Food, glorious and wonderful

I’ll tell anyone that I love my food. I don’t stress whether or not something is ‘fattening’ or ‘bad for me’. Everything is bad for you if you’re stupid about it. Eat in moderation. Don’t eat more than your fill. All that jazz. Not much can put me off my food either. I remember in high school while eating some musk lollies, a friend told me that musk is scraped off deer testicles.


‘Fascinating’ I said as I popped another musk flavoured lolly in my mouth.


I don’t see myself as ‘picky’ about my food, although I suppose I am. In a way that I’m about to contradict myself. I know people that are super picky about things. Like they’ll only eat such-and-such brand of chocolate. Or won’t eat something made from a particular country (yes, that’s true).


As long as I’m happy with the taste, I’m not going to worry about brands or country.


That being said though, I don’t like how food is being ‘fancied up’ (My made up term ) I like good, old-fashioned, regular ways of food. Meals that are bigger than a speck on my plate. Something that doesn’t look like I’m ruining an art sculpture. Added herbs and spices that don’t overwhelm.


Even cupcakes. Yeah, those cupcakes with the thick buttercream may look pretty in the store window, but (and I can’t be the only one) that much buttercream makes me want to puke. I enjoy icing that doesn’t make my throat spasm.


Would you prefer something that looks fantastic on display but is mediocre in taste, or would you rather keeps things simple and be in taste heaven?

Squealing fandom

In a couple of months I’m off to Supanova. Not even the one in my state, no, this time I’m flying interstate. Why you ask? Well, I’ll tell you why. I have three *very* good reasons.

1. Oliver Phelps

2. James Phelps

3. Peter Facinelli

Good grief. Guest stars have yet to be announced for my local Supanova, but I’ve made my choice. I first heard about the twins. I loved them in the Harry Potter movies, so that was a no brainer. Then I heard about Peter and that was just the icing on the cake. The only thing is, I’ve seen on TV what it’s like when these three are out at whatever events they attend and all I ever see is girls of all ages screaming and crying.


I just don’t get it. If you’re about to meet someone you love/admire/look-up-to/worship/crush on, wouldn’t you want to make at least a semi decent impression? I think I’d freak a little if someone came up to me screaming and crying and waving an autograph book and pen in my face.


Of course, my impression will most likely to be go bright red in the face and then to blurt out something completely stupid like, ‘omgiwannamarryyou’ and then hope to god they don’t mind a slightly older woman hanging off their arm (yes, I know Peter is married, but I can live in hope )


How do you keep your cool when meeting a celebrity? Or do you go stark raving mad from their sheer awesomeness?

Besotted by Wednesdays 15-02-2012

Bringing you things that have me drunkenly infatuated. Or is it infatuatingly drunk? Either way, it's things and places I love. 

For (probably a long) while, some of the links may seem like old news. This is because I currently have a backlog of pure awesomeness to sort through.

With tech trends changing so fast, it’s sometimes hard to keep up with them all. GeekSugar have put together a slideshow of what the best trends were for 2011.

Who doesn’t love playing Fruit ninja? Well, this won’t interest you then. For the rest that love testing their reflexes on random pieces of fruit, you can now buy Fruit Ninja plushies! Great for testing your abilities in your lounge room.

I came across the most wonderful sketch pad. It’s browser sketch pad so you can draft up your webpages! One of the best ideas ever in my book. There’s even a stencil you can buy to use on the sketch pad.

Do you ever think much about the future? What’s going to happen, how things are going to change. Well Michael realised that we only need to look to movies to see what’s supposed to be happening.

NY’s School of Visual Arts students come up with some amazing work and for those that are interested in seeing what’s they’re producing, they’ve created a free online magazine for us to flip through.

I love a broad range of music. On my MP3 player, you can find Aaliyah next to ZZ Top. Britney singing about ‘til the world ends’ right after Metallica tell me ‘blackened is the end’. It’s not just the mainstream songs that I listen to, you’ll also find parodies and wizrock. And now I’ve found another genre to listen to. GeeksAreSexy introduce us to bands who use or base their music on video games.

A simple reminder, that reading is not such a bad thing after all. Whatever format you may choose.

The mouse maketh the (wo)man

As I have yet to do anything to fix my desktop, all my computing needs are handled by my laptop these days. Of course, ‘these days’ has been for the last couple of years or so. Seriously, all it needs is a new hard drive. I think. Anyway, sliding off topic.

The laptop is great. Does everything I want it to… except keeping peripherals connected when via the USB ports. One slight brush of the cable and it’s suddenly disconnected. One such peripheral is the mouse. I can’t stand using touchpads for long periods of time (which totally contradicts the need for my touch UI smartphone…). My mouse has served me well for the last five and a half years. Until now. It started double clicking everything that I wanted to only single click. Very frustrating when sorting through emails, copy/pasting files, etc.

I hear you saying, ‘So go buy another mouse. Geez. They’re only five bucks at Officeworks.’

While this is true, I find that I’m very picky about things in a seemingly Sheldon-esque way. I’ve handled and tested far too many mice than is normal until last weekend when, in sheer frustration, I bought the cheapest mouse I could find. Simply for the convenience of actually having something useable, but not wanting to spend a lot on something I’m not completely happy with.

It does the job sufficiently well, but the feel of it… It’s the oddest shape and makes me feel like I need to merge my fingers into an alien-looking talon.

So, how picky are you when it comes to your mice? Will any ol’ thing do, or do you test and feel as many as possible before diving in?

Money, money, money

Guess what? Don't worry, I'm going to tell you anyway. It's my birthday on Saturday (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). No idea what I'm going to do though. I'm not one for big gatherings of people. Especially if the gathering is because of me. But (yes, I did just start a sentence with a preposition) that's not what made me bring up my birthday. It's because I have stuck inside my head that I have to buy a lotto ticket for Saturday's draw. "Why?" you ask. Because my mother keeps reminding me that there's going to be a huge jackpot on that day. I don't remember how much it is, only that if I were the single winner, I would be beyond ecstatic and immediately set about organising a world trip.


Like most people I've occasionally thought about how nice it would be to win lotto/powerball/obscenely huge amounts of cash and already spent most of it in my mind, but it seems to me that my mother is obsessed about trying to win some sort of jackpot. Whenever there's a large jackpot coming up, she says to me, "Don't forget to get your entry!"


To me, sure, it'd be nice and if I remember to buy a ticket, then whatever. It's not going to bother me if I don't buy one.


Anyway, how would you spend your winnings if you won some huge lotto jackpot? What I'd do is;

• Buy my house. Not just any house, but the one I'm renting now. We quite like it here.
  
• Buy a car. Yes, I know I said I'm liking not having a car, but when I want to buy shelves at IKEA, I kind of need to bring it home in something.
  
• World trip! There's so many places I want to see. I doubt that I'd do it all in one go though. Oh, and I'd have to send mum over to see her sister.
  
• Buy mum her own place to live. She lost her house last year and is currently in a sticky predicament.
  
• After the big things, there's the little things. Like buy some new clothes, replace my old, worn out bookshelves, replace my ancient desktop. The rest would probably go into savings and a trust fund for my daughter.

I'd still probably keep my job though. Funny as it may sound, seeing as I keep hearing/seeing people complain about their jobs, I love my job. Would you continue working, or would it be an ecstatic 'SEE YA LATER!'?

What's your calling?

A few lunch breaks ago, one of our PAs had some questions for me. Now, what those questions were and what they related to I'm not entirely sure as she usually has quite a few. Probably either something to do with her mobile phone or her computer. After answering her, she said, "I think you've missed your calling."
What calling she had in mind, I don't know. And when did I miss it?


Sure I like helping people. Sure I'll answer as best I can or direct you to where you can find the answer, but what exactly kind of calling does that indicate? Sure I've thought about getting my Microsoft certificates before. Sure I've briefly thought about doing help desk, but I don't think that would mean I missed my calling.


For one thing, I've heard too many help desk stories. Yes there's the good ones, but it's the bad ones I worry about. I don't deal well with anger or criticism. If I went for the Microsoft certificates, then which one?


Further educataion has always baffled me. In high school, everyone else was planning what subjects they needed for what they wanted to do in life. Me? It kind of went like this; "Hmmm... ancient history sounds interesting. I'll do that. I like playing the keyboard, I'll do music. Ooo!! Woodwork! That sounds like fun!" And you can forget about me planning what university I wanted to attend and what courses I would do. In the end, I didn't finish high school. Sometimes I wish I had. Then I have a hot chocolate and feel all better.


Even now, I'm enrolled to do a Bachelor of Naturopathy. Which I like. Mostly. There's heaps of things I love learning about. Then there's the ones that make my head hurt and cause me to wonder why in blazes I enrolled in the first place.
Then there's the part of me that wants to go off and do some stunt driving courses and get into stunt driving.


In conclusion, for me, this whole 'your calling' business is completely nuts. They make it sound like there's one thing you should be doing, so you should stick with it. Personally, I'd rather go with the flow...

Besotted by Wednesdays 01-02-2012

Bringing you things that have me drunkenly infatuated. Or is it infatuatingly drunk? Either way, it's things and places I love. 

For (probably a long) while, some of the links may seem like old news. This is because I currently have a backlog of pure awesomeness to sort through.

This article places a large amount of blame on Google for not recognising geeky women, but it’s only because of the data they are getting. Follow the simple steps to state proudly, that you are a geeky woman!

If websites were superheroes, who would they be? College Humour have come up with a few ideas.

OK, this is a little late, but I was on holidays. Besides, don’t they say ‘It’s better late than never.’? A bunch of random trivia for National Trivia Day. I found this list to be a lot more random than others. Usually I’ve already heard of the so-called ‘things you didn’t know’. This time I’d be lucky if there are 10 I’ve already heard.

Another one from Mental Floss. I love them. This one brings back a lot of nostalgic feelings. Sounds that (mostly likely) your children have never heard.

Who doesn’t love typography? Well then, you can probably skip this one. For everyone else, RedBubble have found ten places where you can increase your typography skills.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of cooking lately. I mean, more than the usual steak & veges for dinner. Something about being in a new, slightly more organised kitchen I think. I usually like to make my own variation of a recipe I’ve come across, or something completely different like these two for an ‘Impossible Pie’.

(edit: link no longer works. Thankfully I saved the recipe)

Sending you back in time again is the ‘Restart Page’. How many do you recognise? Prefect for those times you miss the old Apple IIe starting up... or something like that.