Shamelessly Trawling for a Flatmate

Are you looking for a fabulous flat in fabulous Mt Victoria with three other people? Drop me a line and I can let you know the deets. James is moving out, and Hayley and Shan-diggity-dawg and I are looking for someone equally fabulous to take his place in the flat (they couldn't take his place in our HEARTS).

Edited to add: the Trade Me advertisement is up, finally.

Arohanui: another lovely week

The end of another week! As I write this I'm watching the RWC Scotland v Argentina game. The Argentinian players wear stripey shirts and socks and the effect is very strange; they kind of look like blue Tiggers.

Anyways, I had a very nice week, and here are some things that happened:

• I've spent all this weekend at a wedding up on the Kapiti coast. The wedding itself was lovely; the bride played murder ballads on the banjo; I saw killer whales breaching off Peka Peka Beach; and Jess Chambers and Rosy Tin Teacaddy played during the wedding and reception respectively. Shannon and I camped on the lawn which was not as cold as I thought it would be - but it did ignite a desire to spend all summer camping at the edge of the bush in DoC campsites.
• On the way back from the wedding we dropped into my Grandad's house in Waikanae and were fed by my lovely step-Nana Dorothy. My Grandad is always happy to discuss history indefinitely with me which I'm sure must be tedious beyond belief for Dorothy and Shannon. I was crazy tired from the wedding the night before, but it was very awesome to see them.
• This evening I made some baked oatmeal from the Budget Bytes recipe: part of my plan to be better organised in the morning and eat breakfast every day. My decision to make it was inspired by the Pumpkin Pie Baked Oatmeal that Beth posted about earlier this week, but as we're heading out of pumpkin season at the moment, I thought I'd better use her earlier seasonal fruit recipe. S and I had some for dinner and it was delicious.
• It was my lovely Nat's 30th birthday yesterday. I had a drink with her at Little Beer Quarter on Friday night - the first time that I'd been there. Good beer selection, lovely atmosphere (much less crowded than the Malthouse), and the nuts were good too. I'm just nuts about nuts (lol, obv). The best thing though was Nat. She's such a legend - starting university after working and travelling and living in the UK for ten years, studying incredibly hard, and absolutely blitzing with her marks. Happy Birthday darling - super proud of you, Ms. Fabulosity.
• My flatmate Hayley arrived back from her trip to Burning Man and around the States - it's great to have a gender balance in the house again, and to have someone to cackle with.
• My other James bought a pig's head for his birthday on Friday. Did you know pigs have very human looking eyes? I discovered this as a pair of them peered out the the head on the counter top. However the food made with the pig head has been good so far (some kind of Brazilian bean thing with the cheeks). There is something that looks suspiciously like brawn in the fridge at the moment that's freaking me out a bit but I'm sure it will be fine - nay, delicious!
• I dropped in yet more books to the second hand book store and I think I've finally reached an equilibrium with my book shelves, and THAT knocks another of my resolutions from my list.
• My new raincoat from Wet and Wendy arrived and I love it. It's raining rather heavily at the moment, and I'm hoping that it will be again tomorrow - can you believe that? I figure, if I can't have beautiful sunshiney weather then I want a lot of rain to splash about in.

And now I figure that it must be my bed time. Goodnight, lovelies!

The image above is from Simply Breakfast. The recipe the Simply Breakfast lady used is a different to Beth's, but Amazon has hosted a little preview that includes the recipe. Keen to try it out!

Investigative Blogging and fermenting things at home: Baking with beer yeast

My flatmate James is a dude and (more relevantly) brews his own beer. Since I’ve become somewhat obsessed with bread making, we’ve had a number of conversations about combining out powers for good: that is, I will give him some bread for his brew, and in return he’ll give me some yeast as a starter for my bread.

In theory this should work fine. But in practise? It’s difficult to say. After I was given a huge plastic container of live, beery-smelling yeast, I decided that I should probably do some research instead of winging it (ie bunging it into a bowl of flour and hoping for the best).

One of the forums I looked at suggested using the yeast to make a sourdough starter (I think sometimes called a sponge) and picking up the bread making from there. Fortuitously, James has a copy of NZ Lifestyle Farmer which has a description of how to make and bake from your own sourdough starter. There was also a comment that the yeast made a slightly bitter bread, which I chose to ignore. I figure people have been doing this for centuries. Right?

This morning I decided to start the whole, epic process. I didn't manage to put the loaf in the oven until about 8.30 this evening!

I first took about half of the yeast that James had given me and put it into a bowl with a dough made of half a cup of water and a cup of flour. I did my best to combine this (not easy; very gluey) and then covered it with a teatowel and left it to grow while I went to school.When I came home four hours later the yeast had grown to a freakish size and had begun to eat my teatowel! A good sign though, because clearly my yeast is ALIVE.

The beer yeast in its original state. Things to notice: brown, bubbly, not very appetising

Step two involved throwing away half of this mixture, and adding a slurry made of a cup of water and a cup of flour. I combined these two together and went away for about two hours to do some work. The mixture doubled again, without a teatowel casualty this time.

The sponge/starter in a glass jar. Slightly more appetising than the yeast in its most basic form. Also: bubbles! It's alive!

Finally: time to make a dough! The instructions recommended combining two cups of the starter*, two teaspoons of sugar, two teaspoons of salt and two tablespoons of oil in a bowl and then kneading in three cups of flour half a cup at a time until the dough “felt right”. This is very vague if you’ve never made a loaf of bread before, so to clarify: it should feel silky, but not sticky. This part of the process made me long for my beloved no-knead bread because kneading lots really strains the unaccustomed hands.

The dough then goes into a warm place to rise. At this point I normally hope for “twice the original size” but the sourdough manual warned me that it might not grow very big. This was a fair assessment of the situation: while the dough grew a bit, it just didn't grow terribly much.

I then knocked back the dough, gave it a quick knead, put it on a tray and shaped it into something approximating a loaf, and left it to rise again. The second time around seemed even slower! After something like two and half hours I decided that I'd had enough and put the loaf in the oven at 220C for about 25 minutes - I was planning to do it for longer but it didn't need it in the end (and luckily James caught it before it had burnt to a crisp).

The finished loaf on a decorative teatowel

The texture of the bread is absolutely lovely, very soft and moist, and not crumbly at all. The crust is nice too. The flavour is a bit borderline - the lees in the yeast are very strong tasting, and the loaf has a kind of weird bitter after taste. However, I think if I persevere using the sponge that I started making, eventually the lees in the yeast will become less concentrated.

In conclusion: As a breadmaking method, it's worth a go, and I'm now quite keen to make a proper sourdough starter sometime in the future. I am in love with the texture of the bread - in terms of texture I think it's probably one of the best loaves I've ever made. However, the flavour is very much a downside and I hope hope hope that it will become less concentrated over time. Finally, it's probably best to leave the loaf to rise overnight at least because it takes so much longer than a store-bought yeast does.

You could give it a go if you have all these bits and about 24 hours at your disposal. I'll let you know how the second attempt goes.




 *The rest of the starter goes into a jar with half a cup of warm water and half a cup of flour. Because you need to feed that little dude!

Monday

The following things are happening in my flat right now:

• James is harvesting the hops from the vine on the balcony.
• Hayley is dancing to Paul Simon's Gracelands and cooking with chokos and ridge gourds.
• Shannon has just returned home from diving and is cleaning a bunch of butterfish.
• I am suffering mildly from ennui and considering knitting some more.

Yesterday I finished reading Linotte and Doctor Zhivago on the same day. I loved both, which are pretty good odds, I think. Linotte has rekindled my Anais Nin love which is - a tiny bit worrying, to tell the truth. The Anais obsession can lead one to some very dark, Freudian and incestuous places. However, given previous Anais-obsession times, I feel well prepared and thus I'm now re-reading this strange fictionalised biography of Anais that I've had for some time. I haven't re-read it at all though, which is quite unlike me. 

Oh, Anais Anais Anais. Why am I so obsessed with you?? I had a conversation about Anais with my colleague Ian and I had SO MUCH TO SAY. Another thing that came out of that conversation was the possibility of writing (yet another) Anais biography. Can there be too many? She's just given so many primary resources it's almost like resisting temptation not too. I shall be like Anais and put it on my list of things to write some time in the future when I'm feeling all boho.

WWAD? Why, she would go and write about it in some high falutin' language in a hardcover notebook.

Four more days until WOMAD. I have made some lists and my picks for "must see" are Hanggai, The Barons of Tang, Horace Andy (for old times' sake) and Tanya Tagaq who I am drawn to with a kind of horrified fascination. You should go to this website and watch the first video because she gives a super amazing and very emotionally intense performance. Actually cannot wait. Coincidentally (or not??), two of my must see acts feature throat singing. I'm of the opinion that going to WOMAD and not watching at least one throat singing act is probably cheating oneself of the true World Music experience and I could not deny myself that.

Today I am grateful that my house has not been washed away in a tsunami or destroyed in an earthquake, and that I am not digging myself a latrine and living off tinned soup. Tomorrow is payday and I shall be sending money to Japan. I don't know what else to do. But I guess that the ocean is made of drops, so even another drop helps.

Your hair smells pretty

Hello lovelies; time for some shameless self promotion (the BEST KIND).

Are YOU looking for a flat in Wellington, New Zealand? Are you looking to move in at the beginning of February? Are you super cool with a love of eating everything drenched in butter and with none of those pesky "special dietary requirements"? Do you like to play a nice game of Cranium in the evening?

YOU COULD BE THE PERSON WE'RE LOOKING FOR.

Behold the lounge.

We have a Trade Me advertisement. Or you can email me direct! Please spread the word x

Sporegate 2010: In which Ginger commits a spore-based faux pas

Image credit.
 I can't see a hairy high top here. It's possible they're actually called "Ink Cap".

I live with three other people - the Boy (Shannon),  a woman named Jo and a man named James. Every one I live with is super cool, so I'm pretty lucky in that regard. James is especially eccentric, spends about 90% of his non-working  week at his girlfriend's house or at his studio, and when at the flat is usually gardening, brewing something bizarre, cooking something he's foraged for, or practicing charcuterie.

Anyways, I haven't seen James really since last Sunday when he came back from a trip down South with his family. He rushed into the house while Jo, Shannon and I were eating dinner and he was very excited because he'd found an edible mushroom in Frank Kitts Park that was called a hairy high top (or something like that. Not sure of the name now). It was a big mushroom, but I was a bit doubtful about it's edible nature which wasn't a big issue as right then I needed to go to bed in a huff because of a pre dinner mop-based bickering/snapping session I'd had with Shannon. I had no interest in hairy high tops when my mop-putting-away abilities had recently had such aspersions cast upon them.

James and hairy high tops have been notably absent for the last few days and I have been in a rather intolerant, snippy sort of mood for the last couple of weeks, so this morning when I saw that James had been painting and using one of my beautiful Crown Lynn plates as a dish to mix his paints on, I huffily rinsed it off and put it in the dishwasher. I really had no intention of broaching the subject with him because 1. I am terrible at any kind of communication/confrontation in this regard, and 2. I figured he'd just vagued out, forgotten that he'd even started mixing it, and that it would sit on the deck for the next few days until somebody else moved it anyway.

OH NO I WAS SO WRONG. It turns out that this dish was not just covered in drying out black acrylics or ink! In actual fact it was hairy high top spores that James is using to make some kind of art type thing! We had a spectacular passive-aggressive off in the kitchen, where I told him NOT to use my plates to mix his art supplies on, he told me he had no idea what Crown Lynn plates even looked like, and that the material I'd biffed without a second thought was his spores. After my self righteousness had worn off I felt terrible knowing that I'd washed his spores down the drain. And then annoyed that I felt so bad. But: Can you believe that I could be so heartless? I need to apologise to him. But he's left the house in a huff and I'm not sure when I'll see him again. And then I'm like - "ugh but my plates are so precious to me!" But then I think - "oh but people are more important than things" and "I should try and be more tolerant/communicative".

I told Shannon all this on the way to the bottle shop and he laughed on and off the whole time we were shopping for beer and all the way home. For I know he could be chuckling away in his bedroom as we speak.

Moments of Sunshiney Inspiration

Sunshine, I think, is my other boyfriend. On Monday I went for a long walk in the sun, and I felt enthused and inspired for the first time in ages. It was a wonderful feeling.

What did I feel inspired about? Mostly I felt inspired about my summer wardrobe. The sunshine made me think sunshiney things about dressing in pretty dresses and cardigans. Big plans for the summer wardrobe now include sewing some tunic-style tee shirts (I'm going to cut them off a bunch of 80s tee shirts I picked up in various op shops) and knitting a "That Girl" cardigan in black sparkly cotton. Also, I'd like to sew some more super Ultra Minis in weave (as oppose to stretch-knit) fabrics.

I made a lovely blouse in the weekend from some op shop voile and some vintage crochet lace I've had forever. I'm planning to make another with some linen voile floral fabric that's in my now overflowing stash container at home, but before I can start I'll need more lace trim. Such a hardship shopping for lace trim.

Two things I am undecided about: sheer stockings and clogs. To clarify: I've kind of developed a crush on the idea of clogs, but I'm not sure where the crush came from and if it's misguided. Bex has already shared her opinion (which is, succinctly: "No") but my mind keeps wandering back... specifically I am interested in these clogs via Trade Me. I think I'd like a red and a brown pair. What do you think - am I seriously misguided here? I need help.

Also: the sheer stockings. What do we think of white sheer stockings? With shorts? And boots, but probably NOT the clogs. Probably.

I've never been inside the caravan store called The Princess's Bedroom, but I was stoked to see that there is a cute little food caravan that's opened up next door. I think I shall head there for a sausage sizzle sometime soon.

I also like the Kreuzberg Summer Cafe, which is at the other end of Cuba Street. Roll on summer, and eating outside in front of cute little temporary stores!

On Sunday night I had a conversation with my flatmate where I offered Sensible Advice about money (specifically - about using a credit card to pay for travel). I am notoriously much better at giving advice than I am at taking it, so I'm trying to do a better job of listening to myself when I'm telling other people what to do with their lives.

I am proud of a couple of things I said. The first was "If you are prepared to get yourself in debt and spend years paying it off, then you should also be prepared to save the same amount of money". The second was "If you have to get yourself in debt to do it then it's not really an opportunity."

I am ready to follow both of those pieces of advice, and Oh So Ready to be debt free.

Last bit: I am getting myself a Filofax. This is a direct result of reading two other blogger's peans to their Filofaxes and my slight exasperation with my poorly chosen diary for this year. My flatmate's response was "Will you get some shoulder pads to go with it?" but I laugh (ha! ha!) because I have big plans to use some blue check Swandri fabric and a cute 70s felt transfer that Liz gave me years ago to give the Filofax some serious pizzaz.  I'm also quite in love with the idea of my increasingly epic organisation.

Thursday. Arohanui time

 haven't been feeling the blogging mojo so much this week. But it's all good! All about enjoying the habit, isn't it?

So, anyhow (and if it isn't patently obvious), Arohanui is Things I Love Thursday by any other name - originating from Gala Darling, an opportunity to make a list of things I love and, thusly, be super enthused for the rest of the week.

In no particular order (and apparently involving a great deal of CAPS LOCK):

♥ Sleeping with the Boy. Gushy and kinda gross to share I know, but I adore sharing my bed. And I haven't been late to work one day this week, so I must have found a way to mediate this love of spooning with productivity?

♥ Yoga times. My favourite things at the moment are: shoulder stands and being stretched into position by my instructor, and THE SPACE. Choosing to go somewhere and do something solely for myself, by myself. It's the polar opposite of roller derby in terms of exercise, and there is no pressure to make attendance. I love not having to make attendance anywhere.

♥ The ongoing underwear making habit. I'm learning the fine art of Patience in Sewing, which is an excellent lesson indeed. My most recent prototype is Prototype 4 - I've drafted a pattern but I haven't yet sewn a pair of those bad boys. BUT I'M EXCITED TO TRY! Tonight is the night, verily.

♥ My new flatmate. She is fun and likes drinking wine and makes pie and other delicious foodstuffs, and isn't afraid to eat all the porky dumplings at yum cha. Also, it's fun to have another girl in the flat and talk about shoes in the kitchen. Apparently, the sound of cackling fills the house. Ah, cackling. Also also, I haven't tried yet but I suspect that she would DANCE IN THE LOUNGE to "Single Ladies" should I apply pressure at the right time.

♥ I'm in charge of my money! And I'm in love with the feeling. It is one of the best feelings ever to know where my money is at, how much I have to spend and how my debt repayments are going. I don't feel fear when I log in to online banking, I feel pride. It's a pretty fucking cool feeling. Tears baby, tears.

And now, for your time wasting pleasure:

Thinking this would be good to see at the cinema... Can't see a release date for NZ yet though. DRAMATIC.

The inside of my head this Monday

Photo via Vintage Photos.

I'm feeling grumpy like this grumpy man. Grump grump grump, eating worms etc.

The Boy was here in the weekend on a break from his epic around the country trip looking at radio transmitters. It was awfully nice to see him because I am rather fond of him. We drank and gossiped and had a bit of a dance off on Friday night, and then went to the vege markets on Sunday morning. It was all terribly domesticated and rather cosy and lovely. These are the things that living together is good for!

I now have a little less than a fortnight to wait until he is back for good, and I’m so stoked. The flat dynamics are all wrong without him around too, and it makes it kind of horrible to live there. Flat dynamics are a subtle balance indeed, especially given my apparent intolerance for almost everyone in the world. The dynamics need to be perfect or else I find myself raging about and re-organising what has recently be re-organised by someone else. ("I CAN'T BELIEVE HE MOVED MY TOASTED SANDWICH MAKER" *basilisk glare*).

I scrimmaged in the weekend for the first time in weeks and weeks and weeks. I forgot how much I love hitting people. I’m still a bit overly cautious and appear to have become afraid of falling over, but still - it’s just a matter of working through these head things. It’s been a drag trying to convince myself that I still have the abilities that I had last year, and to keep motivated to train when I know that I won’t be skating in the first bout. Also, admin stuff is making me hell grumpy at present, and so despite my little bit of joy in skating again, I am piking this evening to be quiet and far away.

My flat has been pretty much abandoned - Shannon and Dave are away, and my third flatmate, James, is pretty much always busy and is never there. It's fair to assume that I'm going to have the place to myself until next Thursday - quelle excitement! I'm planning my perfect evening for tonight in an effort to make myself feel better in my grumpiness. Thus, I am planning to make Italian Meatball Soup, hula hoop in the lounge to Beyonce, MIA and Missy Elliot for the hour or so it should take to cook this, then oil my spinning wheel and spin for an hour while watching an episode of Rome. Does that sound some kind of awesome or what? Wish me luck!

Baby Steps

Lately it's benn a bit of a mission trying to find new/old routines, and especially a routine in which blogging will fit. We'll just have to take baby steps for the time being and darlings, I'm afraid that you'll just get what you get. This is a cardinal blogging rule broken (people want REGULARITY, dontcha know), but until I'm paid to blog full time about my own shit, strict regularity is just not going to happen, I'm afraid. I stop blogging when I start feeling guilty about not blogging what I thought I would blog, which leads me into a vicious cycle of procrastination that can only be broken by being kind to myself.

I have been feeling The Burn more than I have for an awfully long time. I am back at roller derby training after a somewhat unintentionally long hiatus; I've recovered from my 2009 Season Burn-out and am trying to balance out my commitments a little better this year. One of the nicest things that I've picked up, and recently with a kind of vengeance, is Astanga yoga. It's a very physical form of yoga but it works very well with the very high impact stuff that we do at derby and has helped me with my recovery time from that high impact exercise. I started with yoga because I am obsessed with the tightness in my hip flexors - they're the muscles at the top inside of your leg, which control how wide you can (ahem) spread your legs and the rotation that you can get during that spread - getting my legs rotated further would be good for skating because I want to be able to skate with my feet facing out to either side so I only present my back to the opposition as I take a corner. I saw Smarty Pants do this when she trained with us last year and it was super impressive. Some of the women I skate with can do it and it would be a fantastic thing to have in my arsenal I think.
However, I am so inflexible in my hip "flexors" it's as though my body was made of a ball of plasticine and my legs were two toothpicks jammed in the bottom. When I try to face my feet out they are never straight enough and I end up going around in circles. I don't think I've explained this very well but basically, to do this move your feet should look like this:

And mine end up more like this:

Does this at least partially explain this? I'm hoping so.

You'll be pleased to know that my flexiness is increasing. Once you start making a regular effort to do these things it's impressive how quickly the difference is obvious.

I had a weekend with my Boy and with sleeping and with knitting and it was lovely, and it happened mostly in bed. Because, yes, we are now living together (did I mention?).  One of the best things about this is not having to leap out of bed in the weekends to rush home and do things, or sleep in at his knowing that I am making a trade off on "things that will be achieved". Living together means that I am achieving and sleeping in. It's heaven, wrapped in a duvet, wrapped in bacon with a delicous coffee dipping sauce on the side.

I spent a bunch of birthday vouchers I was given by the Menfolk (and one left over from Christmas), and bought the most beautiful merino possum yarn. Merino possum yarn is the most INSANELY SOFT GORGEOUS YARN ever, like knitting with hand fulls of unicorn based loveliness wrapped in marshmallow clouds. Vouchers give one a much better excuse to buy two $15 balls of yarn. Normally, I could never justify such an expense. On Saturday then I rushed home and made a pair of handwarmers from the yarn and using a pattern from a new book that I bought at Minerva - normally I would just throw a pattern together myself but why the hell not since I bought the book? It's a lovely book too and I want to knit many many things from it.

My earlier rush of obsessive knitting has slowed to a trickle, but I've been awesomely happy with what I've produced which is a nice feeling. I bought a new set of plastic drawer thingumies for stash storage and have been relentlessly frogging disappointing early projects. It's pretty much the most awesome feeling reclaiming wool from pure hideousness mistakenry that I've been trying to wear in homage to my
perserverence. I can't recommend it enough.

The Most Boring Man In The World!!?

I have a new flatmate and I'm worried that he’s maybe very boring. Item: I came home last night and he was watching TV and hanging out on the couch and I was rather pleased because I hadn’t seen him for two days after he’d moved in. Also, getting to know new flatmates is good, right?

Me: “hey dude, how are you? Did you have a good one today?” Him (with mucho enthusiasm): “Yeah! I had an awesome day!” Me: “Awesome! What happened?” Him: “I’ve changed desks at work!” Me (thinking there must be more to this story): “oh yeah, cool…?” Him: “And now I’m heaps closer to the Marketing Department!” Me: *crickets*

A list of things that are possibly quite awful but that I have really enjoyed doing lately

• Text messaging while riding my bike along the waterfront and listening to Agatha Christie audiobooks.
• Watching umpteen episodes of Deadwood in a row, until my mind goes funny and I want to call everyone Cocksucker.
• Living in bed: eating Men's Pocky and chocolate chip shortbread and revelling in my own filth while the weather turns to crap outside.
• Spending ages in the library looking at the CDs and only getting the stupidest nostalgia albums out (the Glory of Music Hall anyone? It features the song "The Biggest Aspidistra in the World").
• Cooking too too much food, filling the freezer with insane amounts of dahl and knowing perfectly well it will be there until I come back because both of my flatmates are freaked out by lentils.
• Making the Boy listen to the shittiest CDs of the bunch that I won at work for New Zealand Month while drinking two bottles of cheap white wine and ranting about the Media.
• Cooking an entire pumpkin all at once.
• Crocheting bicycle accessories.

Now listening: The Donnas - Spend The Night - Pass It Around

A Big Easter Weekend of Pottering Around - Good Friday

So, Good Friday began with Fail, as (of course) all the supermarkets are closed on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. So, food shopping was not achieved.

However, I did ok with getting some baking in: we had no bread and so my first act was to remedy the situation and make my own - a bit denser than I'd like. While I was making it there was a lot of standing around and gas-bagging with the New Flatmate. And drinking lots of coffee.

 

I then made soup for lunch. The soup is tomato and pumpkin and chilli, and I've made the picture very very small because all pictures of soup look like pictures of vomit. Unless one is a particularly gifted food photographer with a great camera, which I am not.

Did my laundry and hung it on the line. I suspect that my laundry is actually breeding in the basket, because I did an insane amount of washing and the basket is still near overflowing. Grrr. Ongoing weekend job, it appears.

While I was in the laundry shed I strung up an undies-line for winter, which was an added achievement for the day! Huzzah.

Rode my bike to the dairy to get ingredients for Red Velvet Cake. However the dairy have didn't buttermilk. I decided to make chocolate cup cakes instead and then realised (when I got home) that I no longer have muffin pans to support the cakes while they are baking.  So my cakes were a little spread about and oddly shaped... rather nice lavender icing though. Mmm. Icing. Oh, and sprinkles of course. And I got to use the icing bag, which is always great fun.

[You can better see the weird shapes in the picture below. Please admire how much the cakes really question the idea of what is "round" and whether it's really compulsory for cupcakes to be "round". I love to shake things up, challenge the status quo, ask the hard questions. I'm hard core like that.]

Then I caught the bus to Newlands for the first time. This was an Adventure! When I arrived, mum had cut her own finger with a pair of scissors while she was collecting rosemary from the garden - as in, she cut very firmly through the woody rosemary stem and straight through her own finger. Michelle was there fixing aforementioned finger which was pissing blood. Then we drank red wine and had roast chickeny bits for dinner and ate cake and watched trashy TV. I stayed the night.

End of first day of pottery weekend - how did I go? My list was

• Clothes washing ACHIEVE! - or at least, I didn't say that I had to do all the washing. So, ongoing achieve.
• Vacuum the bedroom FAIL. I completely forgot about this.
• Food Shopping: I will ride my bike to Chaffers Park New World SEMI-ACHIEVE - I rode my bike to the dairy to get ingredients, and I did a bit of food shopping. On second thoughts, I think it's perhaps more of a SEMI-FAIL.
• Make hot cross buns FAIL. And I can't be arsed now, so this can go in the "Crazy Wacky Ideas" pile.
• Make cake, possibly red velvet cake ACHIEVE. I made cupcakes. And in a more general baking sense, I also made bread. And in a more general cooking sense, I made soup.

Conclusion: MUST TRY HARDER.

A Room With a View

Do you know anyone in Wellington who is looking for somewhere to live?

Tom and I are looking for a new flatmate... all the details are on Trade Me.

That is all.

Arohanui

Things I love, for the first time in ages, and in an effort to neutralise some of my angst of the last week.

• Riding my velocipede along the waterfront at a leisurely pace on a sunny day. I like watching the people strolling, everyone seems to be in a good mood. I also like pulling up to a park bench on Oriental Parade and reading in the sun while listening to the sea. Yay!
• Baking cupcakes. I love the anticipation, the smell, and the fact I get to ice them afterwards, with ridiculous pastel coloured butter icing from a piping bag.
• New flatmate anticipation - don't get me wrong, there are many things *wrong* with the process of finding a new flatmate, but it is exciting to get to meet some new people and to think what they could potentially bring to your life as well.
• Living with my brother Tom. He's so quiet, keeps to himself so much, but he has an absolute heart of gold. He's taken to checking that I'll be home for dinner, and he makes good burritos.

• Being excited about Richter City Roller Derby's inaugural bout "The Grudgemaker". I am going to be MCing and I bought a suspender, fishnet stockings and false eyelashes the other day, to go with my new peacock blue and emerald green brocade 60s mini dress. I am going to have SO MUCH FUN. I've never worn false eyelashes. If you're in Wellington, you should totally come BTW.
• Having a great Shannon around.

 

(the photo is by the Polaroid Kidd, who seems to have taken his site down *sad face*)

What I did during The Six Week Convalescence

I write this with great excitement, as I am FINALLY sans-cast, not quite limber, yet strangely nostalgic (already! what a freak) for The Time I Was A Cripple.
So. Let us now take a look back at the last six weeks... and the Varied and Amazing Things I Have Done between waiting for my bones to knit, climbing up the walls and slipping over on the wet mossy concrete on the walkways and stairways of various houses. Mmm, huzzah!

• I made manymany tiny origami stars. They are pretty and pointless and you can find out how to make them here. Oh, and I used this paper for a different lot of them. Pretty pretty pretty.

• Knitting! Squares for the giant and never-ending patchwork blanket in the lounge...

• ... similarly I swathed myself in pink wool...
  
• ... and I made slippers for Shannon on my new fab thing, the Knitting Loom, which I then decorated with red and green pompoms, and gosh golly darn, didn't they look silly. Yes, they did.
  
• I have read manymany books. Mmmm, books. Here are some of them, looking pretty in a pretty pile.

• I listened to manymany Agatha Christie radio plays. I love Poirot and his use of "the Leetle Grey Cells" and I believe that, as a society, what we really need are more pantomime French accents on public broadcasting. Huzzah! 

• Keeping with the multimedia theme is the obsession that I developed with watching entire series of shows in one sitting. I've watched the first series of the Mighty Boosh, learnt parts of all three series of the League of Gentlemen off by heart, obsessed relentlessly about the 2008 series of Time Team (I am so in love with Phil Harding/Wurzel Gummidge) and felt harrowed by the entire series of Band of Brothers, leant to me by the fabulous Nat. 

• I undertook a little editing for Ange, who in turn whisked my dirty washing away and returned it clean and dry, and with my underwear impeccably folded. There is nothing like clean, dry, folded washing when you've obsessed over a growing pile of dirty laundry for a fortnight. I love her.

Mostly however, I lay in bed and demanded tea and coffee from Beatrice and Callum when staying at Shannon's flat, from Bella and Tom since I've been home and from Shannon everywhere I went. And these lovely people (amongst others too numerous too mention) totally humoured me, and checked that I hadn't fallen over whenever I made lots of noise. Lovely lovely people came to my house up fifty-million steps to visit and ended up waiting on me. I have been driven around by manymany lovelies to save me from encroaching and barely resisted insanity. My parents visited me everyday in hospital despite how much of a mission it was to get there, and made me feel I could call on them whenever I needed. I'm so lucky to be surrounded by so many amazing people. I'm so sure that I haven't mentioned all of the incredibly thoughtful things that people have done for me, from lending me magazines and DVDs to plying me with lollies and chocolate to vacuuming my lounge, but rest assured NOTHING is taken for granted.

Arohanui darlings! *mwah*

If you're super keen you can follow my Convalescence Adventures here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here - the famous Caper Caper.

Free from the Dull Ones

The anxiety has subsided - I think it was when I rearranged the lounge, neatly placing my teacups on the window sill, that the magic happened. I am sitting in an empty bedroom and am deliciously full of the favourite food of the home-alone single Sarah, the toasted sandwich. (Should I be saying - the home-alone, poverty-stricken single Sarah). Just missioned over with Callum to my little brother's house; another borrowing of his turntables for a party tomorrow night - big night Tuesday before Waitangi Wednesday.

But the best bit is that there is no annoying people watching shitty tv in the lounge and guffawing periodically at some "witticism" or other. Is this a good time to reflect on the fact that flatting with randoms nearly always leads to a deep seated dislike of someone you are inherently incompatible with? Or maybe it's just the act of living with people in general. I did look for my own place at one point, but it's SO expensive, and one bedroom flats can be so nasty. And bedsits - I remember when Andy and I lived in a bedsit. There wasn't a great deal of room for two adults. Even if one of them was relatively small (even then I had far too much furniture).

So, anyway, I think I might go to bed now. Or at least, to bedroom, as the room itself is a fucking pigsty and I desperately need to move the piles of dirty clothes off the floor.

ALSO: Checking my stats before, I have almost had 5000 visitors (not 5000 hits - defo have more than that). When I have had 5000 visitors  I think that I will have a Blog Party. It's going to be amazing - and virtual.

Library and BORED BORED BORED

I've been reading the Journal of the Auckland-Waikato Historical Society all day, and not only is it not really any use at all, it's also the DULLEST set of local histories I've ever had the misfortune to be obliged to read. Dull, dull, dull. Outside the weather is beautiful, amazing; warm and mild and nary a breath of wind. I felt super young-prof eating my sandwich in Parliament grounds in the sun. Buggering off at half four to go the beach with Bella, I can't wait to get in the water and splash about for a bit. I want to be outside! I don't want to work today! Meh. Grumpy. Only and hour and a half to go... just have to mission through. Seriously tho, I'm wilting from boredom. Last night I had a semi-run in with one of the Dull Ones, accusing my Kranskies of being Mystery Meat. Well, duh! Delicious, tasty, spicy, cheesy Mystery Meat, I think he'll find. I replied that there wasn't anything worse than what was in that bread he insisted on eating. You know, preservatives, additives, cereal. In fact, given the doughy pizza of Monday night with its full complement of additives, preservatives, white flour, flavour enhancer 621 and general air of uncooked-ness, I think it can be gathered that not only were my Kranskies delicious but also comparatively REAL. So, ha! Take my come-back where it hurts, non-present flatmate!

Good good day!

Everything's falling into place... super. Lots of achievement at work, feeling much more on to it than I have the last week or so (really, since I've been back). I harassed an elderly Northland woman into showing me her collection and felt really in touch with the retail bitch within. Deliciously pushy.

I can't wait for my flatmates to move out and for Bella to move in. I swear, sometimes I just want to shriek they are SO FREAKING DULL. Dull-ness is THE Cardinal Sin. I think I could excuse nearly everything else, but people who are so wilfully boring... I could be using that patient tolerance, you know? For someone who is more deserving of my patience and tolerance, and would be more appreciative also. Honestly, I really have tried... but in the weekends, when the weather is amazing, and they'd rather sit inside and watch some absolute fucking drivel of an American movie... all the tolerance and the patience in the world is necessarily put to the test.

Dull, dull, DULL.

And the white bread that turns into powdery orange mould before it's used up freaks me out no end.

And they eat canned fish. EWWWWWWW.

And when they "cook" they mix two cans together. And we share food, so I have to partake in the resulting slop.

And when one of them eats anything I make the first thing he does is smother it in tomato sauce, and then he thrusts it between two of the six slice of white papier-mache-esque bread that he eats at every meal.

And he uses metal instruments in the pots and pans and it makes a terrible screeching sound.

And he unplugs the router and decoder all the time so it is always a huge, massive mission to access the internet.

Enough. I was actually having a Super Day before I started on this rant. Now I am hungry for salad and blue cheese. YUM.

Grr, I am Roller Girl

And typing with one hand. Yesterday I had my first skate training session and fell very heavily, my arms out stretched, and have sprained my left shoulder - one handed because I am in a sling. Although I'm still a reasonably fast typist, which is quite interesting.

I came home after the training session, almost in tears on the bus from the pain (so Drama!). Flatmate Pete offered to drive me to the doctor's, bless him, and so I ended up getting x-rays taken. I sort of imagined magnesium flashes for some reason, but all I heard was a rather unexciting "thump" as each x-ray was taken. And now I'm watching UKTV. I'm a little over-warm and sticky - I am in fear of too much pain when showering. I suspect I'll ned to overcome that pretty soon if I don't want to horrify those within a metre of me.