Daily Life – Page 23 – helenthura.com

December 24, 2007December 24, 2007

to market

On Wednesday I went to market. to market.
I walked up and down.
Tomatoes, $8, great for sauce
Rockies, $2 a carton.
Cherries, super sweet.
Listening to their calls.

Some stand and watch you, waiting for you to decide that the price & quality is right. Others see you coming and do their best to talk you into buying from them.

There is no partridge in my pear tree but I do have 20kg of tomatoes, 8kg of capsicums, 5kgs of cherries and 4kg of mushies.

Which will become/has become
frozen mushies & capsicums
semi-dried & dried tomatoes
dried roasted capiscums
pasta sauce
frozen cherries for baking
cherries for eating 😀

We picked up two cherry pitters from the shop which made it so quick and easy to pit the cherries for freezing. I also picked up a curved paring knife, which has made coring the tomatoes a dream. It is now Monday morning and I just put on the last lot of capsicums to dry and there is one last tray of tomatoes that will be dried in a few hours. For some reason, I am guessing the weather it has been taking a lot longer to dry the tomatoes & capsicums than usual.

I spent a period of time each day, sitting at a little table on the back cement, with a box of tomatoes on one side, my drying trays on the other and the waste bucket between my legs. I core, halve or third the tomatoes depending on size, pop the backs, squeeze out some of the excess juice, arrange them on the trays and pop them in the dryer. Some of the tomatoes I have seasoned with some salt and pepper but the others are 100% tomato.

The dried roasted capsicums are possibly my favourite though, they have this slightly smokey intense capsicum flavour, are about 2mm thick and have a texture similar to a fruit roll-up. Quite nice.

Today is Christmas Eve, it about 8:30am here and we are about to put up the Christmas Tree, like a good Icelandic family, we decorated the house yesterday and put our outside lights up last week. Mum and I went to the farm yesterday to get our tree and of course to decorate Grandad’s house ready for Christmas Day at the farm.

December 19, 2007December 21, 2007

a night at the Chelsea

Sunday night saw me jump on the Concord v2 for a special night at the Hotel Chelsea. Well not quite but close. Instead it went something like the following. My not so gallant steed for the night (The Pulsar) and I picked up Thor from her house before we headed into The Valley for some pre-show drinks/chatter/random events with Tom. After a name change issued to me on my behalf, it was into The Troubadoure for a night with a theme of the Hotel Chelsea. (side note, The Troubie stamp is pretty cool, if I got tattooed on my wrist, do you think they would give me free entry for life?) Tom Woodward was in town *for one night only!* and along with Ange Takats and Cameron Elliot they were putting on a show at The Troubie. Titled “a night at the Chelsea”, promising me a night of music by three artists inspired by the music scene at the Hotel Chelsea in the late 60’s. The promise was certainly delivered.

Ange Takats
I have been meaning to see Ange live for a couple of months now, the classic myspace syndrome, all these cool local acts and only so many days in a week. She was well worth the wait, as I was in for a treat. She opened the night by singing a song, just singing, no guitar, no backup, just her. Rather impressive. Throughout the night she by far spent the most time up on stage as at some point during the boys sets she provided some backup vocals. She has a tale/song about the curse of knitting for boyfriends who then leave with the knitted goods (the word on the street is that to stop this happening that you need to marry said boyfriend and then give knitted goods). That got a gold star in my book.

Tom Woodward
Well there was that rather very interesting guitar tuning interlude. There were a handful of new songs. There was “my song” (publicly known as Reminding me of Your) played in the December 07 style rather than the August 07 style, which is a bpm increase of oh about 60% and a much edgier sound, very different and I don’t know which version I prefer. It was top shelf stuff, could it have been any less? (that answer is most definitely no). I can’t yet offer any soundbites/textbites for the new songs though. Other than that that there is a video clip for one of the new songs at the end of this post. Press that play button!

Cameron Elliot
I didn’t get to *really* hear much of Cam’s set as I was chatting up the back. Which means that I can’t really offer any profound or non profound as the case often is about Cam’s music other to say that I did quite enjoy what I heard though and will be keeping track of him. Cam was the Tom Waits or perhaps the Leonard Cohen of the night, he was one of those two as Tom was the Bob Dylan and Ange was the Joan Baez/Joni Mitchell.

After the “solo” sets were over they got together for some good old fashioned supergroup fun. One of which was of course I shall be released and there was another really great tune they did which I can’t recall at the moment.

Then some time later the music ended. some time after that the night ended with this. Tom and Thor on the footpath. In the light of a streetlight.

I almost forgot, a Troubie shot 😀

December 18, 2007December 18, 2007

clean desk

This is part of my desk at work. It is very clean. How pretty is the flower though? It is a made out of soft drink cans somewhere in Africa.

I took a photo of my desk at home at the moment. It is not so clean. I decided not to post the photo lol.

I went to the most glorious concert on Sunday night. I will have some photos and perhaps even more up later.

I, well Pabbi and I put up the Christmas lights today. Our House looks quite fancy, I will have to take some photos tomorrow.

December 9, 2007

The Girder Arrives

Yesterday morning, I took a call from Mum. She had a brief message for me. That between 3:30am & 4:00am tomorrow morning the girder for the pedestrian overpass would be delivered on to site and put in place. Did I want to go? Of course I wanted to do. It meant that I skipped out on the Banawarun concert but it was good morning.
A bit of a brief info regarding this pedestrian overpass. Redcliffe State High is spread over two campuses on either side of Oxley Ave. For years there has been talk of an overpass/subway. Just over a year ago, a student was killed when a car ran a red light. The talking stopped and action started to construct the overpass.

We got out of bed at 2:15, picked up another teacher who lives down the road and we were off to Redcliffe. Below is a series of photos showing the Girder making its way to the site and then the procedure involved in getting in place.

December 4, 2007

12mm + flash + The Farm = photo goodness

I think it is well established that I ~~like~~love ~~wide angle~~ ultra wide angle. In fact I have had thoughts of renaming this blog to life at 12mm and only posting photos that were taken at that focal length. My tag line on the photo board is “go wide young padawan, go wide”. I have recently discovered the beauty in using a flash during the day time to overpower the ambient light, combining that with 12mm well I just can’t stop taking photos.

Some people dislike (hate is just too strong a word to use about 12mm) the distortion that 12mm can bring, my mother is one of them. Some people love it.

Of course the 12mm really comes into its own at The Farm, green grass as far as the eye can see just works so well at 12 mmm.
Aunty Margaret and Uncle Reg were up from Tasmania as they had been to Norfolk Island with Grandad the week before.

And yes there are photos of Matthew. Perhaps you thought he didn’t exist, my little brother who threatens bodily harm if I rise my camera near him. Well at 12mm there is not much I can do about him been in the frame. One photo is very much just of him. He was standing behind me. I knew this. I carefully swung my camera round on my shoulder to change a few settings, swung it back round onto my back, pressed that shutter button and hoped like 12mm that I got the shot. That shot is the first shot here.

November 30, 2007December 24, 2007

nothing but blue skies

Totally an overstatement as we have had lots of grey skies here recently.

I went out to dinner last night with Ms Andrea as a last supper of sorts before she heads off next week to spend a week with her maternal family in Nebraska. We had dinner at Tomato Brothers. I had a semi-decent Tomato and Fetta salad (it had more rocket and pesto than it had fetta), she had the Mediterranean salad, we shared a Veg Out pizza. It was good, though when you put roast potatoes on a pizza I really think they need to be thin, not thick slices.

We ate, we talked, we laughed, we gossiped, we debated, we laughed, we ate. Then it was time for a good bye. Andrea going in one direction with a pizza for her boyfriend to have for dinner, I went the other way with this photo.