About ten years ago hubby and I decided to go hiking with my sister, brother-in-law and some friends. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We would spend two days hiking up a mountain, walking about 10 kilometers a day. That is like 6.2 miles a day. The selling point for me was that we would not need tents as we would be sleeping in what they called “chalets” and they said there was electricity at both “camping sites”. The only down side, I thought, was that we would need to carry everything we needed in backpacks with us. Optimism never served well, and in this case optimism would once again dismally fail me.
Wednesday 25 November 2015
Camping When Nature Hates You.
About ten years ago hubby and I decided to go hiking with my sister, brother-in-law and some friends. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We would spend two days hiking up a mountain, walking about 10 kilometers a day. That is like 6.2 miles a day. The selling point for me was that we would not need tents as we would be sleeping in what they called “chalets” and they said there was electricity at both “camping sites”. The only down side, I thought, was that we would need to carry everything we needed in backpacks with us. Optimism never served well, and in this case optimism would once again dismally fail me.
Monday 23 November 2015
Happily Ever After
Wednesday 18 November 2015
The Gospel, According to Me
Monday 16 November 2015
When things start to sag
Friday 13 November 2015
On being a casual foodie
Like most people, I claim to only have one real vice. To quote Lily Allen, I'm not a saint, but I'm not a sinner:
I fucking love food.
Like, really. Luckily my girlfriend is quite a foodie too, so I can safely say I live and breathe for delicious noms. Often she is the only one who will dare to join me in trying new combinations, like our recent breakfast of croissants with camembert, honey and fresh rocket (Arugula, if you want to be 'Murcan), so I believe we feel the same about food. I'm practically in a three-way relationship.
If I have the remote, the TV is on channel 175, and currently I have my new copy of a recipe book from The Great British Bake Off in front of me at least 8 hours of the day and I know exactly what I'm baking first. We love going to new restaurants and trying all sorts of different foods, and while there are some things I don't eat (coriander is the real devil's herb), I will try almost anything.
But I have some issues that mean I can't be a real foodie, apparently:
Firstly, I can't cook real food. I routinely burn things - I've set pans on fire cooking everyday things like fried onions - and I often forget to add essential ingredients. I can bake though, at least.
Second, what I can cook is usual teenage/student fare - French toast (I make killer French toast), eggs, potato hashes, that sort of thing. So when I cook, don't expect gourmet if any kind of heat is involved.
Finally, I love eating and using stuff real foodies wouldn't touch. 2 minute noodles with viennas and cheese? I may as well die of a foodgasm right now. Plus I nearly always use good ol' Moirs vanilla essence when it calls for real vanilla extract - nobody can really tell, right? Also, tomato sauce is my friend. That and Tobasco.
According to Geegee, too, I do not eat properly because I do not add cheese to every meal. So there we are, I am not really a foodie at all, I suppose...
Fortunately, though, I happen to be planning to marry someone who can really cook amazing meals. How often do you hear someone saying their partner cooks better than their mom? Well, my partner's cooking outdoes my mom's - tenfold. It may or may not be why I am marrying her.
So while I might not make it to my own cooking show, or become a food critic or a judge on Masterchef, I certainly am a foodie in the sense that if it has enough deliciousness, I wholeheartedly love it and will tell everyone I run into about how amazing it tastes.
Whether it's organic and locally sourced or if it comes from some questionable factory in a town I've never heard of.
Now excuse me while I return to my Salticrax and Marshmallow fluff - happy eating!
It's Friday the 13th so don't be an asshole.
Thursday 12 November 2015
Cessation of Kin
Cocktail Hour - Winston Churchill
Wednesday 11 November 2015
I am so offended! I don't have a STD!
On Tuesday I woke up blissfully unaware that I had a UTI. That was until I had to pee. When I did I was in considerable pain causing me to negotiate with myself for how long I could hold my pee in before I would die. Apparently not long (holding it in, not the dying part). What made it worse was that I was also passing a kidney stone which is right up there on the "I want to die" pain scale.
Monday 9 November 2015
Since we're talking about pet peeves...
...I have many. Too many to list, and they change with my mood.
Today, for instance, my pet peeve is once again stupidity; or rather, a lack of common sense. I saw a review on Facebook of one of my new favourite ice cream parlours. I put a screenshot on the Facebook page for this blog if you want to see. This may be leftover rage from the amount of posts I've been reading on Not Always Right, but I managed to hold my tongue. There, at least.
You have to be a special kind of stupid to manage to fail to see that everyone is doing something specific to get what they want in a tiny restaurant, of all places, and still expecting your (retarded) way to be right and then berating the staff about it in such a public manner, albeit a very cowardly one.
This is not to say I don't have brain farts sometimes as a customer or in other areas:
The other day we went to buy some fresh honey from a farm and, between the useless employee who probably has trouble understanding what a "bee" is and how it makes this gold stuff that people keep wanting to buy, and my own moment of spazzing out from my fear of public speaking (I have far too few grey hairs to have stopped giving a shit what people think of me; to me most days feel like those dreams where you show up to work naked), we got nowhere - I stood there shrugging and making braindead caveman noises even less articulate than those I did as a grumpy teenager. My girlfriend got cross with me, I ran back to the car and we now have two jars of mystery honey from God-knows-what kind of flower. At least she undersold it and we got it cheaper than we should have - at least, we suspect so. Whee.
Sitting at my doctor's waiting room today, though, a man wanted to make me move (to where? The place was full!) so he could put the chair I was sitting on into the hallway so his wheelchair-bound son could sit there. Note, this was after I'd shuffled out the way to allow them more space to pass, since he'd tried very hard to squeeze through the wrong side, which is not very accessible to wheelchairs due to an ill-placed pillar (unlike the other side of the same room; it has two doors, one right outside the disabled bay). I refused to move because I am physically unable to stand up while I wait. He landed up putting his son, who looked about 8 and very scared, in the hallway and disappeared for a bit only to go through to the more wheelchair-friendly side and somehow manage to worm his way into one of the comfortable arm chairs (with a prime spot for a wheelchair within arm's length) and fall asleep. What. The. Fuck?
At least, I suppose, I do make it a point to differentiate intelligence from level of education. Some of the most retarded people I've met are in the medical fraternity. Go figure.
Well, that may be a bit biased on my part because I believe the medical fraternity as a whole is kind of retarded. But that's another post.
The point is "educated" does not amount to "smart". Our most esteemed neighbouring country's president (that one that will live forever) has a buttload of degrees. Doctorates, even. I'll let that sink in a bit.
Conversely, some of my very intelligent friends who never did get into academia have really been a ready supply of thought fodder about why we go to school in the first place. Again, another post!
I do have some... Not-so-clever friends. Above all, they taught me all about cutting the idiots out of your life who increase your risk of heart disease. Oh, and some patience, I suppose.
I've had to learn to tone down my inner Grammar Nazi; not to comment on those Facebook posts, and especially not to challenge someone's "intelligence" , especially if they're trying very hard to come across as more intelligent than you - and themselves - it breaks their hearts if you manage to destroy their belligerence! But some people are so far beyond stupid I just want to slap them through the face. When I'm feeling generous. These you can't just ignore because the sheer stupidity of their statements makes the global average IQ score drop every time they go online, and we can't have that.
I don't speak like a smart person (I think). Hell, I don't act like a smart person nine times out of ten, and there are many ways in which I'm not smart at all.
But please: if you are genuinely not blessed with the gift of common sense, unable to read purely because of laziness or if you don't understand basic social protocols such as buying your ice cream by selecting your flavour yourself at the counter, don't spread your stupidity all over the web - or in real life, for that matter; there are children watching and, of course, those of us that have to suffer in silence because good etiquette doesn't allow us to mace you.
</Murasaki> (to contrast the wonderful Emily)