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!)

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)

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.

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.

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)

...and the lights go out...

...no, not for Earth Hour.

The race is on!

What happened to Barrichello?

Button in front by miles...

Heidfeld with a puncture.

Barichello caused a little bit of fuss at the first corner - carbon fibre all over the place and poor old Mark Webber lost his front wing.

Kovalainen is out with a very broken looking car.

Button is already 4.4 secs ahead on Lap 3.

**time for me to have a look at the onboard camera screens on the BBC**

Onboard camera is sticking with Hamiltwunt at the moment so I'll pass on that.

Not as many retirements as I thought there'd be by this point! (Certainly not as many as last year!)

Rosberg just scampered past Kimi, then Barrichello tried it and clipped him.

Kimi in the pits - puncture?

Rosberg now menacing Kubica who is all over the back of Massa.

Pit stops have started - Ferrari and MacLaren have both now used their soft tires - hopefully this will give Ferrari an advantage at the end.

Rosberg had a pitstop problem that held the poor boy up. But it meant we got to watch a lovely pass on him by Kimi.

Button is miles in front!

Nakajima into the wall - safety car.... poor Button!

That whole thing with the safety car was a bit of a screw up, they let it go after Button so the whole field had to go past it! Now Button will be stuck behind it for ages... and the debris/car seems to have been shifted already!

The safety car has been out for ages with the track clear, very frustrating!

Massa keeps locking up. Brundle - "His tyres will look like a 50p piece soon"

Piquet takes the first corner sideways and slides right to the back of the very wide gravel trap!

Hamilton passes Glock very easily...again!

33 laps to go BTW.

Have got the perfect setup now - TV showing main feed, PC showing the onboard streams. Lovely jubbly.

20 laps to go, things have quietened down for the moment, but the last pit stops are all starting...

Hamilton comes out of the pits and decides to try and squeeze Massa off the track straight away. Kimi bumps into the wall...but keeps going.

Fisichella up to 8th!

Eeep!

Button had a pit stop problem, can't tell if he got enough fuel, but he got out in front of Vettel.

Drat it, Massa is out. His car was sounding very very ill.

Barrichello pits and comes out behind Rosberg, then a couple of laps later sticks in a fabulous pass.

Glock is trying to take people out as he tries to pass them - apart from Hamilton of course.

Hamilton is up to 7th. Anthony says - "It pains me to say it, but he's driven a good race."

Holy crap.

Kubica and Vettel duking it out.

Kubica takes Vettel out then hits the wall himself.

Poor Vettel.

Hurrah for Button! Hurrah for Barrichello! (unless anything breaks)

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

So just as last year, it's the British national anthem. But this time it's for a driver who has really earned it.

w00t!!!

No chance of going back to bed as I did last year, partly cos the race was later, partly cos I'm too fucking hyper!

*chequered flag*

Good morning...

...Australia.

Yup, I'm awake again. But this morning doesn't seem so bad since the clocks changed this morning. Instead of getting up at 5am, it was 6am!

I am going to blog this just like last year, well, not just like last year, I'm going to put the whole lot in one post and update as I go - that way nobody reads the last bit first!

Once again the clever buggers at the BBC are doing text updates, and the fact that Twitter has taken off this year means that I've also got Tweetag to keep an eye on (and find some new tweeps through).

It's now 40 minutes to race start...time to get everything organised - no ad breaks to get extra drinks in!