An unexpected visitor

My friend from Naracoorte is here! Her husband had to fly to Queensland to attend a funeral so she is in Adelaide until he gets back. Yay for me, that means we can catch up tonight. Not hurray for the funeral though - a suicide of someone our own age. Not surprising given the character, but still sad.

I did have quite a fabulous weekend. Just pottered around doing my own thing, it was great. Last night I was at MM's place feeding his crazy dog. She is pretty nuts when she hasn't been out for a while. Almost pulled my arm out of its socket plenty of times on the way to the park. Usually she doesn't go on the leash but I am not happy with her running around all over the road while I am looking after her. If she gets hit while I am supposed to be taking care of her then I am in trouble. MM has this wonderful contraption that allows you to throw the ball really far and also not have to touch it cos you can pick it up with the claw thingy. Whattie lost her ball about 5 times, she kept running in the wrong direction and missing where it landed. I puffed her out good and proper though and on the way home she walked at my side the whole time!

There is a James Bond theme happening on a Foxtel channel at the moment so I watched Dr No for the first time. Missed a bit of it due to a phone call from the unexpected visitor and other distractions, but I saw enough of it to know that it was hilarious. They made some many little errors in the film, you have to wonder if anyone involved in its making ever saw the final cut. Still not on board with the whole Sean Connery thing - what exactly is supposed to be attractive about him? He's seedy looking. Always seems like he's been 2 days without a shower and you wouldn't want to get stuck in a lift with him.

Saturday afternoon I made a lemon meringue pie. It was huge! The filling was too big for the pie crust and it ended up spilling over. Have to get a bigger pie dish then I guess...

There are worse problems.

Hablo poco castellano!

I am slowly learning Spanish at the WEA. There are heaps of people in the class which makes things a little slow. There are a few who cannot get past not understanding words. Why do people need to know the 'meaning' all the time? Translation is not currency exchange, there are no exact equivalents in many cases. Learning a language is all about not understanding every word, you have to just embrace it and savour the chance to pay attention to other mediums of communication.

I think tonight I am making a lemon meringue pie. It's been on the cards for a while. Although, I am pretty tired so I might just go to bed. Buenas noches!

Straw bale housing

It's the latest crazy idea to be floated by me - and I am liking it. Instead of living in a horrendous brick thing that is too hot in summer and too cold in winter, why not live in a house that is not only environmentally friendly but also maintains its temperature without resorting to heating and cooling? There is nothing that is not cool about straw baled houses; from the ultra wide walls that create fantastic wide window stills to the fact that straw rendered walls are so ridiculously fire resistant compared to 'normal' houses. If you get straw walls obviously this decreases the cost of the house, but not by much since you still have to pay for labour and the roof, fittings, plumbing and electrical etc. But think of the savings to be made on heating and cooling! Anyway, just an idea for if I win the lottery because I can't afford land either unless I want to live in the middle of nowhere.

And I don't.

One turtle

Yesterday I assembled a turtle shaped cake for a birthday party. It was a pretty crap looking turtle, but apparently recognisable as such by three-year-olds. I cooked the shell in a glass bowl and unfortunately it took forever to cook right through and the outer shell was very dry and the middle was very dense. But the feet tasted good because they were made out of cupcakes. I have to say though, I am really sick of beating butter and sugar together! I also ate way too much butter when 'taste testing' and this week I think I need a detox - just fresh fruit and vegies for me.

On Friday night the wine and cheese at the art opening turned into a few more wines at the Treasury and on to the Grace Emily for beers. Felt more than a little under the weather on Saturday morning and was missing my sunnies. Unfortunately it didn't stay sunny for long and I got drenched for the second week in a row on my home from Pilates class. I did get to have a nice sleep in on Saturday and Sunday morning though. Sunday I was supposed to be going to training, but all the wind and rain outside the bedroom window soon put me off that idea! Instead, I lazed around, took the mutt for a walk and the began the car borrowing saga. Since I had to go home and assemble a turtle and also get back to my house after the party, I was borrowing MM's car. One of the many, but the only one that is currently ready to drive. We noticed the front driver's side tyre was looking very flat so took it to the servo to pump it up and then found the massive nail embedded in it. Yay! Then it started pissing down so we sat in the car out the front of his house and ran through all the different options for how to get around this. My taking any other car would have involved an hour's preparation which neither of us really had, or I would have to give up on the cake and add to the hassles by getting MM to drop me home after the party. Or, what if we changed the tyre?? MM wasn't sure whether he had a jack or not - turns out the boot was full of them! I have never seen so many options for jacking up a car. Tyre change took a matter of minutes and off I went.

Everytime I borrow a car and go for a drive these days it just reminds me how crap it is to be on the road. Nobody can do the speed limit, nobody can check their blind spots and nobody can use an indicator for its actual purpose. I think I will stick to my bicycle, it is much more stress-free!

It's the weekend again! yay. Another busy one lined up. I have cheese and wine at the Art Gallery tonight, breakfast at the markets tomorrow morning, Pilates at midday, cake baking all afternoon ( and some well overdue shopping and washing to be done), dinner and movie Saturday night, training Sunday, followed by lunch, turtle cake construction and icing in the arvo followed by a 3 year old's party on Sunday night. Phew.

Looking forward to the cheese and wine :)

A fair amount of rain

Another week of cancelled touch games due to the weather. I am pretty annoyed about this. The whole point of playing sport is that it provides you with regular exercise and a reason to get out of the house of an evening. Now, every time the skies open the fields go underwater and my games get postponed. I am not sure what the absorption rating of the grounds are in park 17 but they must be somewhat similar to those cheap nasty 'paper' napkins you receive at certain fast food places. A few hours of drizzle and puddles form! Grrr

Last night was my first Spanish lesson at the WEA. It was fun. The teacher is this little old Chilean man who seems to be something of an aspiring thespian. Right from the start he was speaking only in Spanish which I was very grateful for. He talked about the Spanish langauge and where in Spain it comes from, or which dialect it is based upon, and a bit about South America. Then, much to some people's relief and my disappointment, he started explaining himself in English. Meh, he quickly dropped back into Spanish/Castilian though :) So we went through introducing ourselves and then the Spanish pronunciation of the alphabet. There are about 25 people in the class so it's a bit slow, but hopefully things will pick up. Hasta la proxima semana!

Mixer Shopping

On Saturday I went to my first Pilates class at the WEA Centre. I was very excited because I thought I was actually going to get some exercise. Wrong. The woman running the class spent the first 45 minutes talking about the history of Pilates, her experience with it and all kinds of boring stuff like that. Then we spent the last 15 minutes figuring out where our diaphragms are. I am sure it may have been useful for the middle aged women who look like they aren't sure where their lungs are, let along their diaphragm, but I think I'm across my breathing apparatus. It was pretty tedious. Hopefully next week we'll actually get into some Pilates!

Following my class I rode home in the rain, got completely soaked and wondered what the hell happened to the sunshine I was promised in the weather forecast on Friday. Sulked inside for the rest of the afternoon cos I couldn't do my washing or go for a walk like I intended. Still haven't done my washing. Sunday was pretty busy for me, had to return a DVD early then head to training, then bookclub, then Nachos cooked by MM. Unfortunately our bookclub host had also cooked up some Nachos and I was not very hungry at all by the time I got to MM's place. Oh well, more for him I guess! He didn't even bother making guacamole though so just as well I wasn't hungry ;)

I had half a lamington for dessert. Homemade lamingtons - this is what a spent my Friday night doing. They are very messy things to create! I was considering putting some jam and cream in them too but that would have been five times the mess. Making the cake also decided the issue of whether or not to invest in a mixer. 40 minutes spent beating butter and sugar tends to sway one in favour of some electrical assistance. The mixture was supposed to double according to the recipe, but my arm ran out at the "sugar dissolved" stage and I just used it like that. The cake was OK, but fluffiness would definitely be improved by further beating. So now I am in the market for a mixer. Wonder what Ebay has to offer in this respect?..