a serious threat to the beautiful theory of infinite aggregates arose when outright logical paradoxes in the theory became apparent1

Today I rolled out the Cheerful Carol project, in a very low-key way.

It is going well I think. I made sure to randomly (and enthusiastically) trill here and there that the time off had really refreshed me and that I'm feeling very positive about being at Marie Celeste and the work in the months ahead. Dishy Boss may have choked on his cup of expensive wanker tea for a second there as this is the complete opposite of my normal behaviour. I think he may be suspicious (note to self: perhaps you are not being as low key as you think you are).

Several times during the day, when Anxious Mum did her thang (which I really need to write a series of long posts about) and I started thinking unpleasant thoughts, I reigned myself in by thinking of rainbows and ponies and whiskers on kittens and other delightful, fluffy things - and did not think at all about taping AM's mouth shut, which would, admittedly, be kind of a delightful, fluffy thing.



¹From What is mathematics? Courant and Robbins p.87.

although the uncompromising position of the intuitionists is far too extreme for most mathematicians ... 1

By golly, it's infinitely easier to post when one is not slaving down in the salt mines.

I did remain fairly chilled at Marie Celeste today though. In my own special form of weird passive aggression, I plan to counter Anxious Mum's anxiety, endless whinging and negativity with cheerfulness, hyper cheerfulness. I will become Really Happy Carol. Yay! This should entertain me for at least 2-3 hours.

I really do think I am much better suited to not being at work, I could sit around and post all day - and I think we would all enjoy that. No, really, you'd enjoy it.

Don and I sometimes idly fantasise about buying a small country property and have him work from home and while I tend the vegetables and the tasty animals - which sounds pretty fabulous to me (although I rarely admit it, I am a bit of a DFH at heart). I'm sure in reality it would be perfectly revolting, but hey, I wouldn't be at Marie Celeste.

It's one of those Enthusiasms we both tend to get every so often (which wax and wane and wax and then disappear entirely). Currently we're all about reading self-sufficiency books and preserves books and cheesemaking books etc. Next month we'll probably be back to jonesing for kayaks or really desperately needing more art.

That's just how we roll.


¹was stumped for a title, so closed my eyes and grabbed a book from the bookshelf and opened it at a random page. The sentence is too long to fit in the title, so I will chunk it up over coming posts. From What is mathematics? Courant and Robbins p.87. No, it isn't my book. Frankly, I think the Hardy Boys title project was a whole lot better. If I hadn't given the Nora Roberts to Dfkan, I could have used that!

unharshing my mellow

Well, that was a jolly nice week of not doing anything in particular except, most importantly, not being at work.

I feel very relaxed indeed. Tranquil even.

I am quite good at doing difficult and challenging things when I put my mind to them (such as quitting smoking, quitting drinking, going to the gym) that I feel it could be of benefit to put my mind to chilling the fuck out on a daily basis.

nostradamus

Don and I recently acquired the first season of The Rockford Files, and by golly, it is a hoot.

Remember when television was filled with programmes about private detectives (or rich, crime-solving couples, or little crime-solving little old ladies or general non-policey crime-solverers), rather than the endless cop shows we see now (or we would see, if we watched television)?

In the cyclic way of these things (given that the 60s and early 70s were riddled with cop shows, as now), I predict that within a few years there will be a resurgence in the private detective genre - and there will be much rejoicing.

And that is when I will link back to this post and say, "ha!".

extraordinary

As part of my highly successful non-drinking, weightloss experiment, I began drinking an awful lot of DFH¹ herbaly-type infusions (can't drink real tea - makes me ill).

My fave brand is celestial seasonings (especially the sleepytime, which is lovely and wonderful and other good things), but I haven't really met a wanker brand of herbal tea I haven't liked (well, I'm sure that I wouldn't like anything involving blackcurrant, but I am not even going to go there).

So at the supermarket on Friday, I came across Dr Stuart's Extraordinarily Good Teas, which combined my love of infusions and gorgeous wanktastic packaging and nomenclature!



The one I chose contains red clover, nettle leaves, dandelion leaves, burdock root, chamomile, lemon balm and lemon peel.

I had my first cup this evening. It really does taste like what it is. It tastes as though I had wandered through an unkempt suburban backyard, picked out all the random weeds I came across and then steeped them in some boiling water for a time.

I guess it is an acquired taste.

I had to have a glass of wine to wash the taste away. It was either that or cut out my tongue.

But hey, there's something in it for you too, dear reader! Now is your chance to live the Carol lifestyle. In the first ever Don and Carol giveaway, if you'd like to share the Dr Stuart experience, simply leave a comment and you can have the box of reasonably expensive dried weeds!

No, I wouldn't leave a comment either.


¹Dirty Fucking Hippy

mental health week live blogging: day five

Bludging.

We've done exciting jet-setty things like grocery shopping and now I'm reading some delightful new (to me) blogs while idly mending.

Later I shall see if I might find what the hell is wrong with the fan in Joe/Frank + Bessie's computer (truly, this haus is death to computers).

I might even take the recycling down and check the post - because that is just the kind of edgy rock and roll lifestyle I lead.



List of delightful blogs which I am greatly enjoying while idly mending (I daresay I'd enjoy them sans mending too).

Prudence says

which lead me to:

Dame Honoria's Diary

The Perorations of Lady Bracknell

Get on the Blandwagon!

mental health week live blogging: day four (part 2)

Eyebrow dyeing (does dyeing have that "e", I wonder? Yes, yes it does...)


Pale, aren't they? I really wasn't exaggerating. It's a shame my hair isn't as matchingly blonde. You can see why I need to make liberal use of the eyebrow pencil.


After application of the "stuff", I was getting a little concerned re: the clown brows. Would I have to run out and acquire some eyebrow bleach?


But, no! Success! Eyebrows roughly the same colour as my natural hair colour!

It was very simple too - definitely something I can keep up.

Now if only I could do something about my pathetically short eyelashes (apart from getting extensions).

mental health week live blogging: day four

Body maintenance.

I decided, given Don is playing golf today, I'd use it as my gym day (didn't get there on Monday with all that shopperering) and I'd challenge myself.

Usually I only spend 30-35 minutes exercising (it's all I can fit in at lunch, what with changing and showering¹ &etc). Today I had endless time on my hands ... so I chose a whole hour of running (okay, jogging) - which I have never, ever done before.

And I did it! Yay for me! 7.5k - which is by far my best distance (8k if you count the 500m walking cool-down), still a way from the 10K which is on the list of things that I might do which are definitely not resolutions. I *really* wish I could do this outside (stupid knees) so that I might get a bit more practice in (say, of an evening). But still, for someone who could not run for 5 minutes 2.5 years ago, I'm really pleased with the progress (albeit slow).

I'm also about to dye my very, very, very pale eyebrows - this could have hilarious results, so I shall take progress shots. Hey, if it all goes terribly wrong, at least they might go with my clown pants.



¹There are people at my gym that just towel off the litres of sweat and jump into their work-clothes and return to the office. I am not one of those people, because - just. yuck.

mental health week live blogging: day three (part 2)

Yes, we did end up at sugaroom, which has a very pleasant outlook, lovely staff and very nice nosh indeed. And has the bonus of being a very gentle 30-40 minute walk from home (and not too crowded at all on a week day)


Sparkly!

I decided it would be amusing to take photos of our meals, food-blogger-style, but, in an interesting slant, our half-eaten meals...


This was my entree: Baked eshallot tart with goats cheese, beetroot and chervil
Damn delish it was too. The pastry was teh awesome and I just adore beetroot - paired with goats cheese, it was just marvellous!


Don's: Shaved bresaola carpaccio with basil, parmesan and horseradish cream
And it also had radish, which was fab!

It was at this point that I forgot that I was taking snaps of half-eaten meals - damn.


My main: Pan roasted barramundi, peas, baby leeks, tarragon and truffle dressing
Quite lovely, especially on a hot day. I really quite like oily-ish, mud-dwelling fish and barramundi is my fave.


Don's: Pork confit with roast fennel, cauliflower puree and salsa verde
The confit was yum-tastic. And the pureed cauliflower sounds revolting (well revolting to Don, I love cauliflower), but it was very nice and I kept dipping my (unpictured side dish) fries into it, rather than the aoili they came with.

To our everlasting amazement, we skipped dessert (heresy!) and just had coffee.

I then remembered I was supposed to be taking snaps of half finished things.


Our half finished water and wine (with sparkly background)


Here is my almost empty flat white.

Lovely day, I have decided that I would really like to be one of those ladies who lunch.

mental health week live blogging: day three

Sleeping in and lunch with my lovely husband.

As yet, we know not where. Criterion: somewhere near the water, but nowhere near Darling Harbour / Cockle Bay / King Street Wharf.

I daresay we'll end up at sugaroom - which is reasonably close by and was delish last time we were there.

mental health week live blogging: day two (part 2)

So this isn't really technically live blogging, but hey, at least I am updating! And now I have these titles, I'm sticking to them.

Unfortunately, two of the four C's fell by the wayside - I did cook, I did contemplate (whether I reached any practical conclusions is debatable). I replaced one of the incomplete C's with Consuming (bought a new dress as part of the wardrobe oevrhaul), but only did some (by no means all) of the mending, I also sent my Aunt a USB key of wedding snaps, but those emails are still unwritten.

I'll carry those undone ones forward and will not beat myself up about failing to complete my assigned tasks - this is supposed to be a holiday! And while I am at it, screw twitter and my phone for not playing together (googling for solutions is the primary reason those tasks are incomplete).

mental health week live blogging: day two

The four Cs...

Cooking: The always awesome slow cooked greek lamb.

Correspondence: it's time to write all of those emails I have been promising for months (and to finally send my aunt some wedding snaps)

Crafting: technically more mending, but I do want to give fusing plastic bags a bash

Contemplating: Now would be a Bad Time to seek alternate employment. What can I do to make my Marie Celeste experience less harrowing? To ensure I maintain the holiday zen? To distance myself from the internal politics? To enable me to tolerate Anxious Mum?

feminine arts

In an effort to get out from behind the computer (part of that list of things that are not at all resolutions), recent activities in the Don and Carol haus:


My after work activity for last week, more pillows from old jeans and placemats, this time placemats sandwiched between a wide strip of jeans. These ones are for Bav (the car). All cars should have pillows I think - and a blanket (and an ipod and a spare cardigan and a pair of thongs and yoga mats and shopping bags).


Welsh lamb pie - so very yummy
(Pies: Sweet and Savoury Bay Books 2001 : p79)


Carbonade Pie pre-baking - decoration courtesy Bessie
(Pies: Sweet and Savoury Bay Books 2001 : p43)


Also exceptionally yummy.


And of course when there is leftover pastry, you make pastry shapes sandwiched by jam - again, courtesy of Bessie.

This pie book was languishing, unloved on my bookshelf since I acquired it around 18 months ago from the bookman¹, mainly because I lacked the necessary tools for pastry making (particularly the vital marble rolling pin). Tools acquired and I set upon a pie making frenzy - and the results have been quite pleasing indeed.


¹I'm not sure if this is a Sydney phenomena, but the book man is a dude who visits offices and leaves really crappy books for your purchasing pleasure.

mental health week live blogging: day one (part 2)

Spoils, they were indeed had...



Mostly skirts, as almost all the pants I tried were either too tight (the 10s) or ridiculously baggy (the 12s).

mental health week live blogging: day one

Day One - stimulating the economy.

By god, I need clothes - all that not drinking has made me a size less and I resemble a disappointingly turned out clown when wearing any of my work pants.

And I need to find time to slot in a gym visit without going anywhere near the Marie Celeste - which will be difficult, as they are located quite close together. I will inevitably run into colleagues and they will greet me with a hearty, "ho, ho, ho - can't stay away from the place, eh?" - which really (in the words of my darling eldest child), I have no time for.

I will report back re: the spoils of my stimulating.

Oh, and if you are not reading this via a reader, you will notice that there is a very forlorn looking twitter stream over there in the sidebar.

Yes, I have succumbed (I blame Jano entirely). I'm donandcarol, but even though I have very good intentions about using it, I'm sure that in reality I will be less active than I am here (if only I could claim that it was because of my busy and glamourous socialite lifestyle), but hey, at least I can follow others who are inifintely more interesting than I.

a toastmistress i am not

Last week was particularly revolting in that I had to present to who various Marie Celeste management-types like to refer to as our most important client (and who are considering becoming not our client).

You may recall that I do not present at all - ever, and unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I was somewhat unnerved (even just a little harrowed).

I like to tell myself that I can speak perfectly well from a bullet pointed list of notes, but sadly this is a filthy lie. You'd think I would have learned from my presentation skills course, but you'd be thinking wrong.

So after our pre-meeting run-through, in which I was complete and utter shit when I tried to present from the list (despite the assurances that I was fine¹), I had to run to my desk and write everything out in complete sentences and get down exactly what I was going to say.

Whereupon, to my extreme relief, I performed pretty well - almost perfectly.

I'm rather relieved it is all over and I can return to my normal state of freaking out about the regular day-to-day hellishness at Marie Celeste.

As we all know, I've been a quite suckful blogger, so I probably have failed to mention that I recently had a big chat to Dishy Boss about my future and my dissatisfaction/boredom with certain tasks (and how anxious mum was oftentimes driving me bat shit crazy) and we agreed that when things settled a little, I should have a mental health week (primarily because that is exactly what I did not have over Christmas), and next week is that week. Huzzah!

There will be bludging! And sloth! And sleeping!

And probably some craft! and cooking! and shopping (in thrift stores!)

And possibly even some mental health week live-blogging (I did say possibly).


¹After I performed pretty well, everyone admitted that I was ever-so-slightly, just a wee smidge complete and utter shit on the run through.

ein kleines spiel cup perpetual trophy award for excellence: 2009

The haus tipping competition is on again!

This year, because my children are whingers (and claim they will kick our arses with their superior skills), we are including rugby league in the contest.

To show how much I actually know about League, lets just say I was suprised to learn that the Gold Coast had a team in the competition - I thought they called the seagulls and were kicked out in 1998. Turns out they were and this is a new team - who knew?

Still, despite my massive lack of interest, I am in the lead!

That cup perpetual trophy award will look mighty fine with my name on it.

tiny wee mini mardi gras

I'm sure you all know of tilt shift photography (so cute!), but I had to share this totally adorable tilt shift video (link courtesy of my lovely husband) despite my reluctance to embed video in blog posts.

Unfortunately, the soundtrack is utterly heinous - hit mute NOW and sing a pet shop boys song in your head.


Mardi Gras from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

flurry

Image heavy post as threatened...


My baby boy turned 15! We all delighted in the bizarre "boy" candle.


Don ordered a bunch of weird American stuff from USAfoods including several packets of sunflower seeds with the delightful message "Eat. Spit. Be Happy." Eww.


Red Pasta Hearts! As mentioned in this post


Don makes bread Also mentioned in this post


Bread which rather resembled a mutant wee beakless duck, but which was awfully yummy nonetheless. His later efforts have proven (ha! bread pun!) much less duck-like, but still awfully yummy.


Steak and kidney pies - with hearts! Another image from that post


Meditation pillow for Bessie made from a pair of old jeans and a couple of placemats.


Both Dfkan and I are amazed that the existance of other religions is acknowledged at Bessie's catholic school - certainly there was none of that in the Dfkan catholic experience.

.

svelte and sleepy

Well, the no drinking for 4 weeks experiment was quite successful, I think.

I did give myself permission to partake in celebratory libations for Don's citizenship festivities and drank a 1/3 of a glass of sparkling at the post-ceremony afternoon tea. I pretty much lost interest in drinking after a glass of wine that evening (I don't know what the hell is wrong with me either). Amazingly, after that single glass (and 1/3) I still woke up at 3am and stared at the ceiling for an hour.

And I have gone down a dress size (to a 10, or a 6 for the Americans playing along), so yay for that.

And at least I do know now that my chub was actually from booze and not lack of exercise. And the sleeplessness was also booze-related. I just need to decide exactly what I am going to do with that knowledge (apart from briefly gloat and feel all morally superior - vegetarian style).

=====

As for the promised flurry of images?

After discovering how to have Gertie resize images, I then discovered that Don changed the camera settings to RAW - which Gertie does not like at all (in her current configuration, she should like them). It should be the work of an instant to load the software that came with the camera and use that - except her CD drive is broken.

Would having one computer that works be too much?

Meanwhile, enjoy some images from the ancient olympus point and shoot:


The T23 innards from when I gutted it a couple of weeks ago. Lots of bits, aren't there? This would have illustrated the actual we fixed it! post much better.


And from Little Marley Beach in the Royal National Park. Frankly, I think caming is overrated anyway.


I really can't get enough of danger signs (from the Royal National Park).

Actually all of these images would have illustrated the posts they were intended for much better than just randomly hanging here. I fear there is an awful lot of this sort of thing on the big camera, perhaps some judicious culling is in order (or some retrospective insertion) if I ever get to them (need to hijack Don's computer - although I worry that I may have some horrible computer breaking disease and may infect the only completely functional computer in the house).

of course it could be the universe trying to teach me to learn to use what i have

Why yes, it would help if I used my brain and actually learned what my current computer could do.


Something from Gertie-the-macbook's hard drive.

I think it was from the trip to Canberra in June last year.

Stand by for a veritable flurry of image-heavy posts.

bloody hell

So, I took some happy snaps of Don's citizenship festivities yesterday (only five months since he was approved¹) and was all set to resize them on the T23 today and post a couple here (along with the 30 other pix I have been planning to resize and post since Christmas).

I had Bessie load photoshop for me (earning pocket money and all that), everything was peachy until I walked over to use it and saw a blue screen of death and after attempting to reboot got the beep codes telling me it was dead.

It would appear the Don and Carol haus really is the computer death zone.

And that the universe is telling me that there should be moar text less images here.


¹More about that later - hopefully with images.

missing out

"It's a thoughtful, slouchy, post-Cedar Tavern, Disillusioned Preppy Unisex look, still accustomed to intense, status-minded fashion scrutiny, but overcoated by a spalike, de-stressed and soul-seeky note I'll call Reprioritized Values or The Benefits of Acupuncture".

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/fashion/26CRITIC.html?_r=1

It took me a good while to realise that spalike was not actually an unfamiliar word (sp'leek) and was simply missing a hyphen. I really do think it would be better as a word, "oh darling! that ocean chewed, deconstructed biker jacket in that beguiling shade of burned prune is absolutely spalike!"

posted via gmail.

the glebe triangle

After a perfectly revolting week (honestly I work with disfunctional fuckwits, combine that with a small existential crisis, and well, blah), I had a marvellous day yesterday.

Bought some fabulous pie making equipment (among other things, the perfect red emile henry pie plate, a wonderful marble rolling pin - both incredibly difficult to find) which I'd been thinking about for a while. I used to be quite the fab pie maker way back in the day when I was doing the super-hausfrau thing and had a bit of a hankering to get back into pies.

And we found pasta in the shape of hearts! Red pasta hearts! So cute (Golly, I'm sickening - if you'd once told me I would be thrilled by red pasta hearts, I would have rolled by eyes in disgust).

After months of tireless sleuthing (well, it wasn't exactly tireless, more good luck) we discovered the abode of the grumpy old dude! It was a very slow reveal over a number of months after we first spotted him walking down the street and into the block next door. No, I'm not obsessed. Really, I'm not.

Finally managed to fix the big computer! So very exciting. At last, the joy of being able to update my ipods! It was the CPU for those playing along at home - just reseated it and added new thermal grease and all better!

Unfortunately, I topped off the evening by running the poor car into the metal guard around the pipes in the garage and left a dent just above his wheel arch. Whereupon I wept buckets. The poor, poor baby.

Today was all about the cooking, Don made bread for the first time! Awfully yummy bread it was too. And I made steak and kidney pie, which turned out rather well despite the weather being a bit hotter than the ideal for flaky pastry.

I had some rather lovely snaps of the cooking adventures to post (with new fixed computer!) and then I discovered that that new fixed computer wasn't as fixed as I'd supposed. Yes, it had died again. Damn. Fortunately I had updated the ipods. I swear this house is some kind of death zone for computers.