Well in about ohhh four minutes, I will be walking out the door and heading to the airport to catch a plane to Melbourne!!!! I am currently eating a quick breakfast and then I’m off. I stayed at my parents last night and Pabbi is about to take me to the airport. I am soo excited. Excited to be having a real mini holiday away from work. The last few months have just been hectic. I have a big list (ie 12+ pages) of things I want to check out, places I want to go etc etc. I haven’t got my Rudd money yet, but that is what I am going to be using this week!
I’m back Sunday night as I have to work on Monday morning.
A few pictures from last time I went. I am not taking my 12-24mm this time, just my 16-35, the 50mm and the 135mm. See you on the other side 🙂
We went to The Farm (as we do) yesterday and I had a glorious time basking in the sun, taking photos and reading. Matthew cooked a veal roast, which was quite a treat. Grandad has two pecan nut trees planted in the lawn and currently they are in season so to speak. Each week I methodically work the lawn picking up the nuts. Yesterday I made a heart with what I had collected.
Whilst I was collecting the pecans though I got a little side tracked though taking photos. These are the photos I took.
This is the Fried Egg tree otherwise known as Gordonia. It is named as such because when the flowers fall to the ground they look like eggs sunny side up.
Aren’t they so pretty?
Then these balloons caught my eye. They are from Christmas Day, when the trees were full of streamers and balloons. This trio had long lost their air but had stayed hanging on a branch, fused together in the sun, swinging in the wind. Then I pulled the branch down.
Between the two pecan trees is an African Tulip tree, it is also flowering at the moment.
This is my hand and the sky. My fingers look quite slim and long for some reason in this photo.
I know Mum will hate this photo when she sees it when she returns from Africa. I was laying on the grass looking at the world upside down and out of focus and took this photo. I strangely like it.
One plant that I closely link to The Farm is crucifix orchids. A large mass of them grows on a tree stump outside the kitchen window.
This is Matthew, yes that is true, a photo of Matthew. He was on the lawn finding the strongest wireless signal. He didn’t know I took this picture. 🙂 He is in his final year of uni this year and had dived into this honours year.
This little frog gave me a scare as I was putting stuff into the car, he jumped from the tree, over the top of me and onto the bonnet. He was such a little darling of a frog.
This photo is from the week before but I will share it today. The passion fruit vine at the farm, is not just on some joe average trellis or fence, but it runs wild over the avocado trees, a gum tree and some other trees in the same patch of land. These passion fruit grow high in the canopy, metres off the ground. When they are ripe or a wind has gone through, they fall to the ground below, finding little homes in the leaf litter till they are collected.
Yet again it is a Sunday morning and I am on the deck with the laptop. Thinking back to the week it has been and thinking ahead for the coming week. Another week at work, we have been trying some new processes, paring our working hours back to a more reasonable 37.5 (what we have been doing has been excessive). I’m trying to balance my life out again. I’ve been really slack in the cooking department. I need to start walking to work again or getting a bike so I can cycle.
Monday night at SES was spent doing knots. That is one thing that I am grateful for my years as Guide as I have no problem what so ever with them.
Wednesday night, I decided at the last minute to head out to the Troubie to catch Coby Grant, Rhiannon Hart and Georgia Potter. I’m glad I did. Coby Grant was a very nice discovery and of course it was great to finally catch a set from Rhiannon Hart as I have read a bit about her in the street press over the times. Georgia Potter, well really there is nothing to say there, a great set as one would expect and the perfect music to get you through the rest of the week.
Friday at work, we made hot dogs as one of the interviewers was shifting to a promotions job downstairs. Was really great to see everyone pitching in to help make the hot dogs and generally taking some time out of the day to have lunch. Friday night I had a great night. The Red Eyes, Dubmarine and The Cool Calm Collective were playing at the Step Inn. I took no camera, no handbag, just me. I missed the first half of the Cool Calm set which is life but I would have loved to have caught it. I spent the entire night dancing and feeling really free. More free than I have felt at concert in a long time. It was a great night out.
Yesterday I got up a *little* later than I normally do on a Saturday. A trip to the markets at Kelvin Grove picked me up some fruit and veg for the week along with a hot chocolate and a mini “pizza” for breakfast. I look forward to the KG markets each week as that is here I can get the best hot chocolate in Brisbane. I think the stall is run by the Blackstar Coffee people. They offer a white, milk and dark hot chocolate but each week they have different flavourings. This week they had white with lime, straight dairy milk and dark with peppermint. The previous week they had white with rosewater. I have had the white chocolate the last two weeks and oh my they are soo good. I’m hoping they have the dark with orange or the white with lavender next week.
I had a very leisurely read of the paper and then took some assorted photos. I tried to start read Far from the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy but gave up. I love how he describes the scenes but I just couldn’t get into it.
This morning, I did some weeding in the garden, some more planning for my upcoming trip to Melbourne (I’m going from April 7 to April 12). Can’t wait. I had so much fun when I went to Melbourne in 2007. If you have any suggestions for must visit places, please leave a comment.
Now it is about time to start organising my self to head to my parents and then onwards to the Farm to see Granddad.
A couple of weeks ago whilst browsing the QPAC website to see what was upcoming, I stumbled across Suddenly Single on the events calendar. It was billed as a new musical from two Brisbane writers. Tickets were $15. Straight away it ticked three boxes in the reasons why to go column. Last Friday, I had a bite to eat and headed off to QPAC for a night of song and comedic drama about the single life.
What the QPAC website didn’t mention is that that the performance was actually a workshop performance. Whilst I loved the show and will go see it again when it is in full production. I was relatively disappointed when I started reading the program and was advised that it was a workshop performance. I still would have gone if it had been advertised as that but these expectations I had for the show had to be quickly taken down a few levels. Those expectations were most certainly exceeded. From how the program read, rehearsals had only begun the week prior to the performance and that there will be a final script rewrite before the “real” production is staged.
The cast of six (three ladies and three gentlemen) arrived on stage in their blacks with script books in hand and burst into the title song Workin’ Out Your Life and for the next X hours and Y minutes they developed as characters and became seemingly more “at home” in their roles. It was also interesting to see how their voices changed as well, in the first act the ladies sitting beside me had picked one of the men as the better singer of the men but then come the second half, one of the others seemed the better singer. That was interesting. The role of Mary was played by Judy Hainsworth and oh her voice was just gorgeous, it was sweet and deep at the same time. If in the semi-distant future a musical called Suddenly Single comes your way, go check it out!
Well, Mum should now be firmly on the ground in South Africa, she flew out on Friday for about month away in Southern Africa (i.e. not just South Africa). She is going to have a wonderful time but it will be strange not been able to pick up the phone and call her when I feel like it. Things are starting to settle down at work which is nice. Last week I switched from looking after the medical side of the applications for all the Navy and Air Force full time general entry candidates to now looking after the Army full time general entry candidates. It means that I am looking after a larger number of candidates and am now faced with enlistments every Monday as opposed to three times a month like I used to have.
I went to see Two Fists, One Heart yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed, especially the strong WA music presence in the soundtrack. With a broad brush it had some similarities to Two Hands, in terms of fighting, cars, bouncers and the not the girl ordinarily expected girl as the romantic interest. I would definitely recommend checking it out. Parts made me laugh and parts made me sigh.
This morning I gave the kitchen an autumn clean, top to bottom, I scrubbed, wiped and shined. This photo was taken two weeks or so ago but it gives you a fair idea of what the kitchen looks like.
I also did the seemingly weekly clean of my room; vacuuming, dusting and tidying. I don’t believe I have shared a picture of what my current room looks like. It is small but I do quite like having everything at an arm’s reach.
Talking of my room, that reminds me, I must share the incident that happened earlier this week. I was getting ready for bed, I had closed the deck door, turned off the lights, started the dishwasher and gone to clean my teeth. As I was brushing my teeth, I heard a tumble. I thought something had dislodged in the dishwasher and thought nothing much of it. I finished cleaning my teeth, looked at the dishwasher and it was fine. Then as I stepped into my room, I saw that some of the things from my bookcase had fallen onto the floor, as I looked up I came face to face with a Possum sitting on top of my bookcase. I was slightly shocked to say the least. Possums on the roof, possums on the power lines or possums in the back yard are fine. A possum on my bookcase is another matter. As you can see from the above picture, my room is narrow and there is only one way in and one way out. As I entered the room further the possum jumped and I ducked, it landed on my bed and scattered up to the desk. I started yelling at it to get out of the my room. Johnno hearing my yelling came to investigate and we managed to get the possum out of my room and into the kitchen, then with some fancy footwork the deck door was opened and the possum was let free. As the light was turned on in the kitchen and I walked back into my room, I discovered something the possum had urinated all over my room; the carpet, my bed, the wall, my desk, my laptop etc. Cleaning up possum urine is not pleasant. It is a tick slightly gelatinous liquid and cleaning it off the laptop is not at all fun. Normally I close my laptop when I switch it off at night. That night though for some strange reason I had left it open… if only I had closed it. Now that that story is off my chest…
Something that would surprise most people would be that I actually scapbooked today! I know! It has been a good handful of months since I last did something but the other week, I packed up a fair amount of stuff from my old room and brought it over here. In the picture below you can see the little chest of Ikea drawers that I have covered. They hold my computer cables in one little drawer and then in the others scrapbookig goodies.
It is now just gone 10pm and means it is time to retire to bed with a book and prepare for tomorrow been Monday.
This is the cake that I made last week for birthday at work. A very simple cake to make but oh so very rewarding. I remember the first time I made an orange and almond cake. It was a total disaster. This time though I had a cake that was moist, slightly light (thanks to the whipped egg whites) and gloriously fragrant. This recipe has two slight variations from the Claudia Roden recipe for this cake that made it famous round the world in the form of the orange blossom water and the separated eggs. I could just about have this cake every day with a cup of tea for afternoon tea.
Orange and Almond Cake
2 large oranges
220g almond meal
220g white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
6 eggs, separated
a dash of orange blossom water if needed
Simmer the oranges in water to cover for 1 1/2-2hrs, longer is better as it means the oranges will be softer. Drain the oranges and allow to cool. Cut open, remove the seeds and pith. Puree the oranges in a blender. Heat oven to 180°C. Beat egg yolks and sugar until pale, beat in the orange puree, almond meal and baking powder. Whip the egg whites till you have soft peaks and fold gently into the cake mixture. Pour into a spring form cake pan, at least 20cm, 23cm is better. Bake until the cake has started to pull away from the edges of the pan and is firm to touch – it should take an hour, it may take longer. If the cake starts browning too much, cover with foil. Cool and then dust with icing sugar. Serve with cream if you are feeling decadent or Greek yoghurt if more restrained. If you are faced with oranges that are not very fragrant, add a little orange blossom water.
To make the pattern with the icing sugar, I arranged strips of paper over the cake top and dusted over the paper.
A couple of weeks ago whilst browsing the QPAC website to see what was upcoming, I stumbled across 
