Hoorah it is now the bank holiday weekend!
Most of the day so far has been spent making a cheesecake for someone's birthday. I have only made this particular recipe once before (several years ago) and I wish I'd annotated the recipe that time, as I'd forgotten that it requires a million things to be whisked, as well as needing more bowls than any normal domestic kitchen can yield. I thought I'd worked it all out and had ingredients ready in all manner of containers, only to read down further and suddenly notice that I was expected to whisk egg whites. Oh well. It's baked now and looks OK and I have just finished washing down the walls that got sprayed with cream cheese during a whisk malfunction!
I will be heading out shortly to watch 'Bring Up The Bodies'. Catch you later
Hello my little brioche rolls! How are peops today? I am dozy, having got home very late then being woken at 5.00 by an alarm going off at the premises next door. Oh well.
I have come to the conclusion that I am going to have to take an extended simming break. There just are not enough hours in the week. The massive stack of unread new books, all the films I've missed in the last few months, too many great plays, a big list of TV shows that I need to catch up on, family commitments. Oh yeah.... and work. Mustn't forget that.
I can report that 'Bringing Up The Bodies' was great - some tense scenes of interrogation and people realising the imminence of their downfall. Really well done and a great mix of seriousness and humour. I managed not to kill the person whose phone rang during the interrogation, nor the woman who was rattling a box of maltesers, nor the one who had jangling bracelets and couldn't keep her arms still. My patience was sorely tested though. In the interval I had my programme signed by the author of the books, Hilary Mantel, who was in the audience. Might as well, really.
This morning I was following a bluebottle fly around the house to see if I could chase it out of a window. A spider took it down and started winding it up in web. The noise from the fly was incredible! Having stood there for a minute, frozen in awe, I took the opportunity to chuck both spider and his screaming snack out of the window. Bane strikes again!
Marine managed to win yesterday. Yes - WIN! As did Hearts I believe. Very good. Was very sad to hear about that Algeria player who was killed when struck by an object thrown by a bad-tempered crowd.
(21-08-2014 01:17 PM)Caspin Wrote: [ -> ]Um! I was just looking at the news at lunch and decided to read the article entitled "Barbecue warning: Cook food in oven first, says Food Standards Agency"
This is the image that greeted me. Now, am I going mad, or is that guy on the left conducting his barbecuing while naked?
Burnt sausages are a serious risk.
Maybe the Naked Rambler was camping there?
(23-08-2014 03:08 PM)Caspin Wrote: [ -> ]Hoorah it is now the bank holiday weekend!
Most of the day so far has been spent making a cheesecake for someone's birthday. I have only made this particular recipe once before (several years ago) and I wish I'd annotated the recipe that time, as I'd forgotten that it requires a million things to be whisked, as well as needing more bowls than any normal domestic kitchen can yield. I thought I'd worked it all out and had ingredients ready in all manner of containers, only to read down further and suddenly notice that I was expected to whisk egg whites. Oh well. It's baked now and looks OK and I have just finished washing down the walls that got sprayed with cream cheese during a whisk malfunction!
I will be heading out shortly to watch 'Bring Up The Bodies'. Catch you later
Most of my bank holiday weekend has been "entertaining" my brother & his wife who dropped in during their road trip on Friday & again on Sunday. They didn't half pick a weekend for it, 4 seasons in one day commonplace. I noticed however the berries are out already on some of the holly trees up here, which doesn't bode well for the winter if the old tales are true.
(24-08-2014 02:58 PM)Caspin Wrote: [ -> ]Hello my little brioche rolls! How are peops today? I am dozy, having got home very late then being woken at 5.00 by an alarm going off at the premises next door. Oh well.
I have come to the conclusion that I am going to have to take an extended simming break. There just are not enough hours in the week. The massive stack of unread new books, all the films I've missed in the last few months, too many great plays, a big list of TV shows that I need to catch up on, family commitments. Oh yeah.... and work. Mustn't forget that.
I can report that 'Bringing Up The Bodies' was great - some tense scenes of interrogation and people realising the imminence of their downfall. Really well done and a great mix of seriousness and humour. I managed not to kill the person whose phone rang during the interrogation, nor the woman who was rattling a box of maltesers, nor the one who had jangling bracelets and couldn't keep her arms still. My patience was sorely tested though. In the interval I had my programme signed by the author of the books, Hilary Mantel, who was in the audience. Might as well, really.
This morning I was following a bluebottle fly around the house to see if I could chase it out of a window. A spider took it down and started winding it up in web. The noise from the fly was incredible! Having stood there for a minute, frozen in awe, I took the opportunity to chuck both spider and his screaming snack out of the window. Bane strikes again!
Marine managed to win yesterday. Yes - WIN! As did Hearts I believe. Very good. Was very sad to hear about that Algeria player who was killed when struck by an object thrown by a bad-tempered crowd.
I'm feeling dopey after nightly vigils to deter the fox from digging holes in the garden (& digging up all my plants
). I was going to get Scoot fox repellent but the gentleman in the shop said it's too late, the foxes are going mental because the natural food supply is running out, but it will pick up in a week or so's time (there's a lot more prey running about once they start gathering stores to fatten themselves up for hibernation) when the rain also starts getting heavier making repellents a waste of money. He said repellents are for the summer months when it's dry & they can take up to 3 weeks before they scare the foxes completely away.
The noise from that fly, was it screaming "Help me! Help me! Don't let it get me!" like that old horror movie?
Yes, I hope FIFA throw the book at Algeria for this. It's bad enough having hooliganism between fans without it spilling onto the pitch & leading to murder. Up here there were a number of incidents reported at matches this week on various fan forums but you'd not know from the media blackout that everything's peaceful. It appears there's a new generation of young morons wanting to "big" themselves up at games & looking for trouble.
Well I hope your brother brought you lots of gifts and took you out for a splendid dinner and took a turn at fox-scooting duty. Otherwise you can tell him that he has not met expectations and I'll be writing "must try harder" on his report card with my red jumbo marker pen.
So, if the foxes are trashing the garden due to lack of snacks, is the answer to leave them some food? Maybe not, as they may then just move in!
I will now continue to watch a taped documentary about the amazing Kate Bush.
Milton Keynes Dons 4 - 0 Manchester United!
The most fraudulent club in English football humiliates the most fraudulent fans in English football. I think even the Wimbledon fans will be cheering this one (on second thoughts, probably not!)
In other news, there are reports that E-cigarettes may be harmful to health. There is also reports that water is wet, the sun is hot & foxes dig up your favourite garden plants.
I know - mad score! I reckon even I could get a ball into the net if playing Man U just now!
I'm sure those e-cigarettes don't do you much good, but presumably they do you a lot less harm than normal cigarettes. Using them does make you look like a complete fool, though - there was a very drunk, obnoxiously loud middle-aged woman in the pub at the weekend puffing away on one, or "vaping" away I suppose I should say, and passing it round her group of friends. They could not have looked more absurd if they'd tried.
I was moderately jealous of all those who got to go to the Kate Bush concert last night. It's possibly a good thing that I wasn't there, however, as I might have been tempted to sing along and then all the cats wailing outside and the shattering of nearby windows would have been a problem.
Here we are, Sunday again. Today I will try to have a very quiet and restful day. Last week at work was quite busy, particularly since everyone is ill with some virus doing the rounds. I have escaped with no more than a few headaches and general malaise, but it has felled most of my colleagues. By Friday afternoon I was the only one left in my part of the office. Also I have been additionally exhausted with having too many conversations with people about how their GP is not "denying" them access to antibiotics that would cure them, since their disease is clearly viral. Sometimes it is tiring to be a microbiologist in a country in which so few people have been taught even the basics of the subject.
Yesterday I had a wedding to go to. Since I do not like dressing up (as in getting all sparkly and stuff - dressing up as a pirate or a dinosaur is perfectly acceptable) and do not like large gatherings, this was a slight ordeal. I had to style my hair for the first time in about five years, since the last wedding that I attended in fact, so I was quite relieved to find that I could still do it. Normally as long as it is washed and brushed I do not worry about which direction it might be facing.
I've been hearing of quite a few people getting sick (myself included), although that's probably most people getting colds from this Ice bucket challenge, which I have been nominated for, but so far avoided with being sick already. Plus almost everyone and their mother has done it, I'm pretty certain that most of the world now knows about ALS/MND, so there is barely any point in doing it, but the pressure.
I would not be keen to have iced water thrown over me. I would much prefer to give the money to the charity and use the ice in a drink. It's great that a charity that perhaps doesn't normally get a lot of support has been given a boost and I wouldn't begrudge them the donations, but I was reading an article that compared various charities and how they manage their money and of course not all are equally effective. In fact many waste a lot. I've seen this first-hand as a family member worked for a couple of charities, who shall remain unnamed, and was amazed at the large sums being wasted through bad decision-making. I'm a bit picky about who I will give money to.
Anyway, I hope you are feeling better Ollie.
I've got a week off starting tomorrow. This is good news as I haven't been sleeping well and am starting to get that weird delirious feeling. I'm having to triple check all my work! I'm going to Stratford for a couple of nights to catch a play. It will be
'The White Devil' at the RSC. Yes, that's right, I'm going all the way to Stratford and visiting the RSC but not watching any Shakespeare. Hey ho. Then I am going on a march on Saturday to highlight the perils faced by the NHS and then I will play The Sims 3 for a few days while I rest my legs. I am going to make a lot of sim pets as I realised that I haven't had any pets in my game for a while. So some kitties are required and perhaps I will attempt to create a Milo pug.
I hope Ollie's TS4 will turn up soon and then we can hear his first impressions. The reactions I have seen have been quite mixed so far, but then most people had only been playing for a few hours.