The sweet smell of the weekend

Hahaa, the weekend is upon us. Only 50 more minutes at work and off I go. Tonight I have a bit of a cookup going on with my special friend. Last week I purchase my first cook book and have since been inspired to actually cook most of the recipes in it. I have never really enjoyed cooking very much, but I have discovered that cooking with or for someone can be good fun! It's my bro's birthday on the weekend; Happy Birthday!!

Who is 'lentheric' anyway? I give up!

Royal Adelaide Show Countdown is on

It's nearly Showtime. Someone just told me that you can get into the show for free after 9pm. What a bonanza! I'll be able to wander out my front door and into cake decorating and tree stump lopping for FREE. And of course, access to the Bertie Beetle showbag. Although, just quietly, I have always preferred the Freddo Frog showbag. And just think of all the fireworks I'm going to be blessed with from the comfort of my bedroom what with the window facing that exact direction! Yeah, bring it on.

Today I started my teaching placement. It's at a place that teaches adults. Most students come for about 6 weeks, although some only for 2 weeks, a few for longer periods. It's basically an intensive English program for tourists. Like, if I wanted to go to Spain to learn Spanish I could go on the internet and book myself in a school - it's kinda the same thing. Expensive. I just madly wrote notes for ages, got a sore arse from sitting on the horrible plastic chairs and wondered how in hell I was ever going to sort out a lesson plan for my classes in a few weeks. Well, only 2 weeks really. Eek. Bit different to kids classes, that's for sure.

Face this

Facebook is going completely off its nut! If Facebook were a furniture shop there would be a massive sale on at the moment what with all the crazy. Everywhere I turn there are people talking about it and I'm just not sure what the big deal is. I joined up, I admit. Someone sent me a request, a person in a far and distant land and I thought "OK, I'd like to see what this bloke is up to", so I joined and now I have an ever-increasing number of people in my friendlies box. But I'm just not sure what I am supposed ot DO with them. What is the point in sending them a "poke" when I could poke them in real time if I can just have the patience to wait a few hours? I do have mates who are overseas so in that respect it could be useful I suppose - but we already had e-mail going. Besides which, they aren't doing anything so interesting that I need to hear from them everyday! According to The 'Tiser (source of all breaking news and hardhitting headlines) hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars are being pissed down the drain by mindless employees who sit and Facebook each other all day at work. Well, if that isn't front page news, I don't know what is! But why?? What exactly is so good about it? Aren't we sick of computers yet? I have to sit in front of one from 9-1pm everyday and frankly - that's about enough for me. By the time I get around to typing up my uni assignments too I have practically developed an allergy caused by over exposition. Aha, and how amusing, one may think, to choose to rant about wasting time spreading personal information via the internet and computers through such a medium. OH yes, my sides are aching with laughter.

Choclofied

The Cook Off was a mega success. At least I think it was. The two desserts were a moussey number and a flan. In the end the mousse took the cake since it wasn't quite so rich as the flan. The flan was FULLON chocolate and so rich one bite was more than enough! Both girls put in a huge effort though and there really was no loser at the end of dinner when we were all stuffed to the gills! We had a bit of karaoke action - a bit of a drinking game for about 2 seconds until I knocked over a glass of red in my enthusiasm and it sprayed just about everyone around the table. Nice one. Then we discovered a selection of ink stamps and of course ended the night with "received" and "paid" in blue and red covering our skin. They should make that ink not quite so permanent on skin, there was a lot of scrubbing to be done in the shower this morning. There was a bit of guitar action and we decided that next time we should bring some music that everyone knows and have a sing along because when everyone only knows every second word it's a bit shit. I had way too much red but enjoyed myself tremendously and what more can you ask of a Friday evening? Can't wait for the next Cook Off (so long as I'm not cooking that is...).

CopyCat

The photocopier fixer is here and he's just given me a big long spiel about how bad our paper is for the printer and I spent the whole time imagining him back at Copier Fixer Headquarters bitching to his workmates about people who use "dusty" paper and try and get half-used sheets of labels through the thing... God, people just have NO idea do they! A photocopier is a fine piece of machinery that should be treated with the respect it deserves - you wouldn't try and run your car on coke would you??

My plans for friday? A Cook-off. I have been invited to judge in a dessert competition. The theme; chocolate. And who indeed would be more qualified to decide such matters? I'm heaps looking forward to it, there's been sledging flying around between the competitors all week and it sounds like they are both going for gold. There really can be no losers in a situation where there are TWO fantastic chocolate desserts on the horizon can there? I have to bring the vego dish since with the proposed menu comprising of oysters and steak it didn't seem likely that any non-meat dishes would be very inspired. My planned contribution?.. A carrot and pesto bake. And a fair amount of wine...

Beepbeepbeep

Argh, Sunday. I'm at uni attempting to write another assignment. I got my first one back on Friday and it had some scribbles all over it - who knows what they said! The only part I could discern with any degree of confidence was "good". Right-o. I'll take that on board then. I'm supposed to start my teaching prac this week but I still don't know where I am going! I'm trying to just not worry about it but that's hard on the weekends when there is nothing to do but think about such things. Well, that's not completely true. Yesterday I did go on a wine tour of the McClaren Vale for my friend's 30th. It was a good day, we didn't get too messy, had a lovely lunch and tried plenty of wines. I had a pretty good cocktail of whites and red and ports going on in my tummy I tell you what! The bus took us back to the birthday/housewarming party lined up for the evening, on the way stopping at mine to pick up a few bottles of wine leftover from my housewarming. On to the party and suddenly all the drinking throughout the day caught up with me and I recall having some very odd conversations with various people, toasting marshmallows, and dropping a full bottle of red on my foot resulting in some pretty serious bruising today. Don't think I'll be running off to touch this arvo... Actually I have several mysterious injuries, I somehow managed to cut my fingers as well - I think it may have been while trying to open a bottle. Oops. Several people spent a good while rubbing the tuna mornay (sp?) in my face. Not literally, just going on about how fantastic it was because I couldn't eat it. I do miss tuna because it is so easy. Tuna goes in salads, in pasta, it's cheap and it's yummy and quick - how can you go wrong? But I did eat teh pasta bake instead and it was yummo - although I probably could have done without it since I'd been eating finger foods non-stop since arriving. There was a brilliant guacamole which the host made - there was a massive bowl full of it and it was practically licked clean. Will try and recreate it myself... Oh yeah, vegie spring rolls went into the guacomole too - that was a good combo!

I was very lucky to get a lift home with a non-drinker who stayed very late like me. Bent his ear with endless chatter about what's going on in Jo's head at the moment, although without any context it must have made for extremely confusing ramblings so perhaps it was if nothing else, amusing. Fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and woke up at 7:30 when my alarm went off, grrr, and then snoozed until 11. Feel a little seedy, but not too bad.

I've just had a massive conversation with a girl from my course who is equally confused about what we are supposed to be doing over the next few weeks. It feels so nice to know that everyone else is just as much in the dark about what we are actually doing here as I am. Not that it bodes well that so many of us are confused, but it does mean that perhaps I'm not as slow as I was beginning to think.

What a wonderful day! Clear blue skies and all that sun, spring is definitely on the way... I've been doing some research on the internet about how to keep the tomato plants I received as a housewarming gift alive. Apprently I will have to work pretty hard to kill them, but if I want nice juicy red fruit I gotta actually pay attention to what I am doing. We'll see what happens. I wonder if I'm allowed to dig up some lawn and put them in the ground?? Probably not aye! Well, more uni readings to do so here I go...

Happy Birthday mum...

She seems pretty pleased with everything!

It's a golden pig!!!

jfdlakr

Yipee! Finished my assignment! Hurrah :)

This morning my shoe fell off while I was trying to cross Goodwood Rd. It was highly embarassing because everyone was just sitting intheir carwatching me. Oh well, good to give someone some mirth I guess... At least I didn't fall off!

This morning I woke up with a fat lip. The whole right side of my bottom lip is swollen. I look like a real treat I do.

Well, I haven't done the reading for this week yet cos I spent all my time writing this assignment and being too poor to pay for it. Oh yeah, and I gotta ring Centrelink so off I go...

BOO to strange words

It's been a long long weekend and I'm kind of glad to start the week. Although I am having major difficulties with my assignment for Language Teaching in Specific Settings and beginning to wonder what I'm doing here at uni again... Saturday night I cooked up a storm for my mate's birthday. Made Pumpkin and Sage Risotto - the recipe for which I found on the internet. It turned out fabulously (if I do say so myself), the only problem being the part where I sliced open my thumb opening a dip and had to cut all the vegies one-handed owing to a lack of Band-aids. Put them on the shopping list then I guess. Unfortunately risotto takes forever to cook so everyone filled up on starters before it was ready, not that it stopped them eating a fair portion each - just made them pretty full! Especially after they tucked into the birthday cake which was pretty much a chocorama. Had a trifle on the go too which was received with groans (that particular "I'm SO full but it looks SO good I might risk explosion..." groan). After dinner I quickly jumped into some fancy clothes (luckily I had slipped into my jeans before I ate or they never would have done up!) and off to the Botanic where there are some pretty damn cosy couches and a lot of girls wearing strange puffy dresses. The drinks weren't cheap and taking into account the taxi ride I could afford exactly 0 of them but somehow ended up having two cocktails. Odd. Trouble with fancy cocktail places is that it takes a good deal of time to make fancy drinks so you end up spending most of your time at the bar or lining up to get to the bar. After we had gathered a good group together we proceeded to the Universal Wine Bar where mate's boyf kept us in supply of wine through his connections... Several rather disturbing conversations later I was ready for bed and, aware that I had another function the next day, bundled myself into a taxi with instructions for the cabbie to only go as far as $11.60 would take me. I ended up around the showgrounds and driver ended up dropping me all the way home for free! Lovely man.

Sunday morning brought some study after a little sleep in. That's about the point I realised that this assignment was going to be the death of me since I had no idea how to even start answering the question... My ride to the party never turned up so I had to taxi again. $48.08 for a trip to St Agnes from Goodwood - in case anyone's interested. Mum's 50th. It was a great arvo, way too much food which she cooked herself over the past 2 weeeks. I ended up leaving with more than enough food to see me through the week. Yummo. I stayed until 5:30ish - the guests all did the dishes which was lovely. It's not her actual birthday until Wednesday so there was no present to hand over or anything. My friend kindly came and picked me up and dropped me home and collected the car left in front of mine the night before. Sunday night I did some more reading for uni, watched an hour of TV and headed for bed at a reasonable hour in an attempt to remove the seemingly permanent dark shadows from under my eyes.

Ah, yes I am procrastinating since I should be trying to figure out this assignment right now...

Loving it

The new job rocks. By the time I start getting fidgety and want to leave it IS time to leave! 9-1 has to be the best shift ever. I might just work part time for the rest of my life...