Month: August 2011
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10,000
File this under “Meaningless but Still Momentous”: This is officially my 10,000th blog post. Yes, really. It’s taken me just shy of 11 years to hit that milestone. Obviously my posting frequency has dropped off a lot in recent years, but I still can’t see myself ever stopping completely. I was never able to keep a proper diary, so this blog has become the record of my life for the past 11 years. -
Mink Car Cover
Mink Car Cover – a project to commemorate They Might Be Giants awesome yet ill-timed album. I’ve just bought the digital version and I am rockin’ out to it. The “NES-rock band” version of “Man It’s So Loud in Here” made me dance in my chair. Hipster geek awesomeness.
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Shared today on Twitter
Hahaha… troll commenter on my blog referred to Snook as my “man slave” and accused me of making him cook everything. FEMINAZI WIN.
@randomknits Yep, if he misbehaves I beat him with a ukulele. 🙂
HP TouchPad came and went so fast, Sydney bus stops still advertising it for $599! Heh. (cc @gruber) http://t.co/WB9GvLu
RT @msgusset: huge thanks @web_goddess, @teegs3, @emage & more, pledging to TON OF WOOL http://t.co/16pj5nY. knit, felt, spin, weave? ge …
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TON OF WOOL
TON OF WOOL
My friend Kylie Gusset has launched an intriguing new project: TON OF WOOL. Kylie is passionate about minimising the carbon footprint of the wool we knit with, and also about preserving and maintaining the Australian wool industry (most of which has moved overseas). For this project, Kylie has sourced a rare breed of Australian sheep (Cormo) that produce a beautiful fleece. She’s also secured a “scour” that has agreed to process a ton of the fleece. (That’s the minimum amount they’ll handle.) She needs about $35K pledged in order to get this project off the ground. If you like the idea of preserving Australia’s wool heritage, you should consider contributing. I did! -
Shared today on Twitter
So this whole colored tights thing is really happening, huh? Saw a lady today with red on front, black on back. She looked like a jester.
@DDsD Yep, credit where credit is due. @Opheli8 totally started this whole thing. She’s the only one that can pull it off though!
@witty_knitter Hm. Have you ordered yet? I could use some new plain tights myself…
@witty_knitter Oh darn. Looks like a useful site though anyway. Thank you!
Wondering if a buxom lass might be able to talk one of those neckbeards in the queue at Harvey Norman to pick up a $98 TouchPad for her…
@henrytapia @toastman Rodos was amused by the idea, but his innate laziness won out and I have no TouchPad to use as an ironic coaster. 🙁
@knitterjp Ok, want to combine then? I’ll jump on this bandwagon! 🙂
@Lauren_lolly_ @knitabulous @tjlethal No, wrong! We have a big La Creuset enameled cast iron pot and it works fantastic.
@knitabulous Induction is the shit. Seriously. Snook was hesitant too until he cooked on one. Come over! You can try it out.
@knitabulous It boils water *as fast as the kettle*. And when you turn down the heat? Instant responsiveness. We love it.
@knitabulous Gets so hot I set oil vapor on fire the first time I cooked stir fry. And goes so low you can melt choc without a double boiler
@Lauren_lolly_ @knitabulous @tjlethal Anything that’s magnetic will work. That leaves out glass, aluminium, some stainless…
@GeorgieKnits We love our induction. IT’S FROM THE FUTURE. 🙂
Jamie’s 30Min Meals #28: Fish Tray-Bake w/ Potatoes, Spinach Salad, Salsa Verde, and Cheat’s Banoffee Pie. http://t.co/wbrPFmP. Verdict=MEH
@TJLethal @lauren_lolly_ @knitabulous Nope, we use a cheap Chinatown flat-bottomed wok on ours just fine. Used it tonight, in fact!
@Ezzles Hahahaha. Yes. I don’t want to spoil you, but I spent most of that book cursing Theon effing Greyjoy.
@TJLethal @lauren_lolly_ @knitabulous We’ve even put a flat roasting tray down on it to make gravy from pan drippings. Worked great!
@Ezzles Incidentally, I didn’t actually like Clash of Kings that much. If that describes you, hang in there. I liked book 3 a LOT more.
@TJLethal Not enough of an expert wok cook to say. But I have definitely spontaneously ignited oil in the wok on induction, it was so hot.
@TJLethal We don’t do a great deal of wok cooking though. It’s better than our old electric stove was, that’s for sure.
@TJLethal Interestingly, pan will still heat when held an inch or two above the induction spot. So you can toss a bit without losing heat.
@TJLethal We bought this place and it was either drop $3K to get gas put in or drop $3K on induction. We tried the induction and got hooked!
@TJLethal Huh, didn’t know that. Rodd insisted on cooking a steak on one before he’d commit. And we needed new pots anyway. 🙂
@knitterjp Ok, will email you a list!
RT @Theon_Greyjoy: @web_goddess I prefer women to scream my name rather than curse it, but I take what I can get. // AHHHHHHHH! @drkknits
@knitabulous @tjlethal @lauren_lolly_ Yeah, induction was only comparable for us because we’d have to get the gas line put in anyway.
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City2Surf 2011
Last Sunday was my fifth time running the City2Surf and the fourth for the Snook. (Previously: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006. We only missed last year because we were overseas.) As we’re both training for next month’s Blackmore’s Half-Marathon, the C2S was merely a training run for us this time. We were actually scheduled to do 17K, and the C2S is only 14K! So we left home a bit early and jogged/walked a few kilometers through the city to the starting line. It was a cool and misty morning, but somehow we managed to miss the small rainstorm that soaked most of the waiting runners. We had finally finagled our way into the Green Group (thanks to our qualifying times in last year’s Run4Fun), but we positioned ourselves to the very back of the group. And then we were off!With no specific time goal beyond hoping to maintain a sub-8:00/km pace, we took it nice and easy with 2:1 run/walk intervals. They spaced out the various group starts a lot more this year, and we found ourselves running on mostly empty streets for the first 4km. It was only as we neared the 5km mark in Rose Bay that the first of the Blue runners started to catch us. From then on, we were in the crush of 85,000 runners making their way to Bondi Beach. We did a great job of maintaining a constant pace and adhering to our walk breaks. Heartbreak Hill was tough, but not as tough as it was in previous years. As we ran down the last few km to Bondi, I remarked to the Snook that I didn’t feel as shattered as I did at that point in previous years. We weren’t going fast, but we were having a great time and enjoying ourselves.
We skipped the walk breaks in the last kilometer or so and tried to finish strong. Our final time was 1:48:05, which is exactly the pace we’d planned for. Afterwards we headed over to meet up briefly with some of the Sydney Dailymile runners and snap a few photos. Then we headed to catch a bus back to the city. (The new bus system of taking everybody straight to Bondi Junction was BRILLIANT. That was the quickest we’ve ever gotten out after the C2S.) Overall a good training run and a fun day out with 85,000 other local runners!
Photos
As we walked through Martin Place before the race, we snickered at these brightly-coloured fellow runners. They were carrying a goon bag between them and taking swigs. “I hope that’s full of water, for their sake!” the Snook laughed.
This was my view from the very back of the Green group waiting to start. (Incidentally, we saw LOTS OF CHEATERS from other groups who had snuck up to start with us. Jerks! We got in fair’n’square via a legitimate loophole!)
Here we go down William Street! This bit always reminds me of the Charge of the Rohirrim. It’s just such an amazing feeling to be part of the giant surge of humanity. (And 2/3 of the runners hadn’t even started yet!)
Here we are coming into the final stretch in Bondi, mugging for the cameras.
The Snook is looking fresh as a daisy!
Haters. Gonna. Hate.
Here we are at the Dailymile meetup afterwards.
The Sydney Dailymile crew (minus a few who started late and were still on the course).
This was the crush that awaited us as we headed towards the bus pickup area.
Lastly, a gorgeous shot of my wonderful Snookums with all of Bondi laid out behind him…
That’s all… See you next year!
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Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #28: Fish Tray-Bake
This is our 28th cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals… and I’m not gonna lie, the fatigue is starting to set in. But we started this thing, and dammit, we’re gonna finish it. We chose this one because we had the episode recorded, asparagus is in season, and I started drooling when I saw a photo of the Banoffee Pie. Snook was on chef’s duty and he finished in a very respectable 33:39. There were some definitely highlights and lowlights to this one…
Substitutions: We already had some big potatoes in the pantry, so we just cut those up instead of using new potatoes. We had “banana prawns” rather than tiger prawns. Fresh red chilli is still very difficult to come by, so we went with dried chilli flakes instead. The pie calls for “Camp coffee,” which we had to google. It’s a kind of thick essence of coffee and chicory. Our supermarket actually had the local equivalent, but we decided against it (on the grounds that we’d never use up the rest). Instead, the Snook just made a shot of espresso and stirred a lot of sugar into it. Other than that, everything was as written in the recipe.
Quick verdict: Meh. It was okay. The fish tray-bake was tasty, but I dislike eating whole cooked prawns. I know why he does it; it’s a time cheat. But I’d rather take the time to use cleaned prawns than have to tear their heads off, peel the shells, and de-poop them myself. (The ones we had were quite gritty, too.) The potatoes and the salad were fine, but there wasn’t really much to them. We were divided on the salsa verde. I loved it, but the Snook thought it had too much raw garlic. But the Banoffee Pie… was a complete disaster. The problem was the bananas. Bananas are incredibly expensive right now in Sydney, and the best ones we could get turned out to be crappy quality and totally not ripe. We ate only a few bites of the pie and then chucked the rest away. Big disappointment! Overall we rated this one an 8/10 as cooked, but with a better Banoffee Pie we’d go up to 8.5. There just wasn’t really any showstopping dish here, and nobody likes to eat prawn poop.
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Shared today on Twitter
Holy crap. In a queue at Costco all the way into the parking garage.
@misswired Yep, that was it. By the time we left at noon, cops had blocked off the entrance. It was craziness!
Home from Costco. If nothing else, giant jar of Vlasic dill pickles for $4.79 = VERY HAPPY KRIS.
Ugh. Watching a documentary on planned obsolescence and consumerism right after a trip to Costco? Total shame spiral. #nevershoppingagain
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Shared today on Twitter
@mrs_sockvictim We just signed up, and we’re going tomorrow morning! You seriously want me to get you some? 🙂
Diet Cheat Day: deep fried mac&cheese, Philly cheesesteaks, beers, bliss. (@ Abercrombie Hotel) [pic]: http://t.co/WitsOCd
My first ever deep-fried Mac & Cheese ball. It was YUMMY. @ Abercrombie Hotel http://t.co/XtVQihp
Jamie’s Fish Tray Bake & Banoffee Pie. http://t.co/NnchYoJ http://t.co/ZeVtCDi Fish = good; pie = MEH. I’m as surprised as you.