Thursday 30 April 2009

Wednesday 29 April 2009

Blog Fail...

...Epic.

Since I'm on holiday there is absolutely no excuse for not posting. Well, apart from the WoW playing and book reading and naps on the sofa with the cats and trying to get the V+ box down to under 40 hours of recordings...

Sorry

Here is the meal I made two weeks ago (after the Chinese GP)

Chicken with Chorizo
It was ok but I won't be cooking it again. Partly because we discovered that Anthony is not a huge fan of chorizo, and partly because all the prep for it took bloody ages. (Which is not good when you are overtired and very hungry). Watching Anthony waving a red pepper over the gas rings in an attempt to char the skin so we could peel it was mediumly humorous, but since the unpeeled yellow pepper ended up fine, that step can definitely be missed out. So it was nice, but far too much faff for me.

Last Saturday I cooked the Chicken in Garlic Sauce for Angie, Paul and Joe and they were all very impressed. I was also impressed as after the pepper charring incident I had forgotten how straightforward the recipe was and was expecting lots of faff. No faff, just lovely food and lovely sauce and lovely people to eat it with.

Next Sunday I shall not be cooking as I shall be at work, but for the Sunday after that I think I'm going to go for something basic - possibly a nice Cottage Pie.

Thursday 23 April 2009

I have been utterly...

...neglectful in not blogging about the Chinese Grand Prix sooner. This is partly due to the fact that Anthony has been here every evening (and distracting me) and partly due to the fact that I'm having a bitch of a time at work at the moment (and unable to vent/blog about why).

Anyhoo.

So on Saturday morning I got to watch Sebastian Vettel sticking his Red Bull on pole and being rather happy about it. Then I went to work and had a rather better day than usual due to the God that is RichieFingers and the comic talents of Donal, our resident Irishman.

Sunday morning I got myself up to watch all the pre-race chatter and saw something come up on the screen that I wasn't sure if I'd seen correctly. Nothing about it popped up on Twitter, and although Martin Brundle mentioned it in his grid interview of Vettel, Sebastian didn't expand that much on it and they didn't repeat the shot.

Then after the race I found this on the red bullog.



I did see it. I wasn't imagining it.

Sebastian Vettel has a sticker reading "Kate's Dirty Sister" stuck inside his cockpit, just above the steering wheel.

But who, or what, was Kate? And why exactly was his car named after her sister? Her dirty sister...

The man himself explained later:
"Like a ship, a car should be named after a girl as it’s sexy.

My original car was called Kate. But then it got smashed at the opening race in Australia. So we called this one Kate’s Dirty Sister because it is more aggressive and faster"

So there we have it. I got smashed in Australia...and Emily has won a Grand Prix. I'm so proud of her.

Kate's Dirty Sister Google Search.

Today is the second...

...of three anniversaries.

Three years ago today a very nice man came to my house to watch a Grand Prix race, and got sucked into the World of Warcraft too.

Tuesday 21 April 2009

This week I was supposed to have...

...four days at work before then having nine days off.

Then I got a letter from the hospital informing me that my appointment time had been changed AGAIN!

So I phoned them up and ranted a bit (and cried quite a lot) and the end result was that I could either take the new appointment time or wait until July for a new one.

So I then had long confabs with Anthony and with RichieFingers (who is a Rota God, seriously) and the end result is that Anthony and I will be at the hospital for our appointment time of 10.55.

I am stupidly scared and nervous. Although I know that it is very unlikely, my mind is already running through all of the worst-case scenarios that it can think of. The stupid thing is, even if one of them happens it won't have prepared me for it.

But we are prepared.

Anthony has Series 6 of Pokemon, I have Ashes to Ashes, Numb3rs, CSI:NY and Eleventh Hour (which I haven't seen any of yet, but it's got Rufus Sewell in it!) on the V+ box. Of course, we both have WoW for when the other one is watching TV.

I also have this:


It was in the Thornton's sale for £10 (from £30) and I couldn't just leave it sitting there...

Update: Home now. Got to see consultant a mere hour and 15 minutes after appointment time. Then she made me cry when she demanded to know why I wasn't currently taking folic acid.
Her - "But if you're trying to get pregnant you need to be taking it."
Me - "I'm not trying bloody anything til I know what went wrong last time, and that's what this appointment is for!"

The blood tests were all fine, the chromosome tests were also all fine. The only one that was slightly iffy was the blood protein one and so off I trooped to have some blood taken.

So basically, no idea what went wrong. But at the same time it's not a case of "give up, there's no chance".

Now I am going for chocolate egg and beer (the sun's past the yardarm) and since it's sunny I shall probably sit in the garden too.

Thursday 16 April 2009

Wednesday 15 April 2009

I have had...

...a very relaxing five days off. Well, four so far and then rest of today which will be the only one of those days sans Anthony. Which has been lovely too.

We have both had haircuts, we've driven round various areas of Wolverhampton trying to find bits that we'd like to live in, we've been to Waitrose three times and Hobbycraft once and we've got the V+ Box down to 40 hours of free space (rather than 5).

Anthony showed amazing patience when helping me choose a new pair of trainers:
K - Not those ones
A - Why not?
They've got too much white on them
What about these ones?
Too grey
How about these?!?
Yuck!
These ones? (said through gritted teeth)
Hmmm....
Eventually I decided on a pair of the Hmmm... ones (what do you mean you can't tell the difference?)

(pictures (in order) for those who did not want to link click)




They also ended up being men's ones rather than women's, partly due to the fact that all the men's ones were out for people to try while you had to ask for the women's ones (and I couldn't put the poor shop guy through it).

That's the first pair of trainers I've owned in 15 years...my last pair were for PE at school and they lasted through my gym moments at uni too. Since then I've not really worn trainers, and the pair of Anthony's that I "borrow" are a size too big and so unrunnable in. Not that I'm about to take up running. Definitely not.

On Sunday I cooked up some Veal Scaloppine. Or at least I would have done had Waitrose had any veal left. They did not, so instead we had Pork Scaloppine.


I very slightly over salted it (due to not being used to using salt when cooking but following instructions in the book to the letter) but Anthony said it was "Bloody lovely". So that was a success.

In two weeks time I have promised to cook Chicken in Garlic Sauce for Angie, Paul and Joe - eeek! Cooking for real people! People who won't be afraid to tell me if it is actually inedible (Joe), but who will also pour me more wine if it is (Angie and Paul). Angie also hit the nail on the head when she called me a 'dinner party cook'. It's true, cooking is such a big event for me at the moment. One of the reasons she therefore decided I should have a dinner party!

Back to work tomorrow...I have three days in, then one off, then four in, then NINE off! (Then my next break is June, then Monza!)

Monday 13 April 2009

Over at...

...the beautiful Tollipop, Kirsten is having a giveaway to mark her one year blogiversary.

She is giving away these three beautiful young ladies


as well as three Tollipop lockets (made by Polarity)



Go see, go see! (and fall as much in love with Tollipop as I have)

Friday 10 April 2009

Your rainbow is intensely shaded white, pink, and yellow.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

What is says about you: You are a joyful person. You appreciate quiet moments. People depend on you to make them feel secure. You are a good listener and your friends are glad to have you around in difficult times.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

Wednesday 8 April 2009

Twitter is suddenly...

...the in thing, which is a little bit scary for me since I first signed up to it back in March 2007. I never usually discover the cool things early on, I'm always late to the party.

I started tweeting again back in December when I was after a new thing to take my mind off other things. It certainly helped...

Tweetdeck is my interface of choice, if I ever get a phone I can tweet from then that might change but at the moment it works perfectly for me.

I have all sorts of people filtered off into groups...

There is the Perfect group, consisting of lovely lovely people like Caroline_S, Keris, emmaj1983, threeleggedcat, antoniajane and of course Miss EmLah.

There is my Groupie group which features stephenfry, neilhimself, bobbyllew and alandavies1 (he's a secret Leyton Orient supporter y'know), among others.

Other contacts are split into book/blog/F1/randomly interesting related groups.

Then I have a new group that I added just today.

This one makes me giggle.

******************

Please put your hands together for the Fake F1 Drivers!!!

* fakejenson * FakeAlonso * fakefelipemassa * FakeKazNakajima * fakemarkwebber * FakeSebVettel * fakehamilton *

All bossed about by fakemaxmosley and all bitched about by fakejuanmontoya.

Now we just need a FakeKimi to turn up and it'll all be good. (Not that I expect a FakeKimi to turn up, we all know he's too busy drinking/sleeping/eating icecreams to Tweet).

Basically...Twitter rocks.

Friday 3 April 2009

I completely intended...

...to blog yesterday, and then suddenly it was bedtime and I realised I hadn't. Bad me.

Right then.

On Sunday (after the Grand Prix) I cooked Chicken in Garlic Sauce, which was flipping gorgeous!

It looked like this:


The recipe suggests serving it with boiled new potatoes and green beans, but since I did my usual thing of forgetting to do anything to go with it until five minutes before it was ready to serve, so we had lots of peas and sweetcorn instead.

Apart from the fact there seemed to be gallons of sauce left (the recipe is for 4 and I didn't cut any quantities down) it was absolutely perfect. It's definitely going to be made again, although next time I think I shall try reducing the sauce a lot more!

Lovely Twitter is not only keeping me informed about all the latest F1 shenanigans (Lewis, Lewis, Lewis...cheats never prosper!) but it also won me a prize!
The folks at the Naxos Music Library had run a Twitter competition to win a free months subscription as part of their 30th birthday celebrations. All you had had to do was DM @naxosrecords for a chance to win.

They contacted me on Wednesday to say I'd won it but then Anthony promptly brought me back down to earth by asking me if I'd noticed the date...
Luckily he was very wrong and so I now have a whole month of picking myself some music to listen to. I don't know much about classical music so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

*Anthony has just phoned me so I have completely lost my train of thought*

Um.

Erm.

Here, have a cat picture.



In fact, have two.


(I love the fact Foley seems to have too many legs in this one)