Jan 25 - Another Dinner and Movie

  Work today was relatively fun.  The receptionist had the day off today, so my offsider and I were handling all of the phone calls and dings of the front desk bell today.  It's fun to do it every now and then, it's a break from routine and covers tasks I don't normally do so I tend to learn new things.  Despite the change of routine though, time seemed to stand still.  Maybe it was just because I was so looking forward to my Australia Day long weekend, but I could swear that it took six hours to get from 4:30pm to 5:30pm!
  When I finally got out of there, I raced home to clean up a bit before Mr Smart arrived.  I only just managed to get the dishwasher loaded and going and was wiping down the bench when he arrived.  We planned to have a restrained treat dinner tonight from Raju's Indian Restaurant.  We ordered just one entree to share and just one main, and instead of ordering rice or bread to go with it, we cooked our own quinoa instead.
  Quinoa worked really well as a substitute for rice.  It's lower GI than most rice (53) and was easy enough to cook in the microwave in my Starmaid Rice Cooker (25 minutes on power level 6 for my LG Microwave, stirring twice during cooking).  It has a funny kind of a smell when it's cooking, but we were pleased to find that once it was mixed in with the rich prawn malai sauce, it simply carried the characteristics of the dish without any trace of the cooking smell.  We tried mixing some with the remaining mint chutney and tamarind sauce and they both worked well too!
  After dinner I had to take a brief break in order to make broccoli salad for tomorrow's traditional Australia Day barbecue at Bertie and Tricky's place.  It's not a difficult salad but cutting the broccoli up into little pieces can take quite a long time.  The chopping up can take 40 minutes and the rest of the salad is completed 5 minutes after that.
  With that little task completed it was time to chill out on the couch with Baileys and milk on ice, a blankie on my legs, and a good movie on the screen.  Our movie choice followed on from our Psycho viewing of the night before and was even more enjoyable.  Once the movie was over, it was almost midnight!  We had planned to play Scrabble while I did the blog but that would've seen us up a lot later than midnight so I decided I could do the blog the following day (which I am!).

  Today's food was:

• Breakfast was a Cheesymite Scroll from Baker's Delight.
• Morning snack was a white-flesh nectarine and a kiwi-fruit with skin on.
• Lunch was a deluxe sushi pack and a salt & pepper calamari hand roll from Sushi Sushi with a little Japanese mayo and some soy sauce.
• Afternoon snack was a Pink Lady apple, cored and sliced.
• Dinner was a poppadum and a samosa with mint chutney and tamarind sauce followed by prawn malai with white quinoa.
• Dessert was 50ml of Baileys Mint Chocolate with milk and ice, followed by 50ml of Baileys Creme Caramel with milk and ice.

  As we got ready for bed, I encountered a bit of a dilemma.  I normally don't mind daddy-long-legs as they are wispy thin and harmless.  They leave me alone and I leave them alone.  However, when one gets to be large and close up they can be every bit as scary as other types of spider.  Imagine my shock and surprise when I reached for the toilet and found this nasty chappy sitting there.

  Luckily, there were other rolls of toilet paper handy so I used that instead (by the way, I didn't have the camera with me in there, I had to leave the room and come back to take the picture).  The dilemma was... kill or relocate?  In the end I opted for a frantic struggle to get him to the floor then employed a squish and flush maneuver.  Mr Smart, a kinder, gentler soul than I, proclaimed dismayed "But they're harmless and so easy to take outside!"  So which path would you have taken?
  Jess