Canberra Times

Today I am making peppermint mousse cake and a pavlova. It's all for a good cause; we are having a party tonight! I am in Canberra staying with my friend and chilling out a bit before I start work again next week. Ick. Let's not think about that. Yesterday I got to thumbing through some Super Food Ideas mags and found heaps of great recipes. We made some vegie burgers for dinner last night and today the dessert baking kicks off. No matter that the party is Mexican themed, dessert just needs to have sugar in it. I don't know what they eat for dessert in Mexico.

I am doing some research for my holiday. It seems I need to get cracking on the visa front if I want to visit Cuba... We are looking at heading to the "poor man's Galapogas", aka, Isla de la plata and Machalilla National Park. It seems that is way more affordable and has a similar amount of crazy animals and we may even see some whales as they start migrating through there in June! It would be nice to get some diving done - we'll have to see.

OK, off I go to whip up some egg whites...

Christmas

I ate too much.

More photos

Making a dive for the try line at Henley

I am pretty excited about something. Perhaps the free drinks?

Touch club 25th anniversary dinner - medal winners


Go-go gadget arms!

Touch days

Here's a picture of me running around last night. We won 7-2 but we should have done much better. How long is my hair getting! Better sort that out I think. There are more pictures - beach touch ones. Sunday was the big event and we had poeple diving all over the sand all morning. It all went pretty well and even the weather was perfect, not too hot but not raining. Unfortunately I got a little bit sunburnt on my chest, the only place i forgot to reapply. Just goes to show how well that sunscreen works.

Last night after touch I made a batch of gingerbread biscuits. They look pretty cute, all Christmas shapes. I bought a baking tray and it came with all these cutters. I also bought a sieve and a rolling pin so now I am pretty close to done for kitchen stuff. Tonight I am going to ice them. The gingerbread recipe needs some work though I think - it isn't tasty enough. I'm going to have a look on the web for something with more omphf.

This weekend I am catching up on some housework and planning on cleaning out all the crap from my wardrobe and getting rid of it. There isn't really much in there, but there is stuff I don't wear. I am down to about 5 outfits for work which go on rotation and it's getting a bit boring! Friday night is the work dinner - too bad it's cold or it could have been another occasion for my new dress. I am still allowed to call it new even though I have already worn it.

Tomorrow I am paying the desposit for my flights to The World. It's very exciting. My friend is joining me for 6 weeks of it and she is hyping me up too. She's back in Adelaide soon so we're going to start making some concrete plans for Machu Picchu etc. Just think; next year the blog will actually be worth reading cos I'll be in South America!! More photos soon...

I have been cruising along the last few weeks. The days at work seem to take forever but they also add up to a week fairly quickly so that now it is only 3 weeks until I go on holidays! I have been looking at my finances and trying to decide if I really want to spend $6300 on flights for my trip next year. I really have no choice unless I cut out South America altogether. No thanks! So I have cut a few weeks off the itinerary and found some people to stay with so I can save a few pennies in the expensive countries. I have been doing a bit of research trying to find the cheapest and best value Machu Picchu trek and Spanish classes. There are a lot of choices out there.

This week has been a bit lonely since I haven't been able to talk to my normal chat buddy. I suppose in some way it is good because it reminds that I shouldn't rely on one person too much because they can quite easily just stop being around whenever they like. And do. I have started doing my Christmas shopping finally and am making good progress so far. Every day at lunch I wander up and down Runde Mall and see the shoppers growing in numbers, by the time I finish work in a few weeks it's going to be packed out there.

Tomato plant update: still growing. Masses of green toms everywhere.
Eggpant update: still growing. Plenty of flowers but no fruit so far. Hurryup!! Although I had better start looking for recipes using eggplants before they start arriving otherwise they'll all go to waste. I don't think I want to waste them making babaganoush or whatever that nasty shit was MM and I were trying to make last year. When batch 2 is still festy it's time to stop wasting vegies.