satisfactory

So, two weeks in, how's that no drinking on the weekends experiment going? I hear you ask.

Well, I've lost 5cm (2 inches) from my waist measurement.

5cm! In two weeks!

Given that I didn't go to the gym at all last week, due to that awful summer cold, I'm quite delighted. Hell, I'd be quite delighted if I had gone to the gym.

Makes me rather think I should revise the parameters if the results continue - perhaps restricting my consumption to special occasions, rather than an every weekend thing, especially as it is not nearly as arduous as I had imagined.

are you training her to be a sloth?

Dfkan had her first rental inspection on Monday, as such, a very good part of her weekend was spent cleaning and tidying her flat.

She was quite miffed that I had not instructed her more thoroughly in the housekeeperly arts, and sent me this link, so that I might see where I had gone wrong in the ways of raising her.

One of the comments:

Gretchen says:
November 20, 2008 at 1:36 pm

What an awesome blessing that you had a mother that took so much time and effort to train her children as your mother did. It is so lacking in today's society. I really had to learn from scratch how to be a wife and mother because my mother believed it more important to get an education than to cook and clean and learn how to care for a family and home.

Dfkan: "I can totally relate to Gretchen *sigh*.

Education and working aren't going to help me serve my future husband and God."


I'm sorry to fail you darling. If only I had trained you better, you might be married with two or three children by now.


Also, by golly, some people have interesting folkways, don't they?

i was rude, and i overreacted. i'm not used to men handing me diamonds over bowls of cereal

I think alcohol must have some sort of preservative effect, because I now have a cold. I've not had a cold for an age, perhaps the wine was keeping the germs at bay.

Okay, perhaps not.

Today, I kept my germs to myself and had a sick day. All I can say is that it's not really much fun having a sick day when you are actually sick (I prefer to use my sick leave to take the babies to the pool or to sneak out to lunch with Don).

I curled up on the couch and read a couple of books that Mom had left here after her reading-frenzied visit (she was here for 5 weeks and I estimate got through 5-10 books per week). Mom and I generally enjoy the same sort of crime genre stuff, so I figured I would plunge into the stash she kindly left for me.

I started with the authors I recognised and had read before - I'd didn't mind the Sue Grafton and Patty Cornwell (although neither have anything on the fabulous Ms Marsh). So then it was onto the rest of the stash, most of whom I'd never even heard of, let alone read. First off was Nora Roberts and if, unlike me, you know of her, you'll be rolling about laughing right about now ... I was expecting something crimes-ish / mysterys-ish and the blurb did nothing to dissuade me, secret buried for hundred years in dilapidated mansion, ghosts etc etc. Except, well ... here is a wee synopsis ...

The protagonist (dishy, wealthy, sensitive, male former lawyer who had recently broken off his engagement and thought he could never really, truly love anyone¹) purchased aforesaid dilapidated mansion with plans for restoration, met colourful, beautiful, untamed local chicky (who also, by amazing coincidence, thought she could never really, truly love anyone) and steamy romance ensued - all the while punctuated by the ghostly haunty happenings in dilapidated mansion. Thinking this was a crime novel, I kept, of course, waiting for the darstardly criminal racket that dishy protagonist and untamed local chicky would cleverly uncover (after which they might be kidnapped or held captive or other hijinks in that vein and cunningily free themselves etc etc).

Oh, how wrong I was.

You see, roughly 100 years before, the colourful, beautiful, untamed local maid (who, by another amazing coincidence, was an ancestor of colourful, beautiful, untamed local chicky) who married the very handsome and good son of the (now) dilapidated mansion, was raped and murdered by the very handsome and evil twin brother of the very handsome and good son of the (now) dilapidated mansion. Colourful, beautiful, untamed local maid's body was disposed of by the evil mother (of very handsome good and evil sons) and very handsome and evil twin brother. Afterward, evil mother (of very handsome good and evil sons) and very handsome and evil twin brother cast about the rumour that colourful, beautiful, untamed maid had run off with some dude more of her own class that she'd allegedly been doing on the side (although of course she hadn't - being faithful and virtuous and such) and very handsome and good son went on to kill himself by drowning in the local body of water.

Anyway, turns out that dishy, wealthy, sensitive, male former lawyer who had recently broken off his engagement and thought he could never really, truly love anyone was the reincarnation of the colourful, beautiful, untamed local maid. Yes, I did say reincarnation. Yes, I did say of the maid.

And of course, colourful, beautiful, untamed local chicky (not to be confused with her colourful, beautiful, untamed local maid ancestor - who, naturally, she looked exactly like) was the reincarnation of the very handsome and good son of (now) dilapidated mansion.

Of course they were!

Anyway, in a development was was really quite shocking, despite both being quite certain they could never love anyone, dishy, wealthy, sensitive, male former lawyer who had recently broken off his engagement and thought he could never really, truly love anyone and colourful, beautiful, untamed local chicky (who also, by amazing coincidence, thought she could never really, truly love anyone) fell in head over heels in love!

And then decided to get married!

Then amazingly the haunting stopped!

The End.



Yes, I had accidentally read a romance novel. I don't know if they are all this batshitcrazy, but by golly, I can't wait to get to the next one in the pile.


¹this really should have given away the genre if I had been paying attention.

no, i'm not a vegetarian1

This weekend saw <gasp> the beginning of my one month hiatus from drinking alcohol.

I'm attempting to see if my chub really is caused by plowing through a couple of bottles of wine of Fri, Sat, Sun evenings - because god knows I do enough exercise and eating right.

Well, that and every time I drink alcohol, I wake at 3am and cannot go back to sleep for an hour or so - leaving me very sluggish and rather grumpish in the morning.

The reactions of the people I've told are quite surprising - primarily, the reaction is one of horror. How could I do such a thing? How could I deprive myself? When I explain that there have been a couple of stretches of five years when I didn't drink at all (and not ages 0-5, or 5-10) they are completely aghast. I don't know what this says about the people I talk to. Anxious Mum refused to believe that I would last an evening (if anything was going to make me determined ...).

So far it has been pretty easy actually. Haven't even felt like a glass and it's not as though I have no access to it - we are quite well stocked, and Don isn't abstaining, but I haven't been tempted at all.

Still chubby, still waking up at 3am ...


¹Amazing how many people used to ask, "are you a vegetarian?" when I told them I didn't drink.

contagious: fin

Despite Joe/Frank's laptop being 10 days out of warranty, I tried emailing the seller just in case he might take pity on me and fix it (being that it was only just out of warranty), or failing that, give me a quote for repair.

Alas, the warranty thing didn't work (I really hadn't expected it would) and he said it would be far to expensive to bother with repairing.

Damn.

Would it be uncharitable to think he was hoping I would purchase a replacement laptop from him?

So, I reluctantly chalked it up to a life lesson (about buying second hand laptops from eBay) and did what I should have done in the first place: I lashed out and bought an Eee pc (and for only $297! Which is way cheaper than they were when I bought the T23). Joe/Frank can use it until the school laptops are rolled out later in the year and then the adorable wee Eee pc will be mine - bwahahaha. Everybody wins!

Still, I wasn't really satisfied with this conclusion, after all, I'd spent $300 on a second hand T23 that lasted a smidge over 3 months (of which 7 weeks were spent sitting turned off in the laptop bag).

So I thought about it for a whle and I googled. I found I had some RAM and a CPU left from when Fenton made the T20 frankenputer, years ago and swapped them out (well the RAM, the CPU was not the right size). No joy.

I thought about it some more and used my mad googling skillz some more and then found this: a fabulous forum thread about my exact issue! Apparently caused by a bit falling off the underside of the motherboard and which some very clever people had managed to resolve with soldering. I spent Saturday afternoon stripping it (a quite arduous task and not for the faint hearted!) and what do you know? The same bit had fallen off!

PIcked up a soldering iron this morning, Don-the-genius soldered it back on, I spent a good hour putting it back together and ... voila! One fixed and working perfectly T23!

So now we have a surfeit of laptops, which is 17 kinds of splendid!

.

hubris

I like to think that I can spell well^{1 2}.

Well, apart from the crazy typos that creep in here (and into my work correspondence and my private correspondence and my ...) - I didn't say I could proof-read well.

So it was with extreme chagrin that I discovered that I had been spelling superseded incorrectly for years. I'd been doing the archaic "superceded" thing.

Shit.

And not just spelling it in my head incorrectly, but in file names which everyone at Marie Celeste can see.

I don't think I can use the "well, it is the archaic spelling" excuse with any sort of conviction, particularly as I'm not one of those ren faire types.

After I discovered my idiocy, I hurriedly corrected as many as I could, however the ones in the read only shared drive are a bit of a loss. I'm hoping I can pretend that someone else named them.

Note to self: you're not half as clever as you think you are.



¹If you're thinking, "duh w.e.l.l." you can just stop right now.

²Who can forget when that crazy tool which assessed the mrs hardly blog as being at some sort of genius level? ... I've been looking for that post to link to on and off for about 3 hours now, and I'm stuffed if I can find it. I did find that my original image host is cactus though - which is unfortunate for everyone ... okay, unfortunate for me, I'm hoping I backed up to the dead computer. Note to everyone: back up your blog posts.

redemption

Last night Don and I went on a date! (See, the americanisms are creeping in already - and I almost put my full-stop inside the bracket ... at least I am not calling it a period).

It's been a particularly hellish week for both of us, although much more hellish for Don, who has been working until 11pm each night. Mine has been more mentally hellish - but more about that later.

Anyways, we decided it was about time to revist the flying fajita sisters after our experience with the worst service ever.

The food, as last visit, was brilliant.

And the service?

Simply. Fantastic.

Really! Not even fantastic in comparison to the last visit, just what I like - attentive and friendly, but knowing when to (hold 'em and fold em and) leave you ('em) alone.

Americans in Aus complain endlessly about the lack of decent Mexican (olde El Paso not really cutting it). If this (and Guzman y Gomez) is a taste, I really want to get me there and sample The Real Stuff.

to. die. for. : the matt armendariz edition

I've mentioned before¹ my love of Mattbites

A couple of days ago he posted this fabulous recipe and today Don raided the cheese drawer and whipped it up.

Oh
My
God
!

So fabulous!

We happened to have a nice crusty (oven warmed - despite the very hot day) bagette and a nice Kiwi Sauv blanc to wash it down with.

Have I said, "Oh My God!" yet?

Go now! and raid your cheese drawer / cupboard / shop and make yourself a wee (or preferably a large) batch of fromage fort.

Really, you know you want to.



¹interesting how some of those blogs have just totally fallen off my required reading list.

catching up

I have decided that I will spend some of the rather hot afternoon updating with the trivial things (and other assorted stuff) I have thought about blogging over the last month or so, but which I-don't-know-what has prevented me from doing.

Well, all the stuff I can remember, anyway.

You have been warned.

contagious

Joe/Frank's replacement school laptop, acquired from eBay, which you might remember from here has bitten the dust, even deader than my dead computer, in that it won't do anything at all (so either CPU or motherboard).

Similar to my dead computer, in that it was working perfectly until it was rested for the holidays.

And I cannot troubleshoot because, like my dead computer, I do not have any replacement parts to swap out.

Damn.

It's horrible to have to hand it off to a professional, I'm so accustomed to doing my own repairs.

Damn.

And it is 10 days out of warranty.

Damn.

If I had only turned it on over the school holidays.

Damn.

Damn.

Damn.

You can replace "damn" with the curse word of your choice here", I know I am.

meet george jetson

Ahhhh! Another school year, another round of covering school books - the majority of yesterday was spent covering Joe/Frank's many, many books. Thankfully Bessie is now of an age to want to cover her own books.

Because I am utterly and completely hopeless at applying contact in the kind of ridiculously perfectionist way that satisfies me (or any way that does not involve several thousand bubbles and lots of swearing), I use old timey pvc covering. By the end of the exercise, I would have paid a great deal of money to have sticky tape in pre-cut lengths, post-it flag style.

I thought something so space-age and futuristic was just a wild a crazy dream - something I might be able to buy around the same time as my flying car, but apparently it exists!

Truly, it is a marvellous age we live in.