Is gloriously sunny today.
Made lemon and spinach risotto and Loud made a poppy seed cake last night.
Yummy.
Thai green chicken curry tonight I think.
8:04:00 PM

 
Fee-nicks
Tried to have an early-sleep-catch-up-night on Friday, but instead stayed up till 5am reading Harry Potter from start to finish. Blargh.

Sated-day
Got up at midday, and headed off for yum-cha almost immediately. Went with Loud and Muso (her new boy who's been just-a-friend for ages until these exciting new developments, also known as Sean), and Wry-Guy, Hippy, and Ursula. Took a train into town and wandered into a restaurant near Chinatown and ate and ate. Afterward we went for lovely free beer-tasting (again, my second time). And apparently had some geek conversation which the Muso later commented on as possibly slightly intimidating (vaguely recall something about scientific philosophy). But again, didn't get to hang around much afterward, we went straight to a combined art-opening-muso-gig where Sean was playing. The venue was quite intimate. There was free wine and champagne and a rather nice cheese platter. The art was by a few different people, and had some quite organic photography, some swirly hippy acrylics, and some black ink life paintings with quite nice form and chiaroscuro.
6:42:00 PM

 
Housemate Wry-(Wise)-Guy just came back from Thailand, so he's been telling us lots of funny stories.

On Wednesday (after a rather stressful start to the week when I had a report due and also had to make a little presentation on the other project) we ended up having a bit of a welcome-back house dinner. I made crispy spicy yoghurt marinated grilled chicken wings, Wiseguy made a Shepherd's Pie, Loud made a salad, and she and I also made a Pear and Hazelnut Cake (they called it a pudding in the recipe) for dessert (yes! dessert in the middle of the week! decadence!). The Hippy didn't actually cook (shock!). (Naif is away in the country). We ate heaps and polished off a few bottles of red. Am quite fond of the McWilliams-Hanwood oeuvre at the moment.
11:04:00 PM

 

hmmm, am having 3rd coffee now, hope it's not too late in the day. Had two yesterday and had a really restless night - although that could've been the dodgy takeaway I had for dinner...

10:11:00 PM

 

urgh - and the officemate just sprayed insecticide. yuk. just for ants! oh wow - this window opens!

7:20:00 PM

 
Whinges

-sigh- might be a three-coffee day today

what is up with my back? is a crackin' and poppin' all the live-long-day...

why are there ants all over my desk?

uh-oh - meeting tomorrow, may have to make mini-presentation...

that report which is "due at the end of the month" is actually due tomorrow :P

7:05:00 PM

 
Weekend nice. Flew by again. Tried to get to bed early Friday night and catch up on sleep, but with one thing and another didn't make it till past midnight. Saturday was nice and lazy. With the HP5 launch (which Loud and friend Retro went to at 8:45am! and brought back the spoils - am in line to borrow Loud's copy), the living room was a serene island of read-itude. In the breaks we made sticky date cupcakes (yes, the ones from the pukkhead's book) - so so easy. I finally finished The Years of Rice and Salt and should post a review or something... soon... Then it was suddenly 16:30, and Loud and I had to get to the end of our local produce market for some bargains (have been meaning to check this out for weeks). We snagged a stack of veggies, plus some fish, and when we got back to the house inveigled the other housemates to join us for a house dinner. Somehow things came together (despite 5 of us in the kitchen) and The Naif made (my! kind of...) chicken and avocado soup, and the Hippy and Loud and I lightly fried the fish in soy, garlic, ginger and spring onion, and also stirfried some onion, carrot, broccoli, squash and bokchoy in a sweet chilli sauce. The Hippy also made some rice with lentils, and Retro and I roasted some pumpkin and potatoes. We were joined by the Muso and the Vintner and ate heaps and polished off a few bottles of white and could barely manage cupcakes for dessert. There was much love in da house. Like, group hugs in the kitchen and everything. It was really quite disgusting.
12:29:00 AM

 
But!

Baked banana bread on Tuesday.

Wed, had nice (big!) Greek dinner on the govt.

Came home to chocolate bread baked by Hippy.

Went and saw some live music last night in hippie-burb.

Met lots of nice people (friends of Loud).

I can cook-up tonight.

Nu-breed and a boogie tomorrow night.

Could convince myself it's time for some retail therapy.

And could catch up on sleep this weekend!

1:12:00 AM

 
-Sigh-

end of the working week.

should def try and do some work on weekend :P

have been in a workshop since wed.

was good, but...

have first deadline in 2 weeks (report due).

informed about it last friday.

haven't had a chance to do anything for/about it.

and have meeting for other project next week i should prepare for.

hm.

1:10:00 AM

 
Schlep
Worked out the bread-machine and made a sundried tomato, olive and parmesan loaf all by myself. Had to finish it in the oven also. Wonder if it usually underbakes? Hung out and read in the living room with the Hippy and also had a nap. Then over to E&M's and with them and Munted, Babe, Candy, Detective and SomewhatFamiliar watched _The Animatrix_ on DVD over a Ginger and Chocolate Jagermeister cocktail that E concocted. Home to have chickpea and brown rice pilaf, eggplant curry, dhal, Heineken, and fruit and seed loaf with Loud and Laidback.
11:13:00 PM

 
Slop
Bonded with The Hippy(-Stresspot-GymJunkie) on Saturday morning with a spot of baking. We made a delicious zesty orange cake with a tangy citrus butter sauce, AND she showed me how to use her bread-machine! We made an apricot and sultana loaf, which turned out beautifully. Unfortunately, in the process, she played with the machine settings and the recipe and the mixing and kneading and even the baking (finishing it in the oven) that afterward I really didn't have a clue how to use it. But we had a lovely leisurely arvo in the kitchen eating and talking and having the other housemates come in and sit down and talk and join us in eating cake and fresh bread.

Little sister's boy (LSB) also joined us, bringing over a futon fold-out couch and additional accoutrements to complement everything he and the LS dropped last weekend (another fridge - which is very useful, don't know how 5+ people can survive in one fridge, a microwave, assorted kitchen stuff (tupperware! yay!, crockery, mixing bowls, muffin trays), a real tv table - as opposed to an upended recycling crate, picnic chairs, coffee tables, and a heap of food! - why haven't I blogged this before? oh yeah, had field trip last week). The housemates liked him a lot. Amongst many other things, we talked a bit about how darned good-looking the LS is. Have heard this a LOT since my housewarming, from the housemates, plus a fair few random friends. Have also had many comments on generally how impressed people were with her, I think from her profession and her resulting ability to convincingly debunk CSI, but let's just stick with the shallow and superficial :) ... Loud(-Extrovert) left for her night out in the country, then The Hippy and The Naif had to go study. So LSB and I went for a drink round the corner at Revolver. Have been meaning to check this place out since I got here, and heard that a friend had spotted one of my friends that I'd fallen out of touch with working behind the bar. So I finally made it, and found it larger and a little grungier than expected. My friend wasn't working though. As with many local haunts (although perhaps it's more Fitzroy than Prahran), they favour the mismatched comfy old couch setup. We had a couple of beers, stopped by a bottle-o to pick up a 6pack, and rushed off to the train station, late to meet E&M in town. We made it into the main train station half an hour after I said I'd meet them to go to my friend D's winterfaire party. Naturally they weren't there, and feeling incredibly guilty, we hopped on a tram to the party. As I boarded, who do I spot getting on the rear doors of the tram? Yes, E&M were massively late also! *phew*
10:49:00 PM

 
Flip
So the contemporary dance thingo (Bush) by the aboriginal dance group (Bhangara Dance Theatre) on Friday was really really good. They used various parts of their Creation story. I liked the Goanna's (also somewhat Moloch-like) the best, especially when they first crawled out of the wall, although the also reptilian Slitherer was also very cool.

Went with housemate P and three of her friends whom she used to live with. So the evening kind of started off with a somewhat amusing high-frequency buzz as they caught up and exchanged the latest, before they wound down a bit. There was a funky cool edgy one, a funny geeky individualistic one, and a laidback retro sarcastic one. They were all very nice. We had dinner beforehand at "Brown Sugar" in a beautiful little cobbled lane in the city. The food was kind of average though. Went to a bar-cafe called "Sahara" afterward - upstairs from one of those ubiquitous random doors in the wall which you never notice unless you know about it and which are all over this city.
10:37:00 PM

 
Have a good weekend all!
11:04:00 PM

 
Perdido Street Station was quite enjoyable. As lo-ol mentioned, nicely weird. Interesting setting and world-building, not over-explained. Possibly not quite living up to the hype (do I need to qualify that as "the hype I encountered"?). The ending had some closure, but not full Disneyesque-all-loose-ends-tied up-closure. Am pretty sure the next book Mieville (accent in there somewhere) brought out wasn't a sequel though. Whilst in the field I started The Mill on the Floss (George Eliot), which has a very nice turn of phrase, and I'm finding quite amusing on the micro-scale. On the overall plot scale though, it's a bit slow.

Returned Perdido.. to the library yesterday, one day overdue - I had to pay a *fine*! Fifteen Cents! The Outrage! :) So on the train this morning, started The Years of Rice and Salt which is also from the library, and I might leave Floss for spare moments (borrowed from HM P - pretty sure she won't charge me a fine).
4:54:00 PM

 
Field trip went quite smoothly. Measured, sampled, processed, logged. Was threatened with rain while on potentially treacherous clay 4WD track, but it held off. Sneakers got a nice solid coat of clay, wonder if they'll recover?
4:41:00 PM

 
Back from another 4 day field trip. Did 6.5 hours driving today. Fun-fun! (Not too bad really - but didn't get to listen to my music (tapes), had Triple-j most of the way instead, which was ok). Argh. Too much to do. But going home now.
12:06:00 AM

 
Finished Diggers and Wings, so can start Perdido..., properly now...
6:21:00 PM

 
Uh-oh. Think I'm coming down with something :P
6:17:00 PM

 
Driving in this morning (had a work car) took me 35 minutes. How long does it take me to get here on public transport? 35 minutes!
4:30:00 PM

 
Hm... Workshop out in the mountains went well. Drive wasn't too long. Only got lost a little bit.
4:30:00 PM

 
It feels like it's taking me much much longer than normal to get through books at the moment. But it may have just been a dud couple of train-reading choices, Haystack a while ago, and then The blind watchmaker (R. Dawkins), which I finally finished last week. Didn't think it was very good. I quite liked The selfish gene, but this later book didn't seem to have any new ideas, and there was all this patronizing and immature sniping at other groups (eg. Punctuated Equilibrists, not just Creationists), while attempting to appear all objective. I also got a little annoyed at his constant use of not particularly apt analogies, rather than just describing the science directly. This was a little ironic, as quite early in the book he uses a quote about overuse of analogies.

Also finally got around to reading Truckers (Pratchett), and it was as good as hoped (not a disappointment). In a yen for Kim Stanley Robinson's newish tome The years of rice and salt (darn! online catalogue says it's available now, but I already have 4 books out), I also devoured some of his other stuff which the on-campus library had, and which I hadn't heard of previously: the novella A short sharp shock and the short story collection Down and out in the year 2000. Unfortunately, I didn't find they compared well to his novels - they went for all atmosphere and taste and feeling and not for interesting science and speculation. The on-campus library also has a couple of Gerald Durrell books which I hadn't managed to come across, and for which I have nostalgic feelings from my childhood, so I just read Encounters with animals. Happily, on-campus-lib also had China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, about which I've seen some good reviews, and which I've just started. Damn. There's just too much out there.
10:01:00 PM

 
Feed
Friday night we were supposed to go see a film at the cinema around the corner, but instead I hung out with HM P and her cuz D. We went to dinner at a funky modern Malaysian restaurant down the road, which was quite reasonably priced considering the area we're in. They tried to teach me a bit of Hindi. [Oh yeah, almost forgot, after dinner we tried a cosy new pub which has just opened like in the last week, a block from us, it's our new local, it's like a house someone's just converted - quite posh, lots of dark polished wood, fireplaces, leather couches and stools, velvet curtains, dj's]. We tried out a local club afterward, but it was early and somewhat quiet. So instead we went to the inner city apartment of M, another cuz of P and D's, where he was hanging with some friends, and where we were plied with Bombay Sapphire and a bit of Bhangara. Got way too trashed. Don't remember some of taxi ride home. Went back to club and danced off the alcohol. Was good.

Sleep
Slept all Saturday. Got up for The House Dinner. Unfortunately, J (the foodie) had family stuff and couldn't make it. Went for a grocery shop with P. Home and made _Caramelised Red Onion, Mushroom and Goat Cheese Tart_, and a _Chocolate Loaf with Chocolate Orange Sauce_ for dessert. Both from my Birthday Cookbook, The Organic Cookbook by Ysanne Spevack (thanks L!), and they both turned out really well (well, ok, scorched the edges of my loaf, oven not too well calibrated J says). P made her First Risotto Ever, a very nice asparagus and mushroom affair. I and M seared swordfish steaks with a tomato and basil sauce. The kitchen was a hive of activity. We shared a bottle of Penfolds cab-merlot and a bottle of aged (8 years!) chardonnay (M's studying viticulture). Managed to make it out to a birthday party at pub afterward. Caught up with the birthday boy, met a few of his friends and made talk, but wasn't feeling very social, and stayed a bit less than an hour.

Shop
Managed to get up by midmorning, and went for a shop at St Kilda markets and Acland St with P, looking for interesting sendable birthday presents. Managed to find a couple of small things. Stopped off and checked out a community garden on the way. Also had coffee and cake at one of the famous Acland St cake shops. Home and made a chocolate pudding from pukkhead's book. It had a whole orange in the middle. While it was steaming for two hours (!) made pasta with yoghurt and smoked salmon and Heaps of Dill. Yay dill! (HMI got a stack of bargain-basement herbs at close of markets on Saturday evening).

Pudding turned out beautifully. Looked really good. Tasted rather nice too. And went really well with chocolate orange sauce of Saturday night! Took some over to E&M&P&A's, and they gave me wine and borscht. We watched The Iron Giant, cutesy, but tolerable.
7:10:00 PM