Things I Love Thursday
- I put up my Christmas tree on Monday night, which seemed to elicit fairly equal responses of ‘You’re crazy, it’s too early’ and ‘Yay! Now I can put mine up’ amongst my friends. I am very pleased that I have enabled people to start Christmas early. I think the longer you have a pretty tree that lights up and is covered with sparkly things inside your house the better, really. I have been drawing the decorating of said tree out slowly, putting on a couple of decorations a day. It’s looking pretty good now, with fruit flavoured candy canes adding a bit more colour. And deliciousness.
- I’ve been coming down with/valiantly fighting off a cold this week, and I’ve been appreciating wrapping myself up in my duvet and achieving all over warm. Nothing like cocooning when you’re feeling less than your best.
- This is just amazing: My Mom, the style icon
- My strawberry plants have yielded sweet, delicious fruit! I have a picture…
- Off the Ropes, the Wellington Pro Wresting show that I was in the crowd for has started up. You can view the episodes on Prime TV on Sundays at 1.30 or you can watch them online through the link. Chelle, Pip, Margie and I are visible in some of the crowd shots.
- Old Buffy, we’re up to Bad Eggs in season 2. I’m really enjoying the re-watch. The last time I watched Buffy again was 2007 and I started from season 4. These early ones I haven’t seen in years and years. They’re pretty funny.
- My parents are fans of James Galway, and there’s this one song that he plays in that my sister and I used to love. I just tracked it down on youtube. When I listened to it again I got goosebumps at the chorus. It’s very old school folksy and you’ll probably hate it, but I had to share it all the same.
“Piper, piper play your song
Play it and we’ll sing along
Piper, piper play toodle, doodle all the day
Nothing in the world is wrong!”
Remember: Nothing in the world is wrong.
Honourable Mentions: New TV: Glee, Supernatural, Gossip Girl, Californication. Thinking about new Christmas decorations I could buy or make, roleplaying, people saying my cupcakes are delicious, chocolate sundaes, being silly, ‘Allow me to explain through interpretive dance’ and the candy canes on my Christmas tree.
And you? What are you thankful for today?
Highlights of my old blog posts
From when I was working out the library…the ABC.
That old musical classic where can you…
The time I met Garth Nix and fangirled all over him.
The best fish’n'chips ever.
An entry about my body image issues. (Still pretty relevant, although I suspect I’ve mellowed some.)
A recount of Svend’s ticklish romp game where I got to play the girl.
A report of the Sorcerer game we played which was a cross between LA Confidential and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?Sorcerer
The funniest thing ever.
Celery’s effect on knicker elastic is a gallery for the ages.
Stay Inside
It’s an immeasurably miserable winter day in Wellington, even though it’s still Autumn for another 5 weeks or so. With this in mind, here’s some stuff to keep you occupied while you stay inside where it’s warm. Snuggle into a blankie, make yourself a hot cup of whatever you fancy, click and read and watch….
Food blogs are always good to read, but I think they’re even better when it’s cold. You can vicariously enjoy the food pictures and dream about things you might make. It may even inspire you to actually cook or bake, then you can really enjoy the food!
*Freshly Ground has recently branched out into podcast reviews, which might also interest you, but the recipes are still coming. Every time I read one of those recipes I just want to kidnap Dan and make him cook for me all the time. Luckily for him, I’m very lazy.
*My friend Jen is back from her OE and put me on to the marvelous looking Bread and honey. She advises me that the chocolate cupcakes are very good.
After I played around with the drama button Svend asked if I’d ever tracked down the animation we saw in the Animation For Kids collection a couple of years ago which we keep quoting at each other. Inspired by the powers of the internets I tracked it down. It’s a story told by three kids about Crazy eyes dolphin vs the Mad cows and animated by Ian Stewart in the manner of kids’ drawings. Good fun, if somewhat startling.
He was an article on stuff randomly, but I still think you should all read Sockington, especially if you’ve ever known a cat. It’s incredibly funny stuff. And it makes me want to talk SOMETIMES IN ALL CAPS and then undercut myself.
Just for something completely different, why not check out Filament magazine? It’s the brainchild of my friend Suraya and the first edition is going to print very very soon. Basically it’s porn for girls, or erotic images of men designed specifically to appeal to the straight woman. I have personally been involved in small ways over the course of the project, giving feedback on one of the photo sessions and beta-ing a short story. In one of the later editions, there may even be a story written by me….anyway, I’ve subscribed, so expect a review of the first edition once I’ve received it in the mail.
Suraya linked to this article about one woman’s experience in a modern burlesque show. It describes quite eloquently the problems I tend to have with the idea of burlesque.
Latest awesomeness from cutebreak is this cat’s bitter disappointment that a pigeon got away from him. Heh.
Have you read something awesome online recently? Seen a great video? Please comment with the links, I’m always up for new stuff! Speaking of which, my sister in law on Lee’s side just got a kitten, we’re going to visit and I’m going to pass on some of my cat-rearing knowledge.
Jenni’s Guide to Auckland
A couple of Coldplay concert videos: Someone from down on the floor at the concert on Wednesday caught this footage of Coldplay performing Yellow. It’s not the whole song, but you get an idea for how much singing along there was, and what the huge yellow balloons looked like. And Chris Martin’s revolutionary outfit.
Someone else got this film of what the butterfly confetti looked like from the ground…just gorgeous.
So. My highlights from the trip, in no particular order. Not counting Coldplay, since you can’t generally plan on them being there.
Tanuki’s Cave Yakitori bar. You go in and sit down at a space around the bar and order a bit handle of Asahi and edamame and whatever else tickles your fancy off their menu. I can recommend the takoyaki. The asahi is very drinkable, the food is quick and good and the atmosphere is just….perfect. They play My Neighbour Totoro on a screen at one end of the bar.
The Imax. We saw Watchmen but really any movie that you are keen on and that they are playing would be awesome. It’s so big that it’s immersive. Plus Lee and I had frozen coke and it was yum.
Borders. It’s huge, but more importantly it’s all mazey and arranged on different levels. Wellington’s one just isn’t as cool. Plus everyone knows where it is so it’s a good meeting place.
Auckland Museum. I like the interactive discovery area, the Victorian street, the tree that does a day cycle in 5 minutes so you can hear the different bird songs and the dinosaurs. Especially the special exhibit T-Rex.
It’s big. 12.8 metres long and 4.0 metres tall at the hips. Plus it had a neat interactive exhibit and I did in fact learn some things about Tyrannosaurs that I didn’t previously know. The other neat thing about the museum is that in the gift shop you can get 10 of their specially printed Auckland museum postcards for $2.00. That’s nothing! So just about everyone on my postcard list got Auckland Museum postcards and two people got elaborate stories instead of news, based on the pictures on the cards. I am eager to hear when people have received their postcards.
The Chocolate boutique in Parnell has many delicious treats, including the Italian denso, which is an insanely rich hot chocolate. Their handmade truffles are really good.
Submarino, fish in a bowl, denso and cherry tart.
You can get to it really easily on The Link bus, which is cheap at $1.60 a ride and does a loop around many useful areas in Auckland. It’s handy and has a TV that gives you the weather, the news, images of what the driver is seeing and of the people on the bus. It also did news headlines and advertised local businesses and there was a neat live map so you could see where you were.
$3 Japan. Up the high end of Queen St, $3.00 Japan was like a magical heaven. I got some presents for people, some stuff for myself, useful things, silly things. I got some really nice comfy socks….it was just magical.
We had a really good seafood platter at Neptune on the Viaduct. It wasn’t too expensive and had turkish bread, dips, scallops, prawns, fried fish, smoked salmon, heaps of calimari, mussels and olives and pickled onions. It was seriously yum. The people at the next table to us actually said ‘we want what they’re having’ but I can assure you it wasn’t because I was screaming or anything. The food just looked really good.
And also, you should totally check out this behind-the-scenes glimpse into The Winding City video that Conan put up. It has me in it, and many hilarious bloopers. And bits that I filmed too.
Weeeeeeekends rock
Ok so my weekend started out with dinner at Cha and then attending Regan’s play Play On! I liked it a very lot. Regan is impressively good at comedic acting, I enjoyed her performance very much and often found myself watching her over the other characters regardless of who is talking. This might be a bias though. The other actors were funny too and overall the show was very fun.
The premise is that a bunch of not-so-great actors are putting on a play but the playwright keeps adding new stuff and changing things. First act is a rehearsal, second act is dress rehearsal and third act is opening night. It was a little like watching a live, very long gag reel off a DVD extras menu. It was tempting to yell out the line prompts when you remembered them and it was very funny when people forgot their cues, etc.
I was at a table with my Lee (much easier to get him to come to something that itsn’t a musical), Svend, Star, Maggie, Nick and Sass. We had a lot of candy and sugary drinks so we got quite silly. If you’re on Facebook you will have already seen the photos of the various cups of things that we created, but I’ll put one in here for the non-FB-initiated. 
So, that was awesome fun and we stuck around and got to chat to the star herself, which was awesome as well.
Saturday morning I finished reading World War Z by Max Brooks which is a collection of oral histories of the Zombie apocolypse, 10 years after humans beat the zombies back. It was fan-freaking-tastic. If you have any interest in horror or history or wars I would recommend it. I am making Lee read it next, so that I can talk to him about it. The author is pretty equal opportunity, collecting stories from all over the world (nearly) and one guy who was on an international space station at the time of the war. New Zealand is mentioned in three sentences near the end, so that was fun.
Met up with Svend and C for brunch at SMK and got a bit of shopping done for my Armageddon costume.
Saturday night Lee and I brought a bucket of KFC and watched Speed racer on Blu-ray at Chelle and Jase’s house. Nothing beats a bucket of chicken, it’s just so high class. We were all giggling like little kids about it actually. I am impressed with HD TVs and Blu-ray now, I think Speed Racer was made for that format. I’m keen to watch some other movies that way, Cloverfield for one, but there’s not too much point in us buying or borrowing them until we get an HD projector, which is some ways in the future.
Today, Sunday, has been nice and lazy. Saw my mother in law, passed on the fabric and pattern for the jacket of my Armageddon costume, went to Spotlight and the library and had a very good hot cross bun at Bordeaux Bakery. As you can tell, I haven’t been eating hella healthy though, so my energy levels today are a bit crap. I did write a ten minute story, a couple of notebook pages of my current long-short-story and did some scrapbooking.
It’s a sunny and beautiful day, I’m feeling good. Especially because I only have a two day work week and then we’re off to Auckland! Now, to note down the names and locations of all the food places you guys have recommended to me.
PoF: Batgirl
CO: What’s for dinner.
art
I gave in to my urge to paint monsters holding flowers yesterday. I didn’t feel like I had any pressing writing issues and I wanted to paint so very much. It’s been a long time.
I didn’t buy any new big canvasses, I just used a couple of blank ones I’ve had forever. I did two small monsters on paper and two on canvas which I am very happy with. I share them here with you, because I am generous that way.
“First Date”
What would you say if this guy turned up to take you out? He brought flowers. He is wearing his best charcoal suit and his spotted tie. I had some trouble with his eyes but I like the way he came out in the end. I left the flowers til last and had great fun painting them.
“Emo Unicorn Boy”
Emo unicorn boy came to me at about 5am when I was trying to figure out how best to use the triangular canvas. I thought about Jared Leto’s leaning in My So Called Life and I had it. Leaning was the way to go, with the horizon lines breaking up the shape. I pencilled in the body and then hit on making him monstrous by adding a horn.
The red shirt is because I found my beloved red corduroy shirt again the other day and the charcoal cargos are made up of the paint left over from First Date’s suit.
I had fun with this hair spilling over onto the side of the canvas. I’m not sure if I should put in any colour in the background or not. I don’t want to on First Date because I don’t need it, but there’s quite a lot of white space around unicorn boy. It makes him stand out more, of course, but some background could be interesting. What are your thoughts?
Also, Lee and I had brunch, well, lunch really but neither of us had breakfast, at the Lido today and I had a prawn and melon salad with mint, lime and ginger dressing and it was amazing. Seriously, if the thought of prawns doesn’t creep you out you have to go to the Lido and eat this salad. It was all fresh crisp radish and lettuce and cucumber and so many prawns and the dressing was amazing and the melon worked well with everything.
They have a seasonal menu so head in soon and try it. I know I’m going back…
Point of Fashion: emo bear
Current obsession: mmmmm prawn salad.
Christmas – the secret to not overeating
I didn’t overeat this year on Christmas Day. I overate on Christmas Eve. I’ve found the secret to the stomach bloat of the holidays! It’s the snacks.
On Christmas Eve I baked for three hours straight so that there would be plenty of cookies and cupcakes for people. Then I ate a whole lot of them, chips and dip, chocolates, brownies, nuts…..when it came to dinner time I wanted dinner because I knew that I *should* have real food but I wasn’t really that hungry. And I felt pretty ill later in the evening.
On Christmas Day I skipped breakfast, only having a Lindor hazelnut chocolate truflle (nom!) and some cherries and strawberries when we got to my sister’s. This meant that when it came time to sit down for all the delicious lunch food I was hungry and could eat a little of everything. Pacing myself meant I didn’t gorge from excitement at the choices and I was even able to have seconds of those things I enjoyed the most. (Ham, green salad, pasta salad, potato and egg salad).
Unluckily we had to go from my sister’s before I got to eat brandy snaps, but then it was on to Lee’s parents place where they had put out chippies and pistachios. Tempting! Too tempting, I had some chips. But only a couple. I was strong. I was steadfast. I ate two of the Roses chocolates that we were given and they were *awesome*!
Then at dinner I was careful to only take portions of the things that I really wanted (turkey, crayfish, green salad, bread, potato and bacon salad) and it was delicious! Even though I wanted to I refrained from having seconds, except for some scrappits of cray meat because I had seen the homemade chocolate eclairs for dessert! Nom! I had seconds of dessert. Besides the eclairs Lee’s sister had made warm, squooshy brownie and I had a pile of fresh berries and cherries as well.
My lebkuchen with lemon icing went down very well and I gave my father in law a tupperware full of afghans. If he gets diabetes it will totally be my fault.
So, that’s what I’ve learned and what I ate. Hopefully it will be of some use to you at the next gorge-yourself-gathering you go to.
Now tell me, what delicious things did you eat this holiday season?
PoF: robey
CO: boxing day sales!!!!!!
zoom!
Weekends go fast when you’re busy. Here’s what my weekend looked like:
Friday night: get home and bake batch of cupcakes and chocolate cake.
Saturday: fail to sleep in, then get up and vote (take two stickers), sing the Making Fiends voting song, buy Batgirl tee shirt. Hang out at home briefly then go to Sweet Mother’s Kitchen for delicious breakfast burrito with old friends, come home, ice chocolate cake while showing off 48 hour film to said old friends.
Rush to The Winding City rehearsal and get there way late, rehearse. Lounge about in the sun with friends and talk about rehearsal, go to Jville for delicious Burger Fuel dinner, come back, eat dinner, partay. At partay, catch up with a bunch of people in between drinking summer ale and playing Rock Band. (Bliss to have a drum set that works.) Oovle homewards circa 11.15.
Sunday: Fail to sleep in, update blog with small sad political post, have shower, let Steve in to borrow stuff, say goodbye to husband, get in car. Drive to Kapiti while recognising that you are a smidge hung over and consider stopping for tasty baking in Jville, decide just to sing at top of lungs all the way instead. Collect parents, give mother birthday money to buy herself a painting, do the Kapiti Arts trail and purchase a willow basket off the Irishman who made it, several little things from an Otaki arts collective called Zambarta (where mum bought her birthday painting) and meet Tasty_fish for lunch. Lunch is pleasant but the cafe is very slow to deliver food. Pan fried fish and exotic cheese salad is so good you can’t complain about the wait. Get back in car, swelter and finish off the stuff you had to see in the arts trail, find out that sister is being kept in hospital overnight for tests, see brother in law and niece. Have icecream, drive home, talk to husband, check interwebs, go to visit sister in hospital. Sister is absent. Turns out she’s been let out for dinner. Got to Mexican cafe in Newtown for dinner (too much cheese) and then visit sister and she is there. Hang out with sister til visitor’s hours over and then come home and watch Supernatural til bed time.
Phew.
Sister is fine, by the way and back at Mum’s house today. Phew.
Steve sent me this nice little advice column about the Query query which is about query letters to publishers. Nice to add to my writing advice collection.
In other er….areas of writing advice, I got this amazing article off Zephfi called How to Write Smokin’ Hot Smut which is very helpful for my current project. It’s specifically written for fanfic, but the advice is actually pretty universal.
PoF: brown
CO: dumb ear
Fun things
Beverly Hills Chthulu? Hells yes.
The other week Lee and I were sitting in Sweet Mother’s kitchen rocking our pop culture hoodies. Mine was Wonder Woman natch, Lee’s was his Cobra Kai one. Then we realised that there was a guy sitting at the counter wearing the Karate Kid headband! I said there’d have to be a rumble but Lee pointed out that Cobra Kai may strike hard, but they strike in packs and he was on his own. It could have been awesome.
On Sunday evening there was a fake horse on the road outside my house. It was a life size shiny black horse. It was brought there in a horse float and then a girl got on it and then hopped off again and then the whole group of people picked it up and ran across the road with the fake horse. Then I couldn’t see it anymore because there are shop awnings in the way.
I had pizza from Scopa on Saturday night for the first time ever. It was freaking amazing. We had the carne and the quattro fromagi. I really liked the carne one. The cheese one, well….I couldn’t help but think it was just flash cheese on toast. I like a bit more meat on my pizza to be honest with you. The carne suited me fine. Oh and we had these amazing cheesey rosemary potato pieces and they were awesome.
Meg Cabot may have the best ever Hallowe’en story pretty much ever.
PoF: WW Hoodie
CO: why do my feet be so cold?
Moanday
I have been frightfully busy.
Being on holiday, having two birthday celebrations in one day followed by brunch, balcony lounging and then dinner out makes for a fantastically fun weekend, but not one with a lot of blogging time.
Awesome things I got for my birthday (in list form, to please Karen 
)
- Books, books, books. On the Road, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Last Unicorn(special edition, with signature of author made out to me!) Notebooks too.
- A very special handmade writing muse doll and painted skull picture from the marvelously talented and woefully absent-from-my-life Amphigori.
- Tasty strawberry wine, personalised home brew blonde ale.
- Lush goodies and amazing pink Lolita (read: heart shaped) sunglasses, ‘tooth picks’, a quilt fabric ‘lollipop’, pink jewelery box and heaps more. I feel so lucky and spoiled.
Awesome things I have eaten recently:
- Breakfast burrito at Sweet Mother’s Kitchen. I wasn’t hung over on Sunday morning but I hadn’t got enough sleep. This was the perfectest food I could have ordered, especially when combined with perky nana milkshake. Om nom nom.
- Dinner at Kazu restaurant. Best takoyaki and miso in forever. Realised, talking with the girl-Seraph that miso makes me calm. Need more miso in my life.
- Brandy snaps and warm Mississippi mudcake with chocolate syrup at Lakota on Paraparaumu Beach. So retro and so right. Not so into the Bailey’s Creme brulee, because I don’t like the taste of Bailey’s.
- Ice cream cake at the family October birthday celebrations. Strawberry, banana and bubblegum strata of good creamy icecream. I am also impressed with how I managed to get all four birthday people’s names on there with the edible letters.
Awesome Stuff I have read lately:
- More H.P. Lovecraft stories At the Mountains of Madness, The testimony of Randolph Carter, Dreams in the Witch House. Good and spooky. It’s also really nice to learn all the actual mythos that I have been blithely referring to for all these years. Also giant albino penguins = win.
- Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls: Moving day Meg Cabot’s first book for younger readers is really really good. Her style is perfectly suited to it actually. It’s also made me rethink how I have my girls speak to each other in Kiki so that’s useful too.
- Violet and Clare another Francesca Lia Block re-read, I can never remember how this one ends for some reason. I loved reading it again. The characters of both leads are so well rounded and real to me. The end made me cry as it turned out.
- Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 a beautifully artsy looking graphic novel about mice fighting wars against predators and each other. There are mouse cities, you see, and the Mouse Guard are like the police/army keeping the order. Great characerisation and impressive expression from minimal facial details. Looking forward to reading the Winter installment. Official site. I agree with Mike, the roleplaying game should be awesome.
- Ladies, a Plate turns out to be fascinating reading. The history of each recipe really makes it for me. I have actually baked from it now, made afghans when I got home from work today. After dinner I will try the fancy fudgey icing that she recommends. Om nom nom the second.
PoF: slobby
CO: hungry for tea and afghans!
