28 August 2006

BIZZY

we are always so busy. dan works monday to friday, i work friday and saturday. so our day together is sunday, which is often when other people want to meet up. i have about one meeting per week afer hours. i don't have time to cook yummy things. we don't have time to do shopping. but apart from that it's all good!

yesterday a get together was cancelled, and i decided not to go to a meeting that would have been really good to go to. instead, we cleaned the house up, had brunch at ceres, went to sydney road where i got some new clothes (bonds top and jumper, good for walking), dan had a snooze (we went to a housewarming on saturday night), and i made a delicious dish with a french name that is essentially scalloped potatoes with mushrooms. mmm, nutmeg and fresh organic cream! the day off was good for my sanity.

today i did a bit of work on a presentation i'm giving in a few weeks about recent 'trans' films - i was writing about TransAmerica. then went into carlton and met julia and esther for lunch (mmm, big harvest salads!) and coffee (in the place that no longer has the ORIGINAL mouth of truth), then went to the nova ($5 films! yay!) and watched Breakfast on Pluto, which is also a 'trans' film. good stuff.

now i'm eating toast with yum hummous on it. and dan made me a cup of tea. so that's our lives at the moment!!! looking forward to our holiday - only about 6 weeks away. must get some travel insurance soon.

19 August 2006

DISNEY VENICE?

venice is nice, and all, but it was already so much like a theme park. and while i agree that it is too over crowded, and something must be done to prevent or repair the damage done by the pleasure seeking hordes, wasn't venice expensive enough before? end of rant.

18 August 2006

HOPE FOR THE UK LABOUR PARTY

British Deputy PM John Prescott shocks the world by telling the truth! What is the world coming to?

15 August 2006

TEA PARTAY!!!!!!!!!!!

WATCH THIS!!!

"tea in the parlour makes the ladies holler"

i'm so happy!

14 August 2006

CHEESES, KIM, I SAID BABY CHEESES, NOT CHEESES...

we went to the australian specialist cheesemakers association cheese show yesterday (sunday) with esther j. oh, the cheese! oh the gorging upon said cheese! oh the tasting of wine! oh, the gluttony!

perhaps my favourite of all the cheese i tasted was the king island dairy "discovery ash blue", a deliciously soft and creamy medium strength blue... my mouth waters... also up there was red hill's "merricks mist", a wonderful, gooey organic "normandy style" mouthful of goodness. oh, and woodside cheese wrights' "edith", billed as "a special goat milk cheese... the cheese is ashed and develops almost blue flavours as it matures"... oh, bliss!

ashed cheese seems to be the flavour of the month (although how much flavour the ash actually imparts varies from cheese to cheese). the washed rinds, i thought, were a mixed bunch, with the milawa washed rinds tasting absolutely gorgeous, and the hunter valley "smear ripened" (?) cheese also right up there, yet others possibly needing to mature a little more. it was brought home to me how in love i am with goat cheese of most descriptions, but i was a little put out by the buffalo cheeses by shaw river - the smoked buffalino was nice, but the others... i think it might be an aqcuired taste (and i am all up for acquiring it). there weren't many exceptionally strong cheeses, though the jindi top paddock wine washed rind ("washed with a special blend of red wine and spices") was delicious. i'd never heard of heidi farm before, but their gruyere was grand - nutty and smoky - as was their tilsit. binnorie dairy's labna or yoghurt balls were devine. tarrago river's triple cream was a suprisingly acidic and gooey cheese, quite salty but very light on the tongue. oh, gosh. shall i go on?

let's just say that for breakfast today i ate fresh cucumber and capsicum, and drank herbal tea.

*

and, over a year from the taking of photos in dorset, we have put some up on the web - thanks to our LOVELY NEW COMPUTER!!! they're in the secon album, under "dorset".

11 August 2006

GIVING FANTASY FICTION A BAD NAME

more acurately, giving fantasy fiction the name it has. i'm reading cecilia dart-thornton's bitterbynde trilogy. i bought all three at book affair, so i am compelled to read the lot. and they are TERRIBLE. the writing is overwrought, the plots so... non-existent, the characters empty. every time i open a fantasy novel i HOPE that it's going to be good, because there's so much shit out there. but with this series it was not to be. yes, there are some interesting things going on - especially with the protagonist who, though free of personality, is the vehicle for some interesting exploration of identity. there are many things i am willing to forgive - i am used to reading bad fantasy. and yet... i ask myself why i am reading them (now onto the 3rd book, and they're getting slightly better). i think it's because they are so bad i can't look away. it's abject. it's like driving slowly past a car crash. i quote:

Birds uttered uneasy, sporadic sounds from the trees and the duck-pond far below. Their quacks and trills increased in porportion to the strength of the iron glow in the east, whose warm facade was smudged by the cloud floatlets as a smith's ruddy countenance is smirched by soot and ash. Above, the profound blue drained from the sky and the stars dissolved. ("The Ill-Made Mute", p36)

And when two characters first meet a third:

They emerged into the open and approached. The stranger did not move from his position. He smiled up at them, a dark smile that struck Imrhien like the note of a great bell. A dazzle ran straight through her like a silver needle [...] Lean and angular was his face, the features chiseled, high-boned. Beneath straight eyebrows his dark eyes seemed to burn with a cold fire, piercing. His jaw was strong and clean-shaven, although brushed with rough shadow. The hair, glossy black as a raven's wing, was swept carelessly back from his brow, the front locks pulled loosely back and knotted together behind his head and falling, bound, nearly to the waist. Unfastened - she imagined - it would be a cloud of soft darkness, a cascade of shadow. ("The Ill-Made Mute", p300 & 301)

he had in fact, wandered into this world from a mills & boon romance.

I POKE MY EYES OUT!

on the up-side, surely if this can get published, i can get published.