Feb 15 - A Full Day Indeed

  Mr Smart rose early and I followed.  I had a shower and got into my exercise gear then set about making breakfast!  I had promised to make eggs with Hollandaise sauce but I got out of learning to make Hollandaise by explaining exactly how much butter and egg yolk it contained.  I'm trying to stay a little more on track today and so is Mr Smart.  I still made the scrambled eggs though, five eggs and some milk between the two of us, served on top of toasted multigrain English muffins.  I also had a glass of approximately 350ml of orange juice.
  Once we were fed I went back to the kitchen and commenced picnic lunch preparations.  I made up three Mission spinach and herb wraps for us to share for lunch.  I packed the wraps on an ice brick in the 6-Pack Esky along with some fresh fruit, then I packed a back pack with water, my camera and a small bag of nuts and off we headed off to Ferntree Gully National Park.
  The extensive car park at the Ferntree Gully National Park is nearly always chockers on weekends.  We thought that by going on a Friday we could avoid the rush of mad joggers... no such luck!  Although it was noticeably less crowded in the car park than a weekend, it was still nearly full the whole way up.  I jokingly exclaimed "Who are all these people and why are they not at work?"  I guess there are a lot more people working flexible hours these days.
  Today we tackled the Lyrebird Track.  It's a slightly longer walk than the thousand steps but it starts and ends from the same spots so you do the elevation of around 400m in a greater distance.  Theoretically that means it should be less steep but as I heaved for breath on the way up I can't say I noticed it so much.  I do think that overall it was slightly easier.  I found the walk back down a doddle compared to the trip up.  We completed our 3.6km round trip in just one hour and twenty minutes!  As usual, Mr Smart kept my spirits up with his constant white lies that 'I'm sure the end is just up around that corner'.

Here we go!

I am just going to hide in here and rest a while.

That wasn't so bad!

  By the time we returned to the car it was only just past 11am so we decided to eat a few nuts to tide ourselves over and head home to eat our picnic in the cool of my airconditioned lounge room.  Mr Smart passed me four Brazil nuts and four almonds as I drove us home.  We arrived home, jelly-legged, hot, and kicked off our sneakers.  It being our Valentine's Day date, we decided to chuck on a romantic movie to watch (Wall-E) and settled in on the couch to eat our picnic.
  I unpacked the three wraps and cut each one in half as it was required.  The first contained cos lettuce and a mix of avocado, one dessertspoon of Heinz Light Salad Cream, and ten diced cooked prawns.  The second contained 40g Philedelphia extra light cream cheese, baby spinach, 120g smoked salmon and cucumber slices.  The third contained Lemnos marinated Persian feta, chargrilled capsicum, chargrilled eggplant, marinated mushrooms and sundried tomato strips.  After that I ate a small just ripe banana and a pluot and had a can of Pepsi Max.

 

  Towards the end of the movie Gub arrived home.  She'd driven home early for the weekend to avoid the Friday night traffic.  She said 'Hi' and the disappeared off into her room to continue working while we finished our movie.  After the movie, despite my very best pouting efforts, Mr Smart decided to head home himself, also to avoid the Friday night traffic.
  I brought in the dry load of sheets and hung out a new load of laundry.  It was about 4pm by this time and holy hell did it get hot out there!  I am so glad we got the walk done relatively early because if it had been that hot then I don't think I'd have survived.
  As it was, I found myself once again battling mild dehydration, despite having consumed at least a litre of water on the walk and another since arriving home.  I remember last time I felt dehydrated, Granny C reminded me that you also lose salt when you do a lot of sweating, and reflecting on what I'd eaten, perhaps the minute amount of salt on my eggs this morning was not sufficient, so I grabbed a small bowl (12g) of Parker's baked mini pretzels to snack on.  It seemed to make a positive difference.
  Gub had to do a lot of work to do on her laptop tonight so we made a quick grocery run to Brandon Park and grabbed veggies, dips and antipasto bits and pieces.  We came back and made up a couple of plates: garlic Afghan bread, rare roast beef, pastrami, double-smoked ham, hot twiggy sticks, kabana, crunchy sprouts and mixed tomatoes; semi-dried tomatoes, chargrilled capsicum, yellow pepper sticks, snow peas, cucumber sticks, carrot sticks, kalamata olives and marinated mushrooms; Black Swan skinny capsicum dip, Wattle Valley Chunky chilli red dip, Yumi's hommus and Yumi's falefal.

  We moved our food and our laptops into the lounge and flicked on an old favourite, The Slipper and The Rose.  It's a wonderful telling of the Cinderella story, made in 1976, set in the fictional kingdom of Euphrania starring Richard Chamberlain and Gemma Craven.  It's a wonderful film, just the right balance of romance, drama, comedy and song.  Between her work, and my blogging, we still managed to sing a long with all our favourite songs.
  Gub was still plodding along when the movie finished so we've just put on Jimmy Carr Live (2004) and grabbed a couple of cold Tim Tams each from the fridge for dessert.  And with that, I shall leave you for the evening.  Have a lovely weekend everybody.
  Jess

PS: Thank you Mr Smart for taking and providing the three photos of me on the walk!