Long Weekend

Pretty uneventful for a long weekend. Yummy food and beer, jogging as a result of yummy food and beer, cookie baking, bread baking, the food show, dehydration, headache, new 30th Anniversary edition of The Princess Bride (book), shopping, laundry, laundry, and humidity.

Friday was pretty eventful. I went to Helen's house early to bake cookies and bread. It was an almost failed attempt at the cookies, probably because we were using whole wheat flour instead of white flour. And they were really sweet. I'm not sure what sort of cookie recipe doesn't have eggs, but uses sweetened condensed milk... they were AWER#@$SA$@#AS WAAAZAA SHAZAM!!! sweet.

From Helen's, Travis picked me up and we went to the Horse & Trap for my half-birthday dinner. I am now officially 28.5, and celebrated with their Monteith's Pairing Special: One Capital Bird

Pork, kawakawa & horopito-coated ostrich, pastry wrapped & baked, bush vegetables & rich reduction.

Matched with: Monteith's Celtic

WOW. Decadent. We also ordered the worst calamari I've ever had. It was so chewy that we were afraid of flinging it on each other when we ate it.

However, the atmosphere was nice, the (other) food was divine, the beer was great, and we just had a lovely time.

(Then we went home, Travis went straight to bed, and I finished up the work I didn't do in the afternoon when I was baking cookies).

The next day required me to go for an hour-long jog. My whole trip was 7.1km, but I probably ran for 5k. My goal is to run 7km non-stop in 2 weeks. Can I do it? I don't know. I'll have to actually go running again. Today looks like a fine day to go for a jog. Jogging up to the top of Mt. Eden is lovely because from there you can see for up to 50km in every direction on a clear day. It's gorgeous. And I can run to the top of it in about 25 minutes from my house. Oh yes, that was an aside.

The rest of Saturday was pretty crap. Travis doesn't want me to re-live it because he said I look "not my best" when I crinkle up my face in a scowl. Saturday afternoon was a definite scowl day. I thought, "A lovely day to wander around the mall." Except I couldn't get to the mall because there was nowhere to park at St. Luke's. Pshhaaah. After driving around that area for 20 minutes, I decided that I'd just go to Pak N Save for groceries since it was just a little further down New North Road. I ended up always being in the wrong lane and turning the opposite way I wanted to. I ended up at Pak N Save (after blocking pedestrian traffic because I couldn't turn right into their parking lot since it was full as well. I FINALLY got in. And once I was in, the traffic inside the grocery store was worse than in the parking lot. I thought I was going to lose it. I didn't get half the items I wanted because I suck at manovering myself with my giant shopping cart through the throngs of people, kids, old people, and all of their shopping carts, too. I'm getting worked up just thinking about it. I shopped, I paid, I left, I got home (talked to Malcolm on the street at an intersection - it's fun running into people I know randomly in the street!), and could not for the life of me get into the car park. Our remote died. This was the icing on the cake. I lost it. I must commend Travis for how he handled the situation (ie: ME). Now that all the whining and scowly faces are over, and he made a few calls, and calmed me down, we have a new remote for the car park. SIGH.

Sunday was the food show. Lots of little bits of food. I learned how to properly pour a perfect Stella Artois beer. Helen and I ended up in an amateur Stella Pouring competition. Don't ask me how that happened. It was our first time pouring beer. My first time pouring beer from a tap EVER, so I think I did pretty well. But the Stella pouring regime is very particular, and there are pouring competitions all over the world. I ruined one step - the pouring step. HHAHA I ended up with too much head (3 fingers instead of 2). But Helen had slightly more than me, and I ended up winning. What did I win? My beer. Helen got her beer, too. And Malcolm got the tester that the bartenders made when showing us (once) how to make it. It was very fun.

I began reading my 30th Anniversary Edition of The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I've already read the book about 6 or 7 times. I've written (at least one) book report on it in highschool, and used phrases for it for my voice class, and used the character names to name my computer and its hard drives. I've seen the movie more times than I can count. This edition of the book includes the first chapter of the story of "Buttercup's Baby"... (as did the 25th anniversary edition), but this book builds on that as well. In Goldman's original "retelling" he uses his son as a character in the book. In this edition, he uses his grandson. It is his grandson's 10th birthday, and his wish is to visit Florin. Goldman and his grandson, Willy, go to Florin - the birthplace of S. Morgenstern. They go to the Morgenstern Museum so Goldman can do research for the "good parts" version of Buttercup's Baby (also supposedly written by S. Morgenstern). He makes reference to Stephen King, and says that he is of Florinese decent and is on a first-name basis with the curator of the Morgenstern Museum. (That is as far as I've gotten so far, because I ended up reading Buttercup's Baby first.) I love the fact that with every edition of this book, Goldman adds more to the story. I'm really looking forward to finishing the intro to this book. :)

Today I will go to my third Cast Glass Class. :) My first cast glass attempt looks something like what a 6-year-old makes out of clay. I'm not quite sure why I keep fooling myself into thinking I'm a creative person when I continually make "art" that has no creativity involved and looks quite juvenile. I think I like it because it's fun and I learn new things. The outcome, for me, seems to be irrelevant. That's beside the point. I have one completed cast glass piece, and it is beautiful. It is blue and green. It was holding my earrings (at one point), and now (for some reason) is sitting on the arm of the chair behind me. Lovely place for a large hunk of glass, I'd say. Last week we "finished" our first glass pieces (sanded bits down), and then we got to play with clay and wax. We learned how to make initial wax sculptures - we'll use the wax pieces to eventually turn them into our glass pieces.

Tomorrow the plan is to go see The Dark Knight at the IMAX. Sarah and I are very excited. Travis isn't convinced that the movie is going to be any good despite all reviews of the movie being AWESOME.

I have to finish working this morning, and go for a jog. I did buy some weights so I can properly do my in-house workouts. I'm looking forward to that, too.

Hopefully I can find USB thingy so I can get the pictures off Travis's camera... I haven't added pictures in MONTHS. Bad Amy. ;)

The Forgotten Weeks

I've been slacking when it comes to blog posts lately. Here's a run-down of the past weeks' adventures:

1. Attended BarCamp Auckland 2 on Saturday, July 12. It's a mini, one-day web conference for web geeks. No, it's not a LAN party, like some of my friends thought. That's just WAY too geeky.


2. Went to 2 films at the Auckland Film Festival - Be Kind Rewind with Jack Black and Mos Def, and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Be Kind Rewind was awesome, Gonzo wasn't as good as we had hoped.


3. We started playing netball - we're called The Nomads. We play on Thursday evenings. We're crap, but it's fun. Lost both games so far. Oh well.


4. I started my Cast Glass Class on Tuesday. It's really fun. When I get my first casting out of the kiln, I'll definitely post pictures.


5. I've lost a total of 2kg since the end of May. Not fast enough of my liking since I have another 10kg to go. REALLY looking forward to summer. I've been doing Jillian Michaels 30-Day Shred workout video. I'm FINALLY on level 3, but it's kicked my ass pretty good. It's a 25 minute work out, but holy crap it's a good one. (3 workouts, one video)


6. Bought a white 1992 Honda Civic last Sunday. It's cute. It smells inside, but I'm trying to solve that problem with baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, and anything else I can get my hands on. Anyone have solutions to a smelly car problem?


7. Went for a hike at Muriwai Beach one Sunday afternoon. That was GORGEOUS even though we were only there an hour.


8. Today is supposed to be the storm of the century.... but Travis thinks they're crying wolf. It's rained for about 5 hours straight so far, but there aren't 100km winds like they were predicting. However, in the 10 minutes since I wrote that last sentence, the wind has picked up SIGNIFICANTLY, and there have been gusts up to, I'd say, about 50-60km/hr. Just gusts, though... I guess one gust is all you need to uproot a tree and knock out a power line.


9. Travis attended a Pohiri at the Marae on Wednesday. He would have to explain what that is because I wasn't there and don't know what was involved.


10. Travis started his own blog for his research projects.


11. Both of us got new, spiffy business cards


12. I tried a herbal detox cleanse... you know, kidney, liver, bowel cleanse with pills and powders and crap. Well, I detoxed myself right into a nasty cold, and I'm still getting over the cold. I did 5 days of the cleanse.... then I stopped. I'll do the other 2 days some other time, when I've recovered from my icky cold.

Things to look forward to in the next few weeks:

• More cast glass class


• More netball games


• More jogging/working out for Amy to lose another 10kg


• Travis going back to Canada for a month :(


• Watching The Dark Knight at the IMAX

SO COLD

Right now it's 8 degrees and raining outside, and it's about 13 degrees inside. BOO. Travis has the space heater at his office, still. A lot of good it does there when I'm freezing my ass off in here. I'm wearing a toque, wool socks, BIG wool sock/slippers, tank top, wool sweater with hood, scarf and jeans. And two blankets (I'm working on the couch). Brrrrrrrrrr.



I'm working in town today - at the "Upper Queen Residence", and I've attempted to block out the draft with our draft-blocker thingy.... long plush lion. Anywhoo, I just received my merino wool hand/arm warmers in the mail today - I ordered them online - and it's so much more comfortable to work. I've gotta break them in, yet. I don't quite have the keyboard span I used to without them on. Oh well. My hands are warmer.

The Christmas party was a success, in my opinion. Lots of food, lots of drink, lots of laughs, and lots of really disgusting conversation. We kept coming back to really hideous topics... but we played games and opened gifts and a good time was had by all... at least that's what they told the hostess. ;)

Travis is busy working today after some busy days last week and a fairly relaxing weekend. I'm also busy working, but taking a break to write this post to describe how stupidly freezing I am.

Weekend full of Baking and Stuff

I made food for our upcoming Christmas in July party. Saturday was the shopping day, and Sunday was the "prepare the food" day.

I made the following:
Perogies (potato, cheese and onion, of course)
Inhaler Buns (grandma's recipe)
Cinnamon Buns
Nanaimo Bars

Just call me Baba Amy

Perogies. The first batch I made on Saturday weren't very good - I didn't add enough salt to the potato mix... tasted really blah. The batch I made on Sunday were excellent - I added more salt and grated "tasty" (aged cheddar) cheese rather than mostly cream cheese. Hopefully they cook up well.

Inhaler Buns. The outcome was WAY better than I had anticipated. I thought that I had ruined the buns due to an issue with the yeast - I used "Surebake Yeast", and I had to double the quantity as called for in the recipe due to it's unique makeup. I thought I had killed it, but no. It worked out just great! The buns were really damn close to the way grandma's taste, so I guess I did good! YAY! My cinnamon buns didn't work as well, only because I stuffed too many of them in the pan. Oops. Travis calls them cinnamon bun roll-ups - they furiously unravel themselves. I'll have to make another small batch of those.

Nanaimo bars. The ones I made on Sunday were pretty close to the ones that Sarah and I made on Wednesday night. I was a bit too impatient and put the chocolate on top while it was still too warm, so it's quite thin. Oh well. I'm sure they'll taste just fine, even when I had to use crushed Arrowroot cookies instead of graham cracker crumbs. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, graham crackers don't exist outside of North America, so I had to do some research to find a suitable substitute.

THIS JUST IN!
I just put some brownies in the oven. Hopefully they're good.

And a thank you to Sarah for giving me my first apron. Awwww...