just once

I'd like to eat a meal and not find one of my hairs in it.

choux and chewbacca

Another entry in my extended research into procrastination.

Today JC came round to help my bake my own birthday cake. But not just any cake, croquembouche (french for 'crack in the mouth'. Not crack as in amphetamines sold in dodgy neighbourhoods, crack the verb, as in I cracked my favourite coffee cup). This was to be my first ever croquembouche.

Croquembouche is choux pastry, filled with custard (ours was chocolate) and then built into a conical shape around a metal mould, and held together with hard toffee, which is also spun around the resulting pyramid to make think web of strung toffee.

It was much easier than I thought (partly due to the gift of new, and expensive piping bags) and we only ended up with third degree burns to 75% of our bodies from the toffee.


We had about six pastries each before I went door knocking the neighbours with kids to off load the rest. I have hurt my jaw from all the toffee and am going to have to go an lie down in a minute, such is the sugar crash currently going on in my endocrine system.

However in a short web browse before my nap, I checked some emails and some new posts. Garrett at Vanilla Garlic who has also had a recent birthday was talking about the prices of cookware in some store I am not familiar with. Googling it to find out what he was talking about I found these:


I think it is fair to say that my life will never be complete until I own a set of Star Wars pancake moulds.

Also, France drew with Uruguay in the first set of Group A matches early this morning. All matches were draws. I got up early to watch France play. Found the game to be dreary beyond words and went back to bed. We're up against Mexico next I think. Hopefully this will be a better match.

feet and butter

Today is a good day. A remarkably good day. It is cold and misty, the way I like it. But, still, the sun is shining a way that indicates that the washing in the machine may end up dry today.
And in the machine? Socks. Well, other things too, but predominantly socks. It seems that every time I lift up something in my house: a book, the saucepan I like to cook pasta in, one of the cats. There's a sock. Now, I'm not the greatest housekeeper in the world. I know everyone says that, but I really mean it. Seriously - I live on my own. I don't have to keep the house clean for children, or husbands, or visiting literati. I only have to keep the house clean for me. And most of the time I couldn't be fucked. I'd much rather read a book, or cook pasta, or sit with the cats. But the sock conundrum probably can't be all down to me. Can it?

OK, part of my disinterest in domesticity is now well placed with my penchant for footwear. I wish my camera was working, and then I could show evidence for this. Currently on the floors in my house are twelve pairs of shoes. And that doesn't include the pair on my feet. So it would come to reason that I would have many socks. But so many? But, undeniably the evidence is there. A washing machine full of socks, and a Persian rug in the lounge where the only thing obscuring the cat hair is the shoes. But today at least the socks will be dry.

Another reason today is a good day? I am supposed to be curbing my spending now that I have joined the ranks of the part time employed. More frugality, less indulgence. Ba-bowh. Today I spent the same amount as you would spend on a good steak on butter. French butter. Methode traditionnelle butter.

And to put the butter on? As close to proper French baguette as you're going to get in Adelaide. With creamy, rich, lush to die for French butter on it, so that the softness of the bread spreads the wonderful feel of the butter over every inch of your mouth.

Dreamy.

Today is a day of dreams. It's a day when I can dream that my thesis is not in as bad a shape as I fear it is (it's not the whole thesis. Just the research design. OK, yes I know that's the whole thesis, but give me this dreamy day). It's a day when I can dream of lying in bed all day listening to rain on the roof. It's a day when I can dream of Greek islands, and Czech castles. Of long, luxurious lunches with my favourite people and drinking pinot noir around crackling camp fires in my sleeping bag. It's a day when life feels like it's going to be OK forever.

Not bad, really.

progress

On Thursday I had a meeting with my supervisor. Actually I had a meeting with the whole academic staff as they discussed who would be my supervisor, who would be the internal examiner (this person will have hot coffee on his desk for the rest of the year!) and who will be the secondary supervisor. I then had a 90 minutes conversation with my secondary supervisor about what is wrong with my paper while my primary supervisor sat by silently.

Now, this is no comment on my supervisor, he is probably the most academically inclined member of the staff. However the secondary one is by far the most powerful and opinionated member of staff, and the one I know the best. But after that 90 minutes I now feel I have much better handle on where the whole project is going, and have managed to re-write a large amount of material (some on screen, some in my head), to pull the whole thing together.

And I've decided I need to go on a road trip. I mean study trip. To Melbourne. Which will involve lots of serious study stuff and not so much shopping, and certainly not dinner at MoVida. I am currently obsessed with the idea of dinner at MoVida. I do seriously like Melbourne. But today I could easily be there. It's the Saturday of the first of my new three day weekend structure. It's cold. It's wet. I have what must be my twentieth cup of tea in front of me, and I've just had lunch of very hot soup followed by a cheese kransky rolled in cheese and tomato pide. There are three cats spread throughout the house, fast asleep in curls of the duvet, or the rug on the couch. Carefully dispersed like an alcoholic stashes bottles, so that I can always find an ear to scratch or a paw to kiss. Still in my pyjamas at 3.30 in the afternoon I am facing the harsh reality of having to take off my bed socks so I can wash my hair before venturing out for dinner tonight.

It's like a little piece of heaven. I don't think anything could possibly make me much happier now. Unless you volunteered to come around and finish the thesis for me? That's OK, I knew it was a long shot anyhoo.

sometimes they make it so hard

If you've read more this blog more than three times is means at least one of two things:

1. You've been reading this blog for about two years, because I think it's taken me two years to put up the last three posts.

2. You'll know that I'm a fan of Chris at A Free Man.

And Chris has written recently about a lack of blogging time. I'm with you there sister... brother, I mean brother!!!! Not only does my lack of blogging time mean that I don't have time to blog (obviously), but it largely also* means that my life is filled with things that make finding saucy little vignettes about which to blog difficult. In the last six months or so, my life has been filled with:

• pointlessly stupid curriculum renewal projects
• large conferences
• work restructures
• thesis procrastination
  
• writing conference papers (for a different conference to the one in dot point two)
  
• going on holiday

Obviously the last dot point, and even the one before were covered in my last post. I could write more about the holiday, I guess, but I'm notoriously crap at talking about my holidays, and hence the alternative blog full of pictures, to allow me to get out of talking to anyone about my holiday - I figure it's over and I need to move on and others don't really care they're just asking to be polite. Let's save both of us, I figure.

One piece of good news is that I will very, very shortly be a part time employee. Yes, one of the very few benefits of working in a tertiary institution is that they feel you not failing your thesis through lack of dedicated time is something they want to be involved in. So very soon Friday will be my research day (note: not my hanging out with friends, going shopping, or sitting in pubs drinking pints day. It is a research day). So hopefully this will make my life a little less stressful, and I will not only have time to blog, but will have time to do things to blog about (Sunday will now be my fun day. Or my sleep until noon day - which ever one takes my fancy on a week by week basis).

But for this post, I need to vent. Part of my job is supervision. This means approving leave, making sure that pays are run correctly, setting broad directions for the team I supervise, and telling them off when they've fucked up. If I did the last bit properly, it would basically be all I do. And as some of the other pressures at work have lessened off, I'm trying to be a better supervisor, so I got each member of my bedraggled team in and had an informal 'chat' with each of them.

One of the things about working where I do is that if I want to do a certain level of work - and I do - supervision is something that is very hard to avoid. And I don't like it, and I'm not very good at it. Why can't everyone just get on with it and do things properly so that I can concentrate on the bits of my job I like. Yes, despite what you may have gleaned from these ramblings, there are bits of my job that I do like.

On the whole these went better than I thought. I was able to tell people that I wasn't happy with their work in a nice, constructive way. Started each conversation with some good things, before I went to the bad (never sure which is the right way to do this, ie to start or finish with the bad). Even my bête noire took things well, and she was the one I had to tell off in no uncertain terms for stupid, stupid behaviour.

And then the email arrives (on her day off), saying things like 'I know what I did was wrong, but so-and-so is much worse', and 'I haven't complained about it before by Miss X does this, that and the next thing', and 'I have never liked Jo Bloggs'. etc.

sigh

sometimes people make things so hard.

Do you supervise this sort of behaviour? If so, I would love advice.

If you own a cross bow, I would love to borrow it.

On the upside, it's getting cold and frosty. This means one thing: polenta. Sometimes when the chips are down, a big bowl of creamy, cheesy cornmeal topped with roasted tomatoes and field mushrooms stuffed with garlic and butter can make everything better again.


*apologies for the split infinitive

konichiwa

Greetings all from Kyoto, upon my return from the land of the rising sun. After three weeks away from the office I am now returned, in need of a shower and starving. Here's the synopsis.

Brisbane
Visited with my bro and the erstwhile Dr Wallis. Brisbane is hot. Real hot. And not just in a groovy way, sweat was the name of the game. Ate well (thanks Dr W), saw some funky stuff at the Museum of Queensland, the Art Gallery of Queensland and the Queensland Maritime Museum.

The lovely brother also drove me up to the Sunshine Coast so that we could visit Australia Zoo. I was sooooo excited. And later in the day I was sooooo disappointed. Expensive. Naff. An Irwin self promotion vehicle. Although I did see Bindi Irwin feeding a crocodile on stage. The whole audience was willing the animal to take her. Unfortunately we were disappointed. Again. I must admit the crocodile show was good, although brief (too much plugging of young Bindi's new straight to video movie).

The Elephant enclosure was also good. Other than that it was rather dull, very sticky and the food was horribly overpriced and near inedible - how somewhere that plugs itself as a conservation centre could serve such obviously battery reared, unhappy, chemical riddled chicken at its restaurant is beyond me. Bleaaagggh.

Townsville
Far North Queensland-ahoy! Even more sticky, but beautifully air conditioned! Went to a wonderful predators of the deep show at Reef HQ, the local aquarium, and enjoyed some great coffee. The conference was hit and miss. Some interesting sessions, some really boring sessions, some totally inspirational sessions. However on the whole it just seemed to be an excuse for people to catch up with people they flirted with at the last conference, not great professional networking going on, and frankly I'm too old and grumpy for it, so I was quite happy to leave the closing banquet early (the food was ho-hum, but I'm sure there is no way to make it otherwise when you're feeding that number of people, lunches were great tho). However on leaving the banquet I was unable to find my left contact lens.

Japan
... which meant on the flights to Japan my eye was red and angry and horribly weepy (probably from me sticking my finger in it ever ten seconds trying to find the lens. Which, by the way, never appeared).

Japan was.... strange. Extraordinarily quiet. Extraordinarily organised. And clean. And punctual. And totally utterly beautiful at every turn. But I got the feeling that not many of them are very good at making their own decisions.

I could have added pictures here, but I have created the 'blog with the worst name ever'. The best are here for friends and family. And you're my friend, so feel free to browse:

cherryblossomsunrise.blogspot.com

pictures executed

I've had some questions regrading the pictures in the post below. They were for a paper I was presenting at a conference in Queensland. My memory stick is buggered and I needed to access the pictures at work, and this was a good way to get them there.


My session was yesterday, and I think the presentation went well and seem to be well received too. Now in Brisbane airport on the way to Japan. Many, many more pictures on my return, I suspect.