walked down to the River Torrens, which is right nearby. It was beautiful weather outside - it had been 35°C (95°F) during the day, and it had cooled down to just the right temperature by midnight. I guess the alcohol had numbed me a bit, so if it had been cold I might not have noticed!

Then we caught the bus home - it was free transport until dawn, so who can say no to that? We couldn’t be bothered waiting in line for a taxi. Catching the bus meant that we had to put up with loud drunk teenagers, but it wasn’t too bad. When we got home I just flaked on the bed - I didn’t bother taking off my makeup or earrings, I was buggered! My stomach was hurting and I felt the urgent need to lie down. I got up at around 11 today, and am not feeling too bad.

Anyway, I hope all of you had (or are having) a great NYE, and that 2005 brings you everything you hope it will

We watched the Iron Chef episode that we taped over the weekend. That is such a funny and gross show. For those of you who may not have seen it before, each week they have a theme ingredient, and a challenger competes with an ‘Iron Chef’ to make the best meal, as judged by a panel of tasters. Just after they announce the theme ingredient, they have a little segment about it, with a guy (although not the same guy that used to do it, unfortunately) saying a bit about how it’s used, and they always have a little ’saying’ to go along with the ingredient.

Usually these sayings are pretty weird. In this episode, the theme ingredient was quail, and the ’saying’ was, “Quail is the virgin; duck is the mature woman.” What the…? It was in reference to chefs needing experience to prepare duck meat properly, and that a lot of them start out with quail first, and then move on to duck. But really - how do they come up with this stuff?

So they were making their dishes, and they showed the Iron Chef cutting off the quail heads and putting them aside. I jokingly said to M that he could stew them later… and later on, the IC deep fries them! Eeewww. They looked like little Freddy Kruegger heads when they came out of the frier. The delightful presentation of the quail heads involved cutting them lengthways in half so that the tasters could eat the brains. Now that may sound normal to some of you, but I don’t think that there is ANY way in which the presentation of halved, deep-fried quail heads can be made attractive. It just looked awful. I know that Japanese food is all about the presentation, but I really could not get into this one! Give me the pagoda carved out of a carrot any day.

M and I had our celebratory meal today! We wanted to go to Alphütte on Saturday night, but unfortunately it’s not open for dinner on Saturday nights (which I think is quite odd), so the only option was to go during next week, which was just too far away! So we took the afternoon off, and went for lunch today instead.

It was pretty cool to sit in the restaurant and watch the world go by. I could get used to not going to work, and just spending my days eating lunch in fancy restaurants. Whenever I’m not at work during the day and I’m out, I always wonder why there are so many people around who aren’t at work - don’t they have to earn a living, dammit?! I wonder if they wonder the same thing about me.

Going out for lunch is great. We always go out for a meal on M’s and my birthday, and usually it’s dinner, but for M’s last birthday, we went out for lunch. It was really good, because after you’ve stuffed yourself (which inevitably happens when you go somewhere nice - you want to enjoy yourself!), you’ve got the rest of the day to digest it, rather than getting home at around 10:30 with a belly full of food that’s just going to sit there all night.

True to form, I stuffed myself. I had Mushroom Buttons for entrée, then Hirsch Medallions for main, with a side of Röschti of course. Yum! I’d been planning to have dessert, but by the end of the main I was so full that I couldn’t fit it in, so we just had a coffee instead. I’m glad I didn’t have dessert. It seems I can only ever fit two courses in, so next time we go out for dinner I’m going to make the two courses main and dessert - being the sweet tooth that I am, I need dessert every now and then so that I can function properly. And I really would have liked the chocolate mousse served in a chocolate box, with a raspberry pudding on the side. Mmm chocolate. Patience, my pet - there’s always next time.