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.
Commonsense Organics
Today I decided my need for homebaked goods outweighed the need to save money. Hence, I took myself forth to Commonsense Organics.
Man, it’s expensive there! I guess they’re still kinda boutique-y and they’re pretty popular, so they can charge what they like, but I kept seeing things that looked good and then not picking them up because of the price.
What I did buy: Dagoba brand organic chocolate from Oregon. It’s cherry flavoured, extremely dark chocolate. If I’d noticed the 72% Cocao content on the label I might have left it be. It’s good, but very very rich. It cost $5 for a 56.7g bar. Not too bad for designer chocolate.
Wanaka Chocolate organic orange. Haven’t tried it yet. $3.30 for a 46g ‘thick’n'chunky’ type bar.
Gluten Free plain baking flour. It’s made by a company called Orgran, and is a blend of maize starch, tapioca flour, rice flour and vegetable gums. Sounds good doesn’t it? Well, I baked cookies with it today and they taste awesome. Which is to say, it tastes the same as wheat flour in those cookies.
$7.70 for 500g, so pretty expensive. You could get a different brand’s blend in a 1kg pack for a little under $20, so this one is the cheaper of the options, and they had lots of different ‘themed’ flours – pizza dough flour, for example and ‘just add milk and butter’ pancake mix and suchlike.
Still, if it means I can eat homebaking, I’ll be paying what they charge. They have the market monopoly right now (as far as I know…) and I do like me some cookies. Hopefully the more people shop there the lower they can make their prices.
PoF: BIG F little f, what begins with f?
CO: days off rawk
best things ever
Cadbury’s chocolate sauce. It tastes like melted dairy milk, but it comes in a bottle so you don’t have to mess around with melting chocolate yourself. Also, it goes all thick and nice on ice cream. So good.
Tip Top jelly tip icecream in the two litre container. I know lots of people are all excited about cookies and cream flavour, but I need more intensity from my ice cream. I need Extreme Flavour red jelly, I need Chocolate Bits, I need jelly tip.
I also am enjoying the Strawberry Rocky Road flavour in the big two litre container, because it combines the yummy strawberry ice cream with the biscuity bits that cover a rocky road on a stick and it has veins of red goo as well.
While we’re talking about ice cream, Cadbury crunchie flavour ice cream is also supremely delicious. Especially when combined with the aforementioned chocolate sauce. I remember at Waitarere we were eating this very combination and Chelle said “The only thing that could make this better would be if there were hokey pokey bits in the icecream” and then there were! Perfect.
Bundaberg Peachee. You can only get it in a four pack of little glass bottles, and it’s always sold out because everyone knows about how great it is. It’s a fizzy drink flavoured like peaches. It’s awesome ice cold, but perfectly drinkable at room temperature as well.
If you can’t get Peachee, on account of it being sold out, Lemon Ale is my next best Bundaberg four-pack of little glass bottles choice. The Apple ale just tastes like appletiser to me, which is unimpressive, since I can just buy appletiser. Lemon ale tastes like that ‘old fashioned lemonade’ Schweppes sold for a while a few years back: it tastes sour and lemony, but sweet and refreshing. Good stuff.
Sunny Wellington Days. These are the best days of the summer. Why am I at work for them? There’s no wind, just a gentle zephyr and the sun is scorching if you’re in it directly. I sweated through my tshirt driving back from Tawa at 1.30 this afternoon. Yup. You wanted to know that.
PoF: emo
CO: ice cream and chocolate sauce.
Weekend
Friday a bunch of us went to the Summer Shakespeare, which this year was As You Like It which I saw as a Summer Shakespeare ten years ago, and a few years ago at Downstage set in Colonial New Zealand. I also played Corin, the shepherd in an extract for the Sheila Winn competition way back in fifth form.
So. I’m a bit familiar with the play, although I haven’t studied it in depth.
This version was set in modern times, with ninjas and pro-wrestlers. It was pretty neat. The girl playing Rosalind was very good as was Celia. Orlando was cool, although a bit buffoonish and very eager to be gay with “Ganymede”, which I found rather amusing.
My friend Nick was in the chorus and had a minor speaking role, of the guy who Audrey was supposed to marry before she met Touchstone. He was very good, and I was much impressed with his singing voice, which I have only heard before in singstar context, which isn’t really indicative. I also thought he looked the most like a commando in those crazy people-living-in-the-woods scenes.
Friday was the only night last week when it rained. It rained right on the play, and was getting pretty heavy by the time the interval came. The director came out and said they’d see what happened over the twenty minute break and if it kept raining they’d cancel the second act and we could come back another night.
I was pretty happy to stay since I had worn warm socks, three layers on top plus my big coat with the thick hood and hadn’t really got wet at all. Plus Lee and I had two blankets to share, so we stayed for the second half. Some of our group didn’t stay and I couldn’t blame them, but I just couldn’t see myself getting organised to come back another night either.
The second half was pretty much dry, right up until the final scenes, in which it got steadily worse. The curtain calls went quickly and then everyone ran for their cars. Lee and I had just got to our car when it really let loose and bucketed down.
For dinner I had a half-mini baguette stuffed with chicken and another roll as well, then a little cake. The next day for lunch we had more of the rolls covered in melted cheese. These gluten-tastic food choices were soon regretted by myself.
On Saturday we went to Rachel and Alan’s housewarming which I had fun at, but Lee mostly sat in the corner trying not to fall asleep. We left about 6.30 and did our grocery shopping and then came home and watched Remember the Titans. Which I hadn’t seen in some years.
I had a grumbly and achey belly by this time and spent a lot of time complaining.
Sunday morning I felt even worse and wasn’t sure I’d make it to Yum Char for Muggle’s birthday. However, once I’d had a shower I felt a bit more human and even though my head was doing a serious space-out thing I managed to sit through Yum Char, talk to people and have fun. I didn’t move from my seat at all, because I wasn’t sure about not passing out if I did.
I had a lot of fun though, with all the different people at our table. Something about the size of those round tables is very conducive to all sorts of simultaneous conversations. I laughed a lot, and managed to actually talk to Nick which was nice.
I got Lee to drop me home after while he went to do some perk jobs. I went pretty much straight to sleep and woke up feeling a bit better. I didn’t feel awesome, but less head spacey than before. Later Sass and Rachel dropped by briefly and I had to be coherent, which I think I managed. After that Lee took me out into the sunshine and I nearly fell asleep again so we came back and I had another nap before dinner.
Today I am still unwell. My belly is aching and I’m having the opposite problem to usual. I haven’t really tried to do anything today, so I’m not sure if my head’s still nutso.
I’ve read these books: Forever in Blue the final Travelling Pants book, which was very good. I love Bee.
1001 Nights of Snowfall which is a Fables title, and excellent. I love a lot of the artists used in this collection, so that made it even more enjoyable.
Little House in Boston Bay by Melissa Wiley. It’s a Little House book about Charlotte Tucker, who is Laura Ingalls’ Grandmother. Or will be. I quite liked it actually. They managed to keep the same tone that Laura used.
Y the Last Man: Unmanned by Brian K Vaughan. Set in 2002, this graphic novel is about a plague that kills every mammalian carrier of the Y chromosome on the planet, except for one guy and his monkey. It is awesome and I already have the next two on order from the library. Steve actually told me to read this about a year ago, well Steve, I finally managed it!
Next up: Seven Soldiers of Victory a DC ensemble title by Grant Morrison.
PoF: nightie
CO: stupid belly, reckless Jenni eating gluten.
Reviews
The Prestige. Is a cool, weird, dark, twisty confection of a movie. It’s by the guy who did Memento, so that gives you an idea of the likely tone. It’s about Wolverine and Batman fighting – well, really it’s about two stage magicians in the last years of the 19th Century battling to be the best. It gets pretty nasty pretty fast, but it’s all very interesting and saturated with period detail.
Plus Scarlet Johansen is hot.
There’s not much else to say without giving it away, so I’ll just say I approved greatly. Movies I can’t predict are frequently movies I’ll enjoy and I think this is as close as we’ll ever get to a movie of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.
Eragon. I went in expecting it to be a derivative story, poorly acted and with disappointing special effects. I quite enjoyed it. The lead had some bad angles but he wore leather pants so I was entertained. The dragon effects were pretty good, I especially liked the super-cute baby dragon which looked like a blue ferret with wings.
I am seriously considering cosplaying Arya, the hot elf chick who Eragon has some weird psychic connection to. I don’t have red hair, but otherwise I think I could do it.
The Sam Taylor-Wood exhibition at the City Gallery. Lee suggested we go and see this, which is so unlike him that I nearly died. Lee doesn’t much go in for art, and although I know he doesn’t mind photography it’s still a shock to be walking to breakfast and hear him say “shall we go to the art gallery?” Of course, I wanted to and we went.
You’ll have seen the posters of Hayden Christiansen and Laurence Fishburne crying around, and if that doesn’t get you interested let me tell you to go and see it instead. Did that work?
The main part of the exhibition is random works of Sam’s including men falling or leaping and a couple of video installations which I really liked. (Man tapdancing on his own prone body with a dove on his head. Brilliant.) But the most accessible, most crowd-drawing and most affecting room is the one of Hollywood actors crying. I’m not sure how she gets these shots of them, I mean sure, they’re actors and can theoretically cry on demand but I have to believe that at least some of those shots are real.
The Daniel Craig one is so emotive, you can see his eyes are red and he’s really upset, and you start to feel for him. The Woody Harrelson one is very good too, his eyes are downcast and his jaw set like a petulant little boy, but you can see that he is really quite sad. After looking through the whole room several times I felt quite upset myself, and I think if I’d stayed I would have started crying in sympathy. We bought a poster of the Laurence Fishburne image, although it’s a little disappointing because it’s cropped at the sides. The full effect of the picture is quite magical.
I actually think it’s a pity they are using the Hayden Christiansen image, because it’s one of the weaker ones from the selection, but I suspect they are trading on his recognisable post-Star Wars face to draw the crowds. Link to some info via the City Gallery.
Sweet Mother’s Kitchen. The American/Mexican/Creole cafe on Courtenay Place. Awesome milkshakes. Seriously, among the best I’ve had.
I was a bit disappointed as I ordered waffles, and the waffle machine was broken so they made me pancakes without asking if that’s what I wanted done, but the pancakes were good so I wasn’t that disappointed. Tasty ricotta with them and lots of maple syrup.
Lee had a breakfast burrito was which actually really good even if I do baulk at eating mexican food for breakfast. We’ll probably go back.
Point of Fashion: stripey arm warmers
Current Obsession: scrapbooking. I am nearly done on my Wedding album!
More Food Blogging
On the course of the holiday in Waitarere I had some wonderful gastronomic experiences which I will now share with you.
Fresh pipis hunter-gathered just down the road by our very own Manly Men. That’s right, Lee, Bro-in-Law and tall skinny guy braved the crashing waves, howling winds and looking silly to dig for pipis. I didn’t think they’d get any, but lo! They returned with many a pipi and they were very very nice. Sweet and sandy and good. Giffy found that if you peeled off an outer skin layer of the fishy bit you could get rid of most of the sand, which was a bonus.
New Years Margaritas. Shaved ice, margarita mix, tequila, Easi-yo strawberry ’squirt’ and lots of fresh strawberries make for a delicious New Years treat. Big thanks to Hive Mind 1 and my darling husband for providing. Was very tasty.
Cadbury brand Crunchie flavour icecream + Cadbury brand chocolate sauce = ice cream heaven in a bowl. Seriously. Chelle was like “the only thing that could make this better is if the ice cream had hokey pokey nuggets in it.” and then…the ice cream totally had hokey pokey nuggets in it!!! Perfection.
Barbecue flambe roast pork. The barbecue caught fire while roasting the pork, thanks to there being no sand or kitty litter in the grease trap tray, but it didn’t matter. The pork was succulent, juicy and very very good. I love my brother in law, for he cooks good barbecue meat.
Expensive designer cheese from Lindale. It’s a smoked havarti and man, it has everything I like in a cheese (apart from garlic), it’s rich and strong, but has an aged tang to it. I ate it with seaweed rice crackers which overwhelmed the flavour a little, but together with fresh salad greens it was really really good.
Plain old onion dip. I can’t help myself. It’s ust reduced cream and Maggi onion soup but I freaking adore it. I love it with ready salted chips, plain rice crackers and fresh carrot (*winks at Giffy*). It’s just so very creamy and good. Ack, I am such a kiwi.
PoF: Tokidoki
CO: food, clearly.
Off Topic, but I suspect there are readers curious…Giffy and Erik’s quilt is now bound on two sides. I have done the first part of binding the remaining two sides, the machine quilting, and that leaves whip stitching by hand, corners and then the quilt label. I hope to get it done so I have time to wash and dry the quilt before the ceremony on Friday. Fingers crossed for me!
