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.
It is a Friday night, and I have just come home from the movies. I have quite literally walked in the door, picked up my laptop and gone back out onto the deck and I am not going to move till I have written at least one recent adventure.
What day, week, fortnight, whatever it has been. Work is of course still work and hopefully in the coming the weeks the stress, the issues and the hours will start to settle down. Next week will mark the turning of a new leaf at work with staff changes and I am cautiously looking forward to it.
Yesterday at work it was the birthday of one of my “Work Mums†and to celebrate I made the Orange and Almond cake made famous by Claudia Roden (photos/recipe of course to follow). We had planned to have it for morning tea but one thing of course leads to another and before we knew it was just before three and the cake had not been cut. A mimed Happy Birthday was sung and then there was cake. I was really quite happy with how it turned out. It does take a little time in the prepping of the oranges but oh it was good.
Today was of course a Friday and it was even Black Friday, it was also a day where we had 29 candidates in for assessment which makes it a very big day. To fill our stomachs, a morning tea buffet was arranged which was a very fitting end to both the week and a booster shot for the day. I made these little Persian rosewater and cardamom rice biscuits which went down a treat (of course as above photos/recipe to follow).
I went to see Easy Virtue tonight and oh it was a tragic delight. Oh the costume design was just glorious and the music and the wit, I did adore the wit. On Wednesday night I went to see He’s Just Not That Into You which was a pleasant reprise from the week. It was a good laugh, which also had some sad/true/real bits in it as well. Two movies in a week is quite bold but through Optus Tickets I have a $8 movie pass for Birch CC till the end of the month and I plan on seeing a few more movies between now and then, especially as a ticket normally costs me $15 something!
Last weekend I had quite a pleasant Sunday, Windsor Brass was playing what was advertised as Jazz, Swing and Show Tunes at Gregory Park in Milton. I arrived a little early and picked up a turkey/cranberry roll, an apple scroll and a ginger beer. I found a patch of grass in the shade and enjoyed what turned out to be an afternoon of show tunes with no jazz or swing. I had been very looking forward to the jazz/swing but the show tunes sufficed.
An older couple enjoying the music
The Band
And a little video! Windsor Brass, play some James Bond
Finally I adored these rainbow pencil bollards at one of the entrances to the park, how cool are they?
Tomorrow I have a Risk Management course alllll day with SES which should be at least interesting.
The last five weeks have been incredibly crazy for me. We changed contract holders at work and that meant for my section a new manager and two new admins, which has meant a lot of training from myself and the other girl who stayed on. It has been hard and there are times when I just want to erect a divider round my desk and close my self off my the rest of the world and get my work done. The reality of that is that I have been working long hours. Which is why this blog has been lacking. Most days I get home from work, have a bite to eat, have a little chill out and then fall asleep waiting for it to repeat all over again the next day. In saying all that though, I still love the outcome of my job and just wish there was more time
A week after the contract changed, I moved house. I am still in the same suburb but moved a few streets over to a house that is owned by a friend of Karl’s. My room is the smallest room I have ever lived in but I love it. For the first time since moving out of home, all my boxes are unpacked and that feels great! Everything has a place and I have also gotten rid of a lot of crap which is great. One of the things or probably the thing I love most about this house and one of the things that sold me on moving in was the deck. I iron on the deck, I eat my meals on the deck, I relax on the deck, I create on the deck. The deck is good. I am currently sitting at the dining table (the deck is the dining room) with my laptop, listening to the bats screech in the trees, the whistles from the basketball stadium across the park and the trains that crescendo and decrescendo past. If I get home and it is still light or on the weekends, I often kick back on the sofa on the lounge and read a book or do some crochet.
On the weekend I went to a BBQ which was organised by one of the ladies I started SES with all those months ago as we are no longer “newbies” but real members. A perfect excuse to make cupcakes 🙂 and SES cupcakes is what I made. Vanilla buttercake for the cake and then fondant icing with lollies on top.
Of course, I decorated the cakes on the deck and here is a photo of my set-up.
It’s just after 9pm and I can feel my eyes starting to close so I am going to curl up in bed with my book and wait for it all to repeat itself tomorrow 😀
Sundays are good days and bad days rolled into one. They are bad because it means back to work tomorrow and good because it means another day at home.
I went to the markets yesterday as I usually try to do on a Saturday. As a change though I picked two croissants. One for breakfast yesterday and one for breakfast today. A little indulgent I know but I have porridge for breakfast every other day, I’m exercising and I am the lightest I have been in I don’t know how long! Chocolate Croissants/Pain au Chocolat are one of the attractors that keep me coming back to the markets each week. When I was in Germany in 02/03, you could buy Chocolate Croissants for I think about €1.30 at the convenience store across the street. At the morning break, there would be a steady stream of teenagers coming back from the store with a Chocolate Croissant in one hand and perhaps a Kinder Surprise for later on. I can’t recall if I ever actually bought a Chocolate Croissant in Germany, I know I often bought a Kinder Surprise but I don’t remember reaching into the display case and grabbing a Chocolate Croissant.
Fast Forward four years later and on any day of the weekend around Brisbane you will find a “Farmers Market” though I say the word Farmers with caution because I have only been to one market in Brisbane that was strictly just a Farmers Market and that would be the Granite Belt wine/produce market that is held at South Bank occasionally. The Northey Street Organic Market is the second closet in terms of only having direct farm to you stalls but like the others does have a number of “market green grocers”. All the other markets appear to have perhaps between a third to a half of the fresh produce stalls are direct farmer to you and the rest will be the market green grocers who have the same variety of fresh produce that you would find at the local supermarket or green grocer. Perhaps one day the balance will swing more to direct farm to you stalls.
Back to Chocolate Croissants though, at all these markets there is often at least two, three or perhaps even four bakeries and in the last two odd years of going to the markets I have tasted I do believe all the Pain au Chocolat on offer at both markets and bakeries. My biggest complaint is that they are typically lacking in the chocolate department. If I want a Pain au Chocolat I want it to have a fair amount of chocolate in, otherwise I may as well just get a normal croissant, split it open and spread on a little Nutella. The very first Pain au Chocolat I had at a market in Brisbane was at the Mitchelton markets. I believe it was from Wild Breads and it was the closet to what I feel a Pain au Chocolat should be like. It had oozing dark chocolate in the middle and the pastry was golden and you could taste the butter. Since then I haven’t had any that have lived up to that first one. The Gympie Cultured Butter/Cheese stall does come close but isn’t what I would say perfect.
When I first started this post, I certainly hadn’t planned on writing the last three paragraphs! I had planned to show a photo and a little text.
A cup of tea or two (tea bag saved for that purpose) and a Pain au Chocolat which I ‘”refreshed” by running a little water over the top of it and placing it in the microwave on medium for about a minute. Worked quite well.
Now I’m off to the Art Gallery with Mum and then to The Farm to see Grandad.
Oh what a day that was.
There was rain, sword fighting, food, laughs, food, turf adventures, swimming, french cricket, food, water fights, lots of photo taking and generally just a fun day.
Matthew and the girls came in my car for the trip to The Farm and oh what at trip that was. Seven odd weeks later, I still think of that trip with a smile on my face.
As has always been done, you take a selection of your Christmas presents to The Farm. Matthew took his gas mask and the girls took their SuperSoakers. The journey was spent with the gas mask rotating between the three of them and scaring/getting a laugh out of other cars as we drove past. It was classic.
The Christmas Table.
Even before I started suggesting “Christmas at The Farm 08” I had wanted to have a meal on a long table with a white table cloth out on the turf or under the pecan nut trees. This Christmas I had that long table with white tablecloths.
Another thing I had been thinking about for a long time was having my glass hurricane vase, filled with glass baubles filled with beads. Christmas Day, saw the girls and I sitting on the floor of the garage filling the baubles and trying not to spill too many beads on the floor! Once they were filled though they looked gorgeous!
One of my other ideas was a large stack of pinecones on Mum’s 21st platter. Al and Ash collected the pine cones for me a couple of days before Christmas but come Christmas Day, I left the platter at Mum’s. Instead the girls had fun wrapping the pinecones with ribbons etc
After morning tea, it was time for the Christmas Tree. There were a few silly gifts given between families as well as the regular gifts intra-family. One of those silly gifts was from Karl and I. When we were in K-Mart getting presents for the girls we saw these foam swords and went “sweet” We bought the four that Chermside had in stock and then when I went to Toowong, I emptied their shelves and got another eight – one for all the grandkids and two extras in case of damages or if partners/wives/the girls wanted swords as well. The foam swords ruled the day.
Once the sword fights waned. It was time for French Cricket. For Christmas, Matthew and I gave the girls a Kanga Cricket bat and ball as they had loved playing French Cricket with us. We only gave them the ball on Christmas Eve and had planned on putting the bat with their stockings for Christmas morning, however I forgot to put the bat out so I wrapped it and took it to The Farm. But! I left the ball at home, so we used a tennis ball. We used to play a LOT of French Cricket at The Farm when we were younger. I don’t remember Grandad playing it when we were younger but Grandmum always did.
French Cricket with eighteen odd players is one hell of a game. When one of the boys got in, they would field out so they could slog it and then get in nice and close when it was one of the girls. It was all fine till James slugged the ball into the sweet potatoes… We only had one ball. That was a good sign though that it was time to start getting lunch organised.
The table was re-set, the BBQ was lit and the snags were been turned and then it started to rain. Luckily, it comes in pretty handy to have a large shed round the corner and with plenty of people it is easy to just move the entire set-up.
Aunty Susan and her girls (and Ian) had made the bon-bons for Christmas Lunch. Inside each of them was a gorgeous beaded Christmas ornament, a scratchie and the other usual goodies
After lunch we had a Turf Tour with Max
The girls were total posers and had a great time posing for photos of each other sword fighting on the turf.
When the Turf Tour was over, we retired to the front lawn to prepare ourselves for dessert. For some this meant more sword fighting
comparing hair length
or just having their photo taken
Dessert was a treasure trove of yummy food.
Trifle from Erica! Plum Pudding from me! Pavlova from Lisa! mmm so much dessert.
With our stomachs filled with sweet treats, a realisation came upon that the light was not going to last much longer and we had not yet taken the family photos!
All the family minus James who had gone visting
We know how to fight
With the fall of darkness, Iceland, Mum and Pabbi returned to Brisbane. The Howie kids, Karl, Matthew and I moved onto The Block where the Williams were staying to chill out in the pool. We had a lot of fun making whirlpools (walking in single file round the edge of the pool as fast as you can) and hypothesising why it is that some people get more pruney than others in the water.
Christmas Day was the highlight of what was an incredible Christmas season and I am looking forward to the next big family Christmas when or wherever that might be.
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.
