Category Archives: misc
well! like, a year after i really wanted to get my hair cut, i finally, just this morning, got my hair cut:
as you can see, it was looking a bit like my middle name might be “rapunzel” (“like brethren,” says the boy), and now my middle name could be “one kilo lighter hanging off that neck”.
while i’m doing a post about me, me, me, i thought i’d let you know, saffron, that a month and a bit after you first waved it in front of me, i have finally completed your quiz. phew! cheated death — painful death — once again. sorry it took so long. it's on the girl page.
for a larf, contrary to my usual shy and retiring demeanor, i nominated myself in the best design category at the 2004 food blog awards run by accidental hedonist. the thing is, i managed to scrape through into the final roundup — go, hand-coded transitional html!
it’s a veritable smorgasbord of tasty blogs in sixteen categories, and i think you’d find something you’d like. plus you could vote for ragingyoghurt, although i’d probably give the vote to 101cookbooks.
beneath the sombre pall that descended after the lavish turkish feast that was last night’s dinner…
[ lavish turkish feast interlude ]
it was the first birthday party of the boy’s sister’s kid, a smiley half australian-half turkish boy who grabs at my glasses whenever we meet. there was a kid’s party in the park with rolled-up jam and vegemite pinwheel sandwiches (not in the same pinwheel) and avocado and shredded carrot finger sandwiches, and pass-the-parcel with a jackson five live tape soundtrack, and bubbles, oh — and kids. so many kids. and then there was a grownup party back at the house with dolmades and olives, pide with a mean beetroot dip, four kinds of shish kebab: beef; chicken; veggie, with mushroom, green capsicum, asparagus and haloumi; and seafood, with scallops with the roe on, and green capsicum. and salads, including one with green beans and broad beans in yoghurt. and a great dome-shaped pavlova sandwiched with yoghurty cream and raspberries and rose syrup and covered in sugared rose petals. yes there was.
…we awoke this morning, confused. the words, “very depressed”, were put forth by a member of this household, in a tone of voice that could not have been flatter or sadder. but the confusion was because, despite the fact that everyone i know and most people in this country whose blogs i read appear to vote for not john howard (and also not any of those loopy christian / family values / otherwise insane parties), and despite the awful campaign ads and the shouting and pointing and jutting-out lower lip and overall less-niceness of the man, and um, the stuff that’s been done in the last few years… going to war, locking up children behind barbed wire, that sort of thing… it is john howard who’ll be putting on his tracksuit and power-morning-walking his victory lap for [undisclosed period of time] to come.
how can it be?
i also just wanted to say that the cafe in the local shopping mall has pancakes with banana and maple syrup on the menu. except that the word “banana” has been crossed out and the word “bacon” written underneath.
that is all.
the mammoth task ahead of me this week, besides regular werk and meeting friends for luncheons, is culling my decade-old stash of magazines. i try and do this every few years, and it involves spending h o u r s sitting in front of the magazine shelf leafing through old spins and rolling stones and details and esquires and rayguns and bikinis, trying to decide which ones can be chucked out. remember that issue of details from 1991, with pretty young keanu all ted-like on the cover? that one is never even considered for the chuck pile. but the thing is, hardly any of the magazines seem to end up on the chuck pile. maybe, like, two.
so this is probably a really bad week to start my 30 day free dvd delivery trial; i don’t know which will be more distracting, from each other as well as other werk at hand. but you, maybe you don’t have such pressing matters as decade-old magazines to cull. if you live around these parts, you too could get free dvds for 30 days. i mean, when else is telstra gonna give you anything for free?
i’ve migrated to another server, which necessitated some alternative coding. which means nothing to me, only that the new pages looked crap until i changed something. um, but maybe now it looks crap to you. is the text little and grey with pink links? or is it ugly 12pt times roman, and black and blue with underlines on the links? please leave a horrified comment if it’s the latter. thank you. we apologise for any ugliness.
if yer walking through the scrum that is the underground passageway between town hall station and the queen victoria building (and beyond), and you inadvertantly look backward towards the space beneath the escalators that used to be a flower shop, you will be surprised (or not, seeing as this has been the current growth sector of the small portable food industry for the last couple of years, following sushi roll holes-in-the-walls and those goddamn city convenience stores) to find that it has become a gelato stand called, i think, “mondo”.
it’s one of those places where the gelato is piled high above the stainless steel tubs, with specimens of the raw product that is the main flavour base perched on the crest. in the front corner of the glass case is a milky white mountain studded through with red. it looks like alpine springtime, snow thinning to reveal new blossoms beneath. this is the flavour: white chocolate and raspberry. i want some.
i should be blogging more regularly, no? maybe you really want to know about the leftover fish congee that i had for dinner last night while watching last week’s “ER” on videotape, or the picnic embarked on, solo, last friday at cremorne point (cheese and tomato with seeded mustard and mayonnaise sandwich, a mandarin and two spicy fruit roll biscuits, on a rock, under a tree, watching the spirit of tasmania sail into the harbour).
you might think that being in the family way, as i am, would result in adventures in more and better eating, what with the crazy food cravings and the eating for two and all, but it’s all been very normal: no weird food has been desired, no extra portions dished out. i can’t even provide pitiful stories of throwing up and having to eat nothing but dry crackers and flat gingerbeer. i could blog about pregnancy in general, but really, everything is so… normal, and other people do it so well already.
slowly, though, i’m outgrowing all my clothes, and the speed at which my intestines fill up with gas is most alarming. a bit past halfway, if there’s one effect on good eating that being knocked up has had, it’s that i can’t fit as much food in my stomach at one go as i once could. here is last night’s conversation with my sister:
nellie: how’s the baboo?
bowb: good. umm. it’s growing. it’s taking up too much space in my belly.
nellie: hah! no space for food!
bowb: yah!
nellie: heh! resentful…
lordy, is that the time? i must go make some mushrooms on toast.
these days i am quite enamoured of my new nivea cherry lipbalm — “daily care with a Cherry flavour” (their proper noun).
i was walking through priceline the other week, trying to ignore the aisle of discounted lindt chocolate bars, when it crossed my mind that my existing raspberry and vanilla lipbalm felt quite out of date. literally so, for when i put it on, my lips get a bit itchy. moments later i fronted up at the counter with a fresh supply of iron supplements, new lipbalm… and five lindt bars.
the lipbalm now sits by my keyboard, and throughout the day, even when my lips aren’t too crusty with sticky-out bits of dried winter skin, i can unscrew the cap just to inhale that sweet sweet cherry aroma.
ps. it was only after i bought my cherry lipbalm that i remembered i will soon be getting my hands on one of these, via new york, norway, stockholm, paris and singapore, on the wings of a nellie.
