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. ;)