nishatalitha

thesane is here. We have spent a lot of time doing handwork and talking. It's good to see her again. I also made hot cross buns (but kept most of the dough to use on Sunday).

For this winter, we ordered an entire cord (about 3.6m2) of mixed gum and pine. It arrived this evening. We spent the next hour or two stacking it in the garage. It turns out that a cord is a lot of wood - about twice what we had last winter. Admittedly, last winter we had to be somewhat frugal with it at times, but still!

I have finished level 7 of Settlers II. I feel quite pleased about this (and at the same time kinda annoyed about this level in particular because I won by capturing the gateway, rather than capturing the gateway and world domination).

Livejournal have given me an extra two weeks paid time because of the recent DDoS issues, although interestingly the time limit for my icons has not extended...

I have one more day of holiday and the weekend and then it's back to work for me. Since I finished Perdito Street Station (one of my to-read list these holidays), I clearly haven't been reading anything with a high enough level of mental challenge, as I'm actually starting to look forward to the work.

Not the getting up early, I should note.

I was asked to come into work for a bit this afternoon to do a couple of bits and pieces that could not wait (client needed it by tomorrow). Work will make this time up to me. I also went in last Sunday for a couple of hours (unpaid) to clear my desk some, since it will be crazy-busy when I get back on Monday.

Haven't done much handwork, but have watched a bit of M*A*S*H and random other tv, and read a lot of fic (been working backwards through my delicious account reading anything on it that takes my fancy and deleting some of the to-read tag).

Spent half an hour on the Terrace on the way home today, what with traffic, and got home to find the weather had turned to a light misty attempt at rain. Nonetheless, I refused to be put off my plans for dinner (barbeque) and went ahead regardless and it was good.

Dinner consisted of shrimp in a Cantonese marinade as a starter around 7.30pm for maudlinrose and myself, since tamarillow was working until 8.00pm; and for mains, once she got home, edamame with a ginger/rice wine vinegar and sugar/sesame oil dipping sauce, chicken on a stick in a thai coridander marinade, mushrooms lightly bbq'd in the remains of the shrimp mariade, plain white rice, and a green salad (well, lettuce, red capsicum and blueberries) with an asian style dressing. We have some leftovers of all except the shrimp.

The Cantonese marinade was perhaps a bit overpowering for the shrimp, but tasty nonetheless - I think it would be better if done as a stirfry and egg noodles mixed in at the end. The edamame dipping sauce is something I really like. The thai-coriander marinade tasted very strongly of the lime juice that was the base and I'm quite glad I added the extra teaspoon of sugar. The other flavours were more noticable when the outside was turning black - something to keep in mind. The aisan style salad dressing tasted a bit strongly of fish sauce (a key ingredient) and I will be interested to try it with a salt-reduced fish sauce when we've finished our current bottle of the stuff.

The various recipes came from a couple of Annabelle Langbein's cookbooks.

I have just finished a mug of hot chocolate which I adulterated with caramel flavouring, about half a teaspoon cinnamon and a quarter teaspoon each of mixed spice and powdered chilli. It was good.

Walked into town most days this week for various reasons and here are assorted pictures:

( click for the pretty )

I have burninated food for the first time this season. It was good. Dinner was pork marinaded in bought orange and saffron aeoli, shrimp lightly marinaded in thai coriander and chilli dressing, chargrilled orange capsicum, baked potato and garlic bread. It was good.

Ankle and knee are doing much better. I definitely got the nerve somewhere in my knee - there's a patch where the skin in numb. Bruising is showing up on the ankle, but for all the damage and pain, there's remarkably little to show for it. Is this what it's like to not bruise easily?

I spent most of my day sitting on the couch in the lounge marathoning the end of season three Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was pretty good. Now for fic.

We have started planning our menu for Christmas, trying desperately not to overcater. We're not very good at not overcatering. There are so many good ideas for food... I will be making my Gran's cheesecake again, because that cheesecake is a thing of glory.

maudlinrose made fudge this evening. It is good.

Comrademojo came around this morning and endeavoured to set up a wireless network for us (me having managed to mess the router up last night). He was partially sucessful - I now have wireless cable and maudlinrose has cable through the cable. tamarillow's computer did not take well to having a wireless network card installed and now doesn't want to get to Windows OS.

I also assembled a BBQ today (Dad having won it and not needing it, handed it over to me), which is a three burner and has side rests so that I'm not constantly looking around for where I put my tools. Cooked onions, potato and kumera wedges and pork steak on it tonight and it was good. Very good. And we were then able to eat at the table kindly given to us by my workmate MQM (in exchange for a dozen or so boxes and some beer). It is so good to eat at a table again!

New calendar has been hung and I even remembered to transfer over birthdays and anniversarys, heavy mirror has been hung (on hooks that are supposed to take up to 35 kgs) and general placement for art has been worked out, which will probably be hung tomorrow.

General plans for the week: call Telecom and say thanks, but no thanks for the free dial-up, we've switched to Telstra due to your lack of ability to provide us with broadband and it's working out well for us so far; read; do crossstitch - I'd like to finish Winter by the time I go back to work and made a reasonable start on Spring; cook more on my new BBQ.

It's good to be on holiday.