Lunar eclipse

It was the lunar eclipse a couple of days ago on Tuesday. It was the 1st time that we in eastern Aust have been able to see in a little while, so it garnered a bit of interest. I tried taking some photos but even with a steady hand & the nite mode it didn't really turn out good. It also never turned red as it promised to do, just a very faint hazy livery colour. If you see red lunar eclipse, all I can say is PHOTOSHOPPED!! Hee, no, they just have much better cameras then my 7MP... sigh...

Meanwhile, have been playing with SMH's APEC dress-up. I love dress-up, hee hee hee :D

Sick as a cat

There's a killer flu 'epidemic' (& I use the term loosely) running around at the moment. So far about 10 people have died. I, myself, picked up some virus lunch time yesterday & am now sick as a cat (I like dogs & not cats, ergo, sick as a 'cat'). My sneezing fit has stopped after some incessant pill-popping (alas, Herron only). Must stop by supermarket to get some Strepsils to quell the sore throat (the Vicks is simply not doing its trick) & the germs. Head is splitting. Argh.... Having distant relos staying with you doesn't help either, particularly if they have a couple of rather annoying kids. I mean, under 'normal' circumstances I have pretty low tolerance for children in any case, so when they are actually staying with you, plus the fact that they run up & down the stairs 10 million times a day, fling around bean bags, leave toys all over the place... That's just the Ace of Spade in my deck of Annoyance. Luckily they're being sent out to the snow for 2 nights from tonight & not return until Sunday night (thank God! A whole wkend of peace & quiet!) & then gone again on farm stay from monday to wednesday (hooray!) I can take my time looking up my tutoring courses, go watch the Simpsons Movie on GU weekly special, sleep in, watch Swans beat the Lions, look up travel info ......

Great use of public funds

Was stuck in traffic for a little while this morning because some truck spilled gravel along our main road so they closed 1 side of the road (2 lanes) & have two-way on my side of the 2 lanes instead. As we drove by we saw 5 police (men & women, mostly young-ish) standing around with their arms crossed, some leaning on the 1 police car that's right next to them, while 1 (yes ONE!) worker in fluro-yellow vest swept the dumped gravel to get cleared out. No surprise it took them forever to clean up that mess (about a 30-40m stretch of road) - I stopped listening to the radio when I got out of the car & didn't hear any progress afterwards, yet it was still congested (ie, cleaning up) about 1/2 hour after we drove past. What plumb job being a police in my area is - just standing around & watch others work. What a great use of public funds! No pics as I'm still stuck in the 'no camera on phone' age.

Meanwhile, bought some 'expendable' (as various websites have suggested) feeder fish on my way home to put some movements in the tank. So far I think all of them have survived (kinda hard to count with them being so small (1-2cm) & hiding behind fake plants & all).

Simpsonised!

I was listening to the radio yesterday & they were doing a review of the Simpsons Movie. At the very end they alluded to a website (simpsonizeme.com) that, if you upload a pic of urself you can have urself drawn as a Simpsons character! So, here's me Simpsonised!

Super busy at work so my studying have suffered a little, yet again. Will definitely have to start on the intro tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I finally got those yabbies last Thursday & they (3 of them) now live happily in the tv-quarium, getting fed (so far) bloodworms every 2-3 days. The websites that I found also said potatoes & zucchini so I'd have to dump those in also. I can't actually put any fish in because (unbeknowst to me before hand) that yabbies & fish can't go together! There goes my idea of having some pretty goldfishes swimming around in that tank again! Will try & find other suitable co-inhabitants but so far I only saw freshwater crabs in 1 store & they're $17 ea! They ain't even the size of my Powerade bottle cap!

Cooking Papa

Recently I had my 20-something-th birthday. Those who know me knows that I am quite good at spending $$ (both in terms of the amount I spend as well as the types of 'bargains' that I accumulate) and so it would be no surprise that I took full advantage of 'my own birthday' as an excuse to buy myself a little som'in' som'in'. I ended up buying this pasta machine after my quadtriple tut this past Tuesday. I didn't have chance to play with it until tonight because I was working hard at work. There was not the usual Friday nite family dinner tonite so I decided to pull the thing out & play with it. It (the instructions) looked simple enough and after a little cleaning the machine was ready for use. Being very new to this pasta making business it was kinda hard for me to judge exactly how moist/dry the dough should be, so getting the kneading right along took me more than an hour! Then there was getting the flattening part right. I tried pressing it this way & then perpendicularly (is that even a word?) & keep swapping but still it didn't resemble a 'regular shape' which is what the instructions said. Took me quite a few tries (& a couple more hours) before finally finishing the 1st batch using the fettucini extension. I'm pretty sure I got the proportions right at 250g & 1/2 glass of water (I guess taking the water option over the egg option means that it's not technically pasta but just noodles...) for 3 ppl, yet I resulted in this HUGE batch that looks like it couple easier feed 5 or 6! So I lowered the 'dosage' & made a second batch, 1) so I could try out the angel hair extension, & 2) to have something for tomorrow's lunch (fettu is for tomoro's dinner :P). I cut it down to 200g & some water. Didn't knead extensively this time round so the entire batch only took an hr & a half! If that rate of 'improvement' is anything to go by, technically I can be making batches of pasta in NO TIME AT ALL!! But back to reality, alas that won't be the case. It's good arm exercise, but simply too time consuming. let's save it for special occasions only...

OK, so the link to pics on Facebook doesn't work. It's gone.