nishatalitha

I work on level 23 of a 26 story office building near the waterfront. Because there's another road parallel to the one my building is on that is a good seven stories or more above road level by my building, I rarely notice how high I am. Except when I see seagulls gliding below my window. One day I'll get a photo.

Cooked lots over the weekend (I forget what we had for dinner on Saturday night but also boiled a chicken for stock that day, gumbo using some of the stock and shredded chicken for dinner on Sunday), and cooked again tonight. I made this, but forgot to add the parmesan and butter to the polenta, so it wasn't as creamy and was a bit more lemony than I really prefer (I used half a cup of stock and some lemon juice and some water to make the polenta). Oh, and I used pork mince instead of lamb mince.

These things aside, it wasn't too bad. If the polenta was creamier, I think I would have liked it more. The flatmates seemed to like it though.

Note to self: do not leave prepared ingredients by the coffee-maker. You'll forget them.

Last weekend was the annual DCM bookfair. Normally, it's early September, but they had to shift it this year due to the Rugby World Cup and not being able to get a big enough venue during that time period. Worst weather we've ever had for it, I think. It was absolutely freezing. purplesparkler joined us for her inaugural trip down and we ran into darthsappho there. Both of them joined us for lunch at Leuven. I managed to get a small pile of Pratchett (for the first time ever) and Pegasus in Space which I was actually looking for, and picked up Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, Paul Gallico's The Lovel of Seven Dolls" (which is creepier than I rememebered - and that's saying something!).

Work hasn't been too bad lately. I am gathering all the information I need to give to my responsible partner for my legal exec registration. But somehow it keeps getting put aside so I can do chargable work...

Am still having trouble installing Alice: The Madness Returns on Annabelle. I eventually worked out that I needed to upgrade my system, and figured I'd just go straight to Windows 7, but no, that didn't work. Have finally got XP Service Pack 3 installed (which it should work on) and am still having issues. I'll try again this weekend.

This week I have read two thirds of (and finished) The Bonehunters by Steven Erickson. Reading the Tor commentary is helping me pick out more aspects, although they're a couple of books behind — they've just started House of Chains. I also read Deceiver by C J Cherryh today - big contrast in writing styles!

Friday I posted my kiwifandomsfest fic here.

I also read Rivers of London (also published as Midnight Riot I believe) by Ben Aaronovitch, which is a contemporary fantasy murder mystery set in London. I thought I knew where it was going, but it's a delightful romp and lots of fun, and then it took a right turn and ended up somewhere completely different. The copy I read was borrowed from a friend and I think I might have to buy my own. I'm also looking forward to reading the sequel Moon Over Soho and the third, Whispers Under Ground.

Yesterday, I went out to Indoorpendence, the Ultimate Frisbee development tournament at Te Raupraha Arena in Porirua with my league team, Dirty Creature. We won a couple of games, lost a few, and — importantly — mostly held together as a team for the day. I have no idea how well we did overall, but I understand that rincewindtvd (one of our A-graders) got male MVP for the tournament, which is excellent. Well done to him!

I had to head off early, though. Unlike previous years, when my work mid-year has been the night before Indoorpendence, this year it was the same day. Different venue from last year too; we were at the Wharewaka this year, and it worked really well for our function, as the band and dancefloor were near the tables, so it was really easy to move back and forth between them.

Wine is one of the things that I have trouble pacing over an evening. I have a certain number of glasses and then it starts tasting funny, so I know I've had enough wine and shouldn't drink anymore of it that night. I hit that point probably around 10 - 10.30pm last night, about when the dancing started and switched to water. Function packed up about midnight, and thirteen or fifteen or so of us headed into town and ended up at the Library bar, where we had a couple of cocktails, and I got home about 2.30am. No hangover, however, due to the spacing of the drinks and the amount of water I drank.

When getting ready, I took one look at my stilettos and decided I couldn't face wearing that type of heel, rummaged in the back of my wardrobe and dug out a pair of old silver shoes with really solid heels that I haven't worn for nearly ten years. Apart from the soles being so slippery that I had to take them off to go up and down our stairs, I was fine. Didn't have to take them off all night, even.

Today I have also been productive. I sorted in date order and put away a pile of filing that I've been stacking up for about two years. Just in case you get the wrong idea, I had previously looked and dealt with it all but put it in a pile instead of putting it in the folders where it belongs. It did take a few hours though.

I also cooked dinner for the first time in about a week. I was home late most nights last week and either tamarillow and maudlinrose had cooked or we fended; I didn't have the energy to cook. Tonight, however, was a different story.

Dinner was a roast vegetable red curry that I make once or twice a year. For dessert, I decided to try one of exiledinpn's favourites: tarte tatin. Like the last version he made, I used the Masterchef NZ recipe. Most of the reviews I read of the recipe indicated that they'd put it on the stove top for less time than recommended and it therefore wasn't as rich.

( tarte tatin commentry )

Back to work tomorrow. Bother! How did I manage to put all my low-heeled shoes in for repairs at the same time?

My week at work is going to be a tad nuts: end of month (always busy); end of local authority financial year (always busy); and the lawyer I do the most work for is recovering from unexpected surgery on Sunday night and one of the juniors and I are picking up what we can. Lawyer is recovering well and appears to be permanently attached to her blackberry, but we are trying to encourage her to rest and not work on her sick leave.

At least there aren't any settlements this week.

Another one of my lawyers who is currently on parental leave dropped by today to fill out some forms and supply us with baking[1]. She will be coming back to work after she's sorted out day care. It was good to see her—but I feel wuite bad that I haven't had time to finish sorting out her office after the shuffle. There isn't even a working computer on her desk; it's on the floor.

I have also managed to be very productive with my evenings this week (after doing hardly anything at the weekend). Yesterday, I cleaned the bbq to go away for the winter. It hasn't been used since Easter. I also tightened all the bolts, so it should feel much less wobbly now. Today I glued the wobbly dining room chair; made a very plain poster to go up in Wargames Supplies advertising for GMs for Confusion 9/2011; advertised Confusion 9/2011 at wellingtonrpg; and I went to my last German class for this term. Three weeks' holiday, and I really must do more practice than I have for the last few weeks!

Tomorrow, I have to write my kiwifandomsfest fic because it's due on Thursday. I have been thinking about it, but haven't put fingers to keyboard for it yet. And having just checked, I see that practically all the copies of the source book are on loan at the library... oh well, I didn't want to imitiate Mahy's style anyway, and not having the source will help with that.

Thursday is gaming and Friday night is currently free, but it needs to be early because Saturday is Indoorpendence and Saturday night is my work mid-year. Alice: The Madness Returns will have to wait until Sunday.

Plus I keep forgetting the dates of the rugby world cup and keep running into events/prices/timetables that are affected by it. Dammit.

Oh, and it's shark week. Joy.

[1] a very familiar recipe to me: Diana's chocolate-caramel brownie.

Had a very good evening out on Friday at Fangirl Friday (which ended with ariadne83 and I talking til midnight over several bottles of riesling) and learned that I should not have affrogato at 8.30 or 9.00pm or whenever it actually was, because the coffee in it does make a difference to how I sleep.

This, and the cold that promptly hit, meant that despite the wine I slept appallingly and was awake by 8.30am yesterday—much earlier than I prefer to be at the weekend. It was cold, so I lit the fire, and pretty much spent the day in the lounge, drinking lemon, honey & ginger, then graduating onto the lemsip max stuff. I think I igored the recommendations about how much you should drink, but I'm not sure. Felt pretty miserable all day and went to bed early.

I did make chicken noodle soup though, which was exactly what I wanted by the time it was done, and there are leftovers for lunch today.

Today is shaping up to be worse. So far, it's not as cold outside, but at the moment, that's about all it has going for it.

Before I started this meta data project, I hadn't realised just quite how many books there are in a series whose title ends in "Death" (I'm not even talkking about J.D. Robb either).

I think it might be time for a cup of coffee—I strongly suspect at least some of my headache is due to caffeine deprivation—and possibly then a nap. maudlinrose has promised to bring in more firewood later today.

EDIT: so it turns out that I am addicted to caffeine and felt much better after having a cup of coffee. Yeah. Still feel tired and miserable, but at least I am clean, dressed and have eaten lunch.

The food show was at the Westpac Stadium this weekend and I decided that the best time to go was after church today. tamarillow was in Tawa for lunch and maudlinrose had to write an assignment, so I went by myself. It was quite a different experience compared to going with someone and I missed being able to share the experience. I think it meant I moved faster—I tended to get impatient with the crowds at some of the stalls more easily and I was done in about two and a half hours.

The only thing I wish I'd gone back for was the smoked garlic carmelised balsamic vinegar. I did taste an even better caramelised balsamic vinegar, but it was about twice the price, even at food show prices.

I resisted pretty much everything we already had in the house. The only thing I didn't resist was some of the Cow Collective yoghurt, because they were doing 3 for $10 and it tastes amazing. I got the black plum (probably my favourite flavour), the mango, and plain.

In no particular order, I also bought sheep's milk parmesan; basil pesto, sun dried tomato pesto, tomato and olive pesto (3 for $10 again); 3 flavours of harvarti in one block; a very sharp cheddar for maudlinrose; 2 packets of feta-stuffed pepperdews and one of olives in balsamic vinegar (another 3 for $10); and a bottle of scrumpy. I also took away a card for the Doctors rieslings (since they'd sold out), and a free Sunday Star Times.

And if I see Piako lemon curd frozen yoghurt in the supermarket, I want to buy some. They didn't have any containers for sale, but were doing mini-ice creams for $1. I had a cone and it was really good. I was quite disappointed that they didn't have any containers for sale. tamarillow will be interested to note that they also do feijoa.

maudlinrose made us a beef roast for dinner—I'd forgotten how good roasts are. It's been ages since we last had one. They suit the cooler weather, and after the cold snap at Easter, it just hasn't been cold enough. I don't even have flannel sheets on my bed, and I usually put them on the last couple of weeks in May! I have lit the fire tonight and the lounge is snuggly warm.

Am making progress on the meta-data. Some of them are rather annoying to find the meta data for, and I solved this by deleting the annoying ones (Buffy & Angel novelisations which I will never read) and all the Anne Rice. For some reason, a search for Anne Rice also brought up Crown of Stars by Robert Jordan...

I spent my weekend playing Settlers II (and completing the entirity of level 8), catching up on housework and adding ebooks to Calibre. I don't feel the need to play Settlers for a while - probably a month or so. Ebooks are still being added, but I think I have managed to get all the ones that were causing the program to hang. Now, to check and edit the metadata on all 10,000 plus of them.

I have also been catching up on Camelot ( (spoilers) )

Happy birthday factioncat!

So it turns out that sometimes I can make chocolatey things that are too rich for eating in one go. I made a chocolate fudgy mousse from Stephanie's Cook's Companion for dessert last night (it a) not having cream, b) not needing cooling then icing, and me not having all the ingreidents for exiledinpn's flourless chocolate brownies). It doesn't have very many ingredients - chocolate, 4 eggs, unsalted butter and a tiny bit of sugar.

I served it in maudlinrose's big wine glasses—the ones that hold about half a bottle of wine each. The mousse would have been maybe a quarter of the glass; none of us finished it. Done again, I would serve it in something much smaller to more people, possibly with a tiny amount of vanilla ice cream.

The mousse followed a delicious mushroom risotto. I got a half-full supermarket bag of mushrooms from one of my workmates, so I still have some to play with. Guess what we're having for dinner tomorrow night?

And boosting the signal: LiveJournal's DDoS and Russian Politics. This is why I'm not as enraged about livejournal's outages as I would be otherwise.

If you're thinking about shifting over to dreamwidth, I have a couple of codes to give away—let me know if you're interested.

Turns out that none of us particularly care for thai green curry made from the Continental range green curry paste. tamarillow found it too hot, I found it too sharp and maudlinrose found it both too hot and too sharp. As such, if anyone local would like a mostly full jar of the paste, it's going free to a good home where it will be willingly consumed. Let me know if you want it.

Fortunately, the green curry wasn't the main part of our meal. I made the thai fishcakes that I've made many times before and decided that I should use up the remaining fish and coconut cream with a just under half mixture. I didn't mind the green curry once I got used to it, but I do prefer red curries.

Today I also made these black pepper biscuits. There's hardly any pepper in them, they were quite fun to make, and I think they would be excellent with chilli instead of black pepper. Oh, and it makes heaps. I must find where I put my print out of the recipe, because I generally try not to use my laptop as a recipe book.

Also I cooked stuff on the bbq both nights, so that makes me happy.

For all that I have managed to cook and bake and do laundry and ironing and whatnot this weekend, I have spent a remarkable amount of time napping. It's been lovely and sunny, so yesterday I napped on and off on the deck in the sun, and today I napped on and off on the floor of the lounge in the sun (until it got too hot). Had hardly any energy yesterday and only a bit more today. I just hope that it doesn't turn into the chest infection that sent one of my authors home on Thursday and kept her off on Friday (at doctor's orders).

There is nothing quite like sliding into fresh clean crisp cotton sheets, unless it's sliding into warm soft fuzzy flannel sheets, and last night I got to do the former. Clean sheets are one of the small joys in life.

So, given that I've had the last few to myself, I ended up doing things instead. On Saturday, I filled in for the Cyberpunk LARP—the Ch'akta Peace Accords.

( I was Moriah Beau, a xenobiologist... )

Then a group of us went out afterward (I totally bought into purplesparkler's assertion that Sunday is a day of rest from Lent and after midnight totally counted as Sunday), which mean after I got home at 2am and to sleep around 3am and then got up again around 8am for church since I was helping out, I kinda regretted it. Not enough that I wouldn't do it again, but I did feel somewhat delicate and had two cups of coffee and a cup of tea before lunch...

Had lunch with some of my age group from church, which was nice; I haven't seen most of them for ages, and it was good to catch up.

Then it was out to the Kilbirnie Festival, since I'd said that I would help out collecting for the Red Cross' Christchurch Appeal. rincewindtvd was there too, and F drove us back to Northland. We went in for a cup of tea and stayed for a bbq after S & S invited us up for dinner. Got home around 8.30, had a shower and more or less collapsed for the night.

Tonight was the regular social grade frisbee game. It was rather windy tonight, which meant for a very low-scoring game. We played Ultimowarriors (I think—Ultimo something, anyway), who are mostly new players. I swear one of the points took half the game. It was fun though, and I was happier with how I played than I have been for a while.