My Deflated Ego
As I mentioned the other day, I ended up telly again Thursday night. (Yeah, I was knitting. I’m like the knitting equivalent of a talking head. Whenever a Sydney PR person needs somebody cranking away on a sweater in the background, I’m the one they call.) So this time we were promoting this weekend’s Knitting for the Homeless event down in Darling Harbour. Once again I found myself at Channel 7 waiting for my annual audience with Nuala, the weather girl. Above you see a screengrab from the footage. Isn’t that nice? Doesn’t the Neopolitan look great on TV? Oh, what’s that? You want to know where I am? I’m right there, right behind Nuala’s great big freakin’ head. *sigh* At least you can see a split-second of me in the video clip (4.4MB). I think I’m going to have to take a break from the fame-whoring. You go to all this effort only to be (literally) eclipsed by a giant head. Whatever.

I did go to the knitting event on Saturday though. I’d planned to hit the trifecta – Inner City Knitter’s Guild meeting, Homeless event, and then over to SSK – but I didn’t make it back over to Newtown. There just weren’t many people at the event, and I felt like I ought to stay and at least crank out whatever squares I could. I ended up having a really nice time, and it was a beautiful day to be out along the Harbour. I should do more charity knitting.

I think my new niece or nephew is going to be getting a Mitred Square Baby Blanket from me. That looks awesome.

How to make a Teddy Bear Remote Control. That is BRILLIANT!

Yesterday I was contacted by a reporter from a suburban Chicago newspaper called The Daily Southtown. The reporter explained that he was “writing a story about a guy who filed a lawsuit asking that a judge restrain his neighbors from referring to him as Willy Wonka. The guy sells gumballs and the neighbors complain his sells them out of his home and creates a bunch of problems.” He wanted to know my opinion, as a Roald Dahl fan of some standing, on whether “Willy Wonka” was actually a negative reference. So I emailed him back with a few thoughts… and got quoted in the article! That’s the wackiest story I’ve seen in a long time. How funny! (Although I will add that the Michael Jackson bit was an afterthought. They cut my bit about how a lot of people found Gene Wilder’s Wonka menacing and got the idea that Wonka somehow deliberately bumped off the naughty children. But I guess that wasn’t as fun as my offhand reference to pedophilia!)

Oh a whim, the Snook and I wandered up through Glebe tonight to see if the rumoured new Mexican restaurant had opened yet. It had! It’s called “Baja Cantina” and it was absolutely packed. Luckily the table in the front window opened up just as we walked in. “Damn,” I grumbled. “We can’t properly foodblog this without a camera!” Words will have to suffice.The menu was fairly short – maybe eight entrees, two salads, tortilla soup, and ten or so mains. Here’s the thing though: I would’ve eaten every single thing on the menu. On paper, they hadn’t put a foot wrong. Lots of good keywords (poblano, relleno, chipotle) and none of the bad ones I’ve come to expect in Mexican-Australian eateries (feta, tomato sauce, olives). We had the “Mixed Dip” platter to start, along with bottles of Dos Equis Amber and Lager. The lager came with a thoughtful wedge of lime. The dip platter was huge and, though we suspected the chips were out of a bag, they were still pretty decent. The dips consisted of quesa fundido (garlicky cheese melted with peppers), guacamole, and fresh salsa. The cheese was good for the first few bites but quickly became too rich (and gluggy as it cooled) for our tastes. The salsa was nicely bitey and traditional. The guac… I loved the guac. It was bursting with flavour. I like my guac with lots of garlic and coriander, and this one didn’t disappoint. (To be fair, the Snook thought the avocado might have been a little overripe.) Then onto our mains: Burrito Grande for me, Taco Supremo for the Snook. Do you know how long it’s been since I had a burrito the size of my head? WAY, WAY TOO LONG. I had the meatless version which was stuffed with refried beans, rice, and cheese. The flour tortilla was warm and soft and a line of sour cream zig-zagged down the top. I could actually taste the chipotle in the beans inside. It came with another big spoonful of guac and a salad of greens, shredded carrot, and a lonely tomato wedge. (The salad dressing was sweet and different; I managed to pick out that it had orange juice in it.) I was a little disappointed in the lack of the traditional Spanish rice accompaniment, but in the end I was so stuffed it didn’t matter. The Snook’s taco was the biggest taco I’d ever seen in my life. It was one whole tortilla, bigger than a dinner place, fried and folded over into a vague approximation of a taco-shape and filled with shredded beef, cheese, lettuce, and tomato. At first I didn’t see how he was ever going to eat it, but it turned out that since it was a “real” tortilla, most of it wasn’t so crisp as to shatter into millions of pieces. He did pretty well eating it with a knife and fork. It also came with a small bit of a salad and a side of Spanish rice.

Overall I can only say that Baja Cantina is destined to become one of our regular haunts. The price wasn’t too bad ($60 total for the two of us), especially considering the sheer volume of food that we had. The fitout is appropriately Mexican without veering too far into Disney territory (the potted cacti are a nice touch), and the atmosphere is definitely convivial. We’re also pretty sure that at least a couple of the servers were actually Hispanic, which (quite frankly) is a massive novelty over here. This was the first decent Mexican meal I’ve had in YEARS. (I predict Rob and Amy are going to love it.) Mmm, I can’t wait to go back again…!

Yeah, I pretty much took the night off from my diet. It was worth it.

Gutted But Not Gone
I was happy to see the sign outside St. Barney’s today. Looks like the University has lent them the Great Hall to hold services in this weekend. That’s so nice!

The Snook and I just watched the Veronica Mars finale. EEEEEEE! That’s all I can do, make high-pitched noises. EEEEEEE!Beaver’s reveal as the killer was shocking, but not that shocking. We’d pretty much guessed him to be the third molestee. I was hoping that Veronica’s long expository story about how he did it was a red herring though, and that we’d get the TRULY SHOCKING explanation afterwards. But DAMN, I’ll settle for LOGAN TO THE RESCUE and then the planes blowing up and the SUICIDES and the AARON GETS HIS COMEUPPANCE and the HUGGING and the BACON and the KEITH NOT BEING DEAD AND THEN, HOORAY, THE SMOOCHING AT LAST!… *sigh*

And then the Snook had to go and ruin it all by saying: “I bet Kendall has Logan’s baby next season.” GAHHHHHH.

I was talking to the fabulous Miss Fee tonight after our television appearance (more on that soon), when she happened to mention offhand that she told her friend Jay about the Star Wars quilt and he thought it sounded really cool. “Wait a sec,” I said, knowing that Miss Fee circulates high in the echelons of Australian celebrity– “Jay Laga’aia??” “That’s him!” she said. “CAPTAIN TYPHO???” The very same. Padme Amidala’s Head of Security is now aware of the quilt my Mom made and thinks it sounds cool. HOW INSANE IS THAT?

Tonight was my first ceramics class over at the Creative Arts Centre. I really didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never seen anyone do wheel-throwing in real life, and all I knew was that it was hard to do. Now I know that it’s hard, but it’s not that hard. I think my biggest problem was that I was afraid to really push the clay around. Instead I kept trying to shape it with my little fingers, and therefore making my first bowl took me AGES. Then I watched the instructor sit down and knock one out in about ninety seconds flat. Damn. So I tried to get a little more fearless, and ended up with a couple useless lumps of goo (a lot of which you see spattered on my pant legs and shoes here; my upper half was just as bad). In the end I managed one decent bowl (which we’re going to “turn” next week) and one semi-okay sorta-straight-sided column thing.

You know what drives me up the wall though? The way stuff like this always turns me into Hermione Granger. I wanted to do the class to try something new and maybe pick up a fun hobby. No stress, right? But as soon as our wheels fired up I was immediately mentally comparing everything I did with everything everybody else did. I have to try to be the top of the class. I was irrationally jealous of one lucky guy who just seems to have an innate knack for this stuff. Why?? You’d think at nearly thirty years of age I could do a group activity where I didn’t compete with everyone else. Sadly, you’d be wrong. And no matter how much I tell myself that it’s okay to be mediocre, that I don’t have to be good at everything, that the world will not end if my very first pot isn’t perfect… I still do it. Every damn time. Tell me you guys are like this too, right? (I mean, I know Kel is…)

DietBlog: I’m back on track! What a difference a week makes. Last week I was tired and depressed; this week I’m 1.2kg lighter and a hundred times more optimistic. That brings me back down to 78.5kg, erasing two-thirds of what I gained over the Easter/Garberick holiday. Sweet. And I actually did it without much exercise! I’m still trying to rest the hamstring as much as possible before this Sunday’s run, so I’ve really only had a couple short jogs and that long walk last weekend. Really, it was just watching my food and religiously tracking my Points. I also have to constantly remind myself that it’s OKAY to be a little bit hungry. I don’t have to stuff myself every time I eat. Now I only have 3.5kg left to go!

And on a related note, my size 14 pants have been feeling a little loose. I wasn’t sure if it was due to weight loss though, or them just naturally loosening up from being worn. So I went into Esprit the other night to try on some new ones. Every size 14 I tried on was pretty roomy! I even tried on some 12s and, while I did get them zipped and buttoned, they were a little too, uh, bootylicious for my liking. But I have a feeling that 12 is where I’m eventually going to end up. That’s an unexpected bonus!