Rainy Day Baking

There's something about grey clouds and rain falling that gets me firing up the oven and flicking through recipe books. 

Today it was a loaf and some rolls of grainy bread, and the CWA cookbook for a chocolate slice of some form sans eggs (I need to go shopping). Always an old faithful when I'm hankering for a slice or a cake to be whipped up in a hurry, the CWA ladies never disappoint. 

Glass of red finished up proceedings. 

Tourist Day

Today Lucky Phil and I played tourists in our city. 

It was fun.  We had a $100 budget and had to occupy ourselves, feed ourselves and get to where it was we were going and do what it was we wanted to do, all within that constraint.  Just as if we were travellers.

We started by catching the train to the Roma Street Parklands for a wander.  We've been talking about checking out the Parklands since we moved back 11 months ago.  Finally we got there. 

They were really pretty and well designed.  Plenty of space and quiet nooks for escaping the crowds.  I can see us returning with a picnic blanket, some cheese and bikkies, and a bottle of wine and plastic wine glasses (the park rules specify that you are allowed to decant your alcohol from glass bottles into plastic drinking vessels but you aren't allowed to actually drink from glass containers.  I can work with these stipulations!).

I was amazed by the frill necked lizard population - they are everywhere!!  I think we stopped counting at twenty when we were only half way round....

Just before we left we came across a tree snake on the walkway - well actually, another visitor pointed it out after we had walked passed it obliviously - but I couldn't stop the whole-body shake I had going on to take a photo.  I don't do snakes at all.  Plus, I don't need a photo of a snake in my camera roll to scare the bejeezus out of me when I next flick through my photos!

We then headed into the city via the Queen St Mall.  Stopped off for lunch outside City Hall and ended up on a tour of the clock tower at City Hall and then a wander through the Brisbane Museum on the third floor.  Who knew that existed, the Brisbane Museum?  Or the clock tower tour?  Best of all, FREE!!

Once we were museumed out, we kept on our track up the mall and joined the queue for a gelato cup (if people are queuing, it must be good right?).  We people watched while we devoured our little cup of sugary, chocolatey goodness - gee the world is full of interesting people .....

Across the William Jolly Bridge and into Southbank for some more people watching.  This time we caught the tail end of a wedding by the river.  Great day for it.  Watched people some more (and lots of kids rolling down grassy hillls - my skin is itching just thinking about it) and then found a bar for a beer and a wine on our way back to the train station.

And now we're back home - happy tired from a good day out and still too full of gelato to even think about eating anything for dinner.  Maybe later.

Definitely going to do a tourist day again - it was fun!

Suggestions for Curing Boredom in Husbands

All suggestions welcome.

Lucky Phil is bored.  Mind-numbingly, wife-annoyingly bored.

It's been that way for about four weeks now and it's killing me!

I feel like mum over school holidays when we were kids, exasperatedly throwing her hands in the air after the fourteenth "I'm boooooorrrrreeeeedddd.  What can I doooooo?" for the morning.  Sheesh!!! 

I keep making suggestions, you know like 'mow the lawn', 'clean the car', but they're not considered appropriate or worthy enough to peel oneself from the lounge and do something.

I have a suspicion that it's because I've made the suggestions that they're discounted in the great scheme of things.  When someone else threw the idea of 'detailing the car' out there, well, consider this afternoon's activity planned....!

I give up.  Here's hopinng we get into our new shop soon now....

On the cusp....

And just like that it's 2014.  And not just 2014 but two whole months into 2014!  Where have I been?!  What have I been doing?! Why on earth has it blown out to four months since I last stopped by?!?!

Short answer - out there, not much, couldn't begin to explain.

I don't know where to begin - I had such high hopes for myself in my last post that I was back into the swing of things, life was going great-guns and I was queen of it all.  And yet here I am, end of February of the following year and not a post in between.  Sheesh.

 

So Christmas has been and gone.  As has New Years.  Australia Day.  Valentine's Day.  Lucky Phil's birthday.  All been and gone, and some time ago too.  In the midst of all that we sold a business and are now waiting patiently (oh so patiently) for the purchase of the next one to finalise (please please please be soon!!!).  

All in all it's now been 6 weeks since we stepped into unemployment - fun at first but the novelty wore off (for some of us) at the end of week 3.  Lucky Phil has been driving me insane since then.  I have plenty of things to keep me occupied - sewing, cross-stitch, baking..... Lucky Phil's current interests lie in the vicinity of drinking beer and gambling. Expensive habits for the non-income-earning person.

We're hopeful that the end of next week will see us gainfully employed again.  Fingers crossed because I'm not sure how much more of the stress and underlying anxiety I can take.  The bills haven't stopped coming in just because we're not working!

We have made the most of our time off together - dinners out, day trips up the coast, visits to family, walks on the beach and the general hanging around the unit annoying each other with the same questions asked over and over again ('what can we do?'  'what do you want to do?' 'what do you want to do?'  'I'm hungry.  What's for lunch?' 'what's for dinner?').  Considering we only had two days off together in the previous 9 months, this has been blissful and I'm not complaining too much at all!

I'm now just waiting for a magical email response in the next few days telling us Thunderbirds are Go!  Come on now....!!!