May 14 - I Love My Work, They Give Me Money!!

  Today the Commonwealth bank handed out a significant reward to all employees, big and small, including all wholly owned subsidiaries like the one I work for.  It was so significant in fact that it made the Australian Financial Review! Every employee was rewarded with a $250 prepaid Mastercard.  Woohoo!  Click here to read a bit more about it if you feel inclined.  I have no idea yet what I'm going to spend mine on.  Special dinner, night away, part payment on a ridiculously expensive but oh so gorgeous corset?  Who knows!  But it is certainly fun thinking about it.  I'm much better at thinking spending out these days.  Money doesn't burn quite as brightly in my pockets now that deep thought is the insulation.


  I had a good catch up with my outgoing boss today.  I say outgoing as she is temporarily replacing a person on maternity leave who has now announced that they are coming back early.  I'm going to miss her a lot.  We have a lot in common and she's very supportive and very easy to talk to.  It's been good to have a friend at work to help me through my adjustment to the new shopping centre.  I hope she's going to be happy wherever she goes next.  Anyway, the catch up was good and she offered up some assistance and ways I could get help which I hadn't considered but seemed to be good ideas.  I just hope the person coming back is as supportive and helpful.
  I worked late again tonight, just two more hours, which I will claw back later in the week by leaving an hour early on Wednesday and Friday.  Tonight I was doing my first pass of supplier statement reconciliations.  What's that? I hear you cry, on the edge of your seats for what is no doubt a fascinating process.  Supplier reconciliations are when a supplier sends you a statement listing all the invoices for purchases you've made up to a certain point in time (usually the end of every month) and you check them off against the system to see if everything has been paid or not.  This is all I do on the first pass and I went right through from A to Z.  The second pass I shall do some of tomorrow but it involves chasing up everything you haven't paid.  Thrilling, I know.
  As thrilling as that particular task is, by the end of it my desk was cleaner and I felt like I was moving in the right direction, even if it's never fast enough.  As soon as I was finished work I headed home to work on the blogs missing from last week!
  
Tuesday's food was:

• Breakfast was a 35g Carman's dark choc, blueberry and almond muesli bar and a 45g Carman's apricot and almond muesli bar.
• Morning snack was a dried pear half, a dried peach half and a 40g packet of Grain Waves sour cream and chive chips.
• Lunch was a 300g red Thai chicken soup with a toasted wholemeal English muffin spread with 17.5g of The Laughing Cow cheese spread.
• Dinner was a 200g pumpkin and parmesan mini quiche heated up in the microwave and an Imperial mandarin.

  No more extra time at work for me this week!  Mr Smart is going to stay over tomorrow and Thursday nights so I'm finishing on time, if not slightly early the next couple of nights.
  Jess

May 13 - Work Work Work

  It's official, Mr Smart is psychic.  Last night as he crawled into bed, Liverpool and Fulham were at one all and he casually announced that Liverpool would win 3-1.  I woke up this morning to find him gleefully pulling up the highlights for Liverpool's 3-1 victory.  If only he'd been psychic enough to lay money on it!
  Pizza Cat has been very good when I've been over lately.  She's been allowed to stay in the bedroom but she's maybe now better off being referred to as Paper Cat, since Mr Smart and I are no longer having takeaway pizza so there are no pizza boxes left for her to sit on.  She seems to like the paper box at any rate and looks super sweet curled up on it.
  I left late, just before 9am, and had a nice drive in to work.  I really enjoy having a flexible start time.  I hate being late so I've found that making sure I have work flexibility is a great way to relieve that stress.  As long as I'm there between 7am and 10am, I'm on time.
  Today was a very busy day at work, the billing deadline, so that is pretty much all I did all day.  I knew there were other things I had to be getting done though, so I did a couple of hours of extra time to get invoices moving along for a particular supplier.  I really hate paying people late, but when I get snowed under sometimes there are delays in process the more difficult invoices.
  I left work just before 9pm, which some might say is a fraction too late but to me that's only two hours extra.  See I started just before 10am, which means my official finish time would be 6:30pm.  If I stay late I take a half hour dinner break at my official finish time before going on, so it's not really that much extra work if you think about it that way, plus, it's very productive working when there is no one else around to interrupt you.  It does have the drawback though that there is no one to ask questions of if you get stuck!

Monday's food was:

• Breakfast was Uncle Tobys berry-flavoured instant oats and a Nespresso Dulsão do Brasil pod coffee.
• Morning snack was a 30g serve of fruit and nut sesame snaps and one dried peach half.
• Lunch was a 300g creamy pumpkin soup with a toasted wholemeal English muffin spread with 17.5g of The Laughing Cow cheese spread.
• Dinner was Breadtop!  Clockwise from the top-left, a pineapple coconut bun, a barbecue pork bun, a spicy chicken bun and a sausage bun.

  I am of course, still a little bit behind on the blog (seeing as it is now Sunday!) but I'm doing my best to catch up.  Life seems to be getting busier and busier!  I am definitely looking forward to my upcoming holiday but it's still eight weeks away!  I will just have to content myself with all the lovely time in lieu I will have accrued by the time I get through end of financial year...
  Jess

May 12 - A Quiet Autumn Day

  A pretty lazy day today.  I got up at lunch time, had a long shower and got on with chores and some blogging.  In between taking laundry in and laundry out I paused to take some photos of the autumn splendour on my back lawn.

  I didn't eat much during the day and was wondering what I might have for dinner while I chatted to Mr Smart online.  He suggested that perhaps I might like to cpme and keep him company while he studied, and perhaps I might like to pick up Lamb's for dinner on my way.  It wasn't planned and it meant packing an overnight bag unexpectedly but it was nice to get to see Mr Smart for an extra night.
  I got to Lamb's and thought their lamb is very good, and very tempting, for the second time in a row it was the moussaka I was craving.  Mr Smart and I ate dinner with an episode of Community and then went on to study and blog until quite late.

Sunday's food was:

• Breakfast at lunch time was Uncle Tobys creamy honey flavoured oats and a navel orange.
• Dinner was moussaka, pita bread with a little gyros lamb, tzatziki and salad.
• Dessert was a lady finger.

  Well I blogged and I blogged and I blogged but I still only made it up to Wednesday in the back log.  And now this one is being written on Thursday!  I'm catching up, but very slowly!
  Jess

May 11 - More Trekkie Time

  I awoke on Saturday morning, to the ramifications of a lack of planning the night before.  I still had my period but owing to a complete lack of luggage, I was unprepared for the realities of the new day.  Luckily, stepping into serious boyfriend territory was the ever supportive Mr Smart, who went down to the shops and bought a supply of the required items that I could keep at his place.  When he got back, he also suggested a few more items I might like to have there to save carting them back and forth since I'm staying there a bit more regularly these days.
  Mr Smart's plan for the day saw a lot of study getting done but when I indicated that I could just catch the train home again, he made a suggestion that I could work on my blogs on his laptop while he studied and then we'd be able to do something together in the evening.  I had nothing else on the agenda beyond boring old housework, but that can always wait.  So that was that.  Mr Smart flicked on the first of the Star Trek reboot movies, which I hadn't yet seen, and I pretended to blog while watching it intently.  It was a rather good story and I was impressed with the casting.
  We paused our various activities at lunch for a very yummy home cooked meal.  Mr Smart is a big fan of pork spare ribs, and armed with the knowledge that no matter what happens he is not capable of making the worst ribs in Australia, he has been experimenting with cooking them himself.  Today's experiment, I'm pleased to say, was really delicious.  He still wasn't completely happy though, he won't be until the meat is so tender it falls from the bone.  All I can do of course is be supportive and offer to taste every batch he makes to assist in the development process!
  After lunch we returned to blogging and study, Pizza Cat joining on and off in search of pats and scratches.  Mr Smart put on Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, one of the original movies that I also hadn't seen. As the day went on we wondered about what we might do in the evening, Mr Smart mooted the idea of going to see Star Trek: Into Darkness at the movies.  I can't help but think that perhaps that was his plan all along!  At any rate, it sounded like a fun idea to me and I started looking online for where and when.
  Coincidentally, I mentioned our plans to TwoWrongs while playing a game of Words With Friends and it turned out he was thinking of seeing it as well, so we invited him along to enjoy it with us.  We all agreed to meet at Victoria Gardens and I organised the tickets online so that we would be sure of getting the best possible seats (middle row of the back section of seating, middle of the aisle).

  We headed off at about 6pm to grab some dinner before the movie.  On the way down I saw a sight I'd not seen in years, the friendly neon of the Skipping Girl Vinegar sign.  Mr Smart told me that it used to be a very regular feature in his life when he had lived in the area.  Being from the other side of town, the regular neon icon in my life was the Nylex clock which seems to have been broken for an age now, or maybe I'm just never facing it at night.
  We got to Victoria Gardens in plenty of time and headed in to see what the dining options were.  What they were, was limited.  McDonalds and KFC - nope and nope, and the only other option was a place called Cafe Krifi and TwoWrongs was waiting out the front.
  I introduced the boys and we went inside and got seated at a nice comfy table under low fired heat lamps.  Sometimes you get stung by eateries that have a captive customer base, but this place was actually pretty nice.  A little on the pricier side maybe, but good food served pretty promptly.  I definitely enjoyed my burger and eggplant chips!  It normally comes with potato chips, but as I've said in the last few days, chips are just becoming a problem again, so I switched them out for the eggplant chips instead.  Yummy!
  There was good conversation and laughs throughout dinner, though I felt a bit out of it at times.  The trouble with putting two techies in a small space is that they have a tendency to speak an entirely different language at times.  It's the price I pay for free tech support I suppose (teeheehee, they will no doubt find ways of punishing me for that comment).
  After dinner we headed up to the cinema where a giant minion statue heralded the coming of Despicable Me 2 in July this year.  I'm really looking forward to that one!  Having just eaten Mr Smart and I didn't grab any snacks, but TwoWrongs had to go and grab a choc top.  Then we were in and seated and off the movie went!
  I don't want to give too much of a critique as it seems that Star Trek has become very popular this incarnation and I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but needless to say, people who've seen the original movies will experience the movie slightly differently from people who haven't.  I definitely enjoyed myself but I did like the first of the reboots better.  I'll leave it at that.
  After the movie Mr Smart left to head home, ready for more study and essay writing in the morning, and TwoWrongs drove me home and we decided to watch another movie from my list.  I have owned Withnail & I on DVD for about ten years, but had never watched it.  I love Richard E Grant, I think he's a brilliant actor, which is why I bought it originally, but it's definitely a film for a particular audience.  Luckily for me TwoWrongs was already a huge fan of the movie so we grabbed cups of tea and the remainder of a block of chocolate and enjoyed the film.

  Saturday's food was:

• Delicious home-made slow-cooked pork spare ribs with barbecue sauce and salad.
• The Cafe Krifi original deli burger: A prime meat pattie, tasty cheese, beetroot, tomato, lettuce, caramelised onions and tomato relish, served with eggplant chips and minted yoghurt.
• Dessert was a cup of black tea, Ceylon orange pekoe, with five squares of Haigh's dark chocolate with cardamom.

  It was a good day all up, relaxing and I crossed four new movies off my list!  That's definitely an achievement of some sort.
  Jess

May 10 - Life & Love

  I got the end of financial year deadlines at work today, and promptly panicked.  My financial year ends four weeks from tomorrow.  I have four weeks to fix everything I can find and enter everything currently on or that crosses my desk.  I put all the deadlines in my Outlook calendar with appropriate reminder times and on my wall calendar highlighted in pink.  Normally the pink highlights are spread out across the A2 sheet.. in this case, the 7th and 11th of June are just huge scary pink blobs!
  In the afternoon, the horn sounded for drinkies, and I wandered down to join in the quizzes.  I was surprised to find people amazed that I knew what hydroponics was, I thought everyone knew that.  What surprised me was that most people seemed to know from sci-fi!  I did years of Agriculture/Horticulture in high school, it was my 'relax' class and I loved it.  We used to grow veggies hydroponically (and I'm pretty sure some of my class mates grew things at home hydroponically too).  I also surprised myself by knowing that François Mitterrand was the French Prime Minister succeeded by Jacques Chirac.  I was glad when work finished.  I had other things on my mind.  Something came up in the morning that begged immediate discussion with Mr Smart so without thinking about the practicalities of it I arranged to go to his place after work.  I didn't really stop thinking about it all day.  Anyway, I hadn't brought my car, or any sleepover things, but over I went all the same and we had a good long discussion and sorted out a few more things.  When we both felt talked out and comfortable with everything, we acknowledged hunger and headed out in search of food.
  We went to Noodle Kingdom and had a pleasant enough meal.  We even had a little entertainment in the form of two funny ladies about our age that sat at the table next to us.  You'd think they'd never eaten Chinese food before!  There was pointing and exclamations of "Oo, what's that?" and then they fussed with their order and got the wrong thing.  Their whole performance was pure comedy.  When the one seated next to me caught sight of our preserved egg I felt sure that another excited 'What's that!?' was heading my way, but she managed to contain herself.
  After an enjoyable dinner, we walked further on down High Street, and around the corner to the home of the Masterchefs.  Mr Masterchef was home alone with the kids so we joined him there to watch Game of Thrones, as I'd missed out on it on Wednesday!  After that we watched A Place Among The Pines which was without a doubt the crappiest slowest piece of shit film it's ever been my displeasure to watch.  I thought Drive was bad enough, but apparently Ryan Gosling is now type-cast as the quiet-moody-badass, kind of makes me want to vomit just a little.
  The Masterchef herself came home at the end and was showing me some cool Star Wars themed party items she was planning on making for the littlest Minichefs birthday party.  I like the Storm Trooper cupcakes particularly, and the Death Star piñata.  Not long after that though, it was time for Mr Smart and I to walk home, curl up and go to sleep.

  Friday's food was:

• Breakfast was a 45g Carman's Classic fruit and nut muesli bar and a 35g Carman's dark choc cranberry and almond muesli bar.
• Morning snack was an Imperial mandarin.
• Lunch was a 300g homestyle lamb and barley soup with a toasted wholemeal English muffin spread with 17.5g of The Laughing Cow cheese spread.
• Afternoon snack was a green nashi pear, cored and sliced.

• Dinner was at Noodle Kingdom in Preston and comprised of an entree of six chicken and prawn pan-fried dumplings and half a preserved egg and a main course of spicy salt and pepper squid and sizzling seafood.
• Dessert was a splash of McWilliam's Hanwood Estate Amontillado.

  It was a long and draining day, but it ended up ok so it was worth the extra efforts needed.  The important things in life are always worth putting a bit more hard work into.
  Jess

May 9 - Menstrual As Anything

  I hate having my period.  I really hate it.  Hate it, hate it, hate it.  It's the one part of being a woman that I could really live without.  I feel bloated, headachey, fart-ridden, extra-stressed, paranoid about everything, and just want to curl up in a ball and suck on chocolate biscuits and hot tea.  I did manage to at least skip the chocolate biscuits.  I didn't sleep well last night either, too much lying awake thinking, not enough movement, though at least Pizza Cat didn't jump all over me.  I had Feel The Pain by Dinosaur Jr on a loop on the drive to work, it seemed to fit my mood.
  The highlight of my work day was a special lunch at work as we had a bigwig visiting.  He was quite a nice chap, down to earth and open about himself, and very involved in the company's charitable works too.  It was nice just to be able to feel a part of something bigger in the office.  I can get to feeling a little bit isolated when I'm glued to the screen all day and having lunch in the office up the back without leaving to stretch my legs in the square.  I don't remember much else from work that day, just another blur of activity.
  I went home and started half-heartedly blogging, but everything just felt crap so I mostly wasted time on the internet.  Mr Smart and HotCakes both posted links to a particular blog today, entitled A Daddy’s Letter to His Little Girl (About Her Future Husband) which was posted on a site called The Good Men Project which seems a really interesting site.  I'm very curious to know what people think about it.  To me it seems most definitely, from father to daughter, but it does encourage the idea that people shouldn't change themselves to 'keep someone interested', which I think is mostly healthy as ideas go.  Not sure how applicable it is to a long-term relationship though, it seems to glaze over some of the realities of that.

  Thursday's food was:

• Breakfast was a 35g Carman's dark choc blueberry and almond muesli bar followed by a 45g Carman's apricot and almond muesli bar.
• Morning snack was a green nashi pear, cored and sliced.
• Lunch was pork belly, rice, chicken in betal leaf, prawn noodle salad, a small pie with sauce, salmon salad, chicken cucumber and nigella seed salad, another piece of pork belly and a small sausage roll.  It was all really yummy.
• Afternoon snack was an Imperial mandarin and a green tea custard bun from Breadtop.
• Dinner was two chicken in betal leaves, leftover prawn noodle salad, two small sausage rolls and five fruit mentos lollies.
• Comforting hot drinks were a strong cup of lapsang souchong tea (rather like drinking a sweet campfire) and a cup of green tea with lemon.

  I struggled through the evening in the iron-sucking grip of Aunt Flo, comforted only by online chatter and cups of hot liquid.  Suffice it to say, I was pleased to see the back of Thursday, though looking back on it now (Monday 13th), I'm impressed at how little I went overboard with the eating.
  Jess

May 8 - Dinner At Tuahine's

  This morning as I packed up my things tonight, Pengi stowed away in my overnight bag.  Apparently he misses Mr Smart as much as I do.
  Once more, work is a blur, not that it matters.  By and large, I figure that although I find my work interesting and challenging, it is probably pretty boring to others and of course confidentiality agreements prevent me from over-sharing anyway.  Mr Smart met me after work and we headed off to dinner at Tuahine's place (Mr Smart's sister's... I finally found a nickname that I felt suited).
  We were greeted by a very cheerful little nephew and had a glass of red poured for us each by Tuahine.  Mr Smart had brought four Little Golden Books for his nephew: Iron Man, Thor, The Incredible Hulk and my favourite, The Tawny Scrawny Lion.  I was immediately seconded to the sofa and instructed to read Thor, followed by Iron Man.  Mr Smart, who had been outside getting the fire going, was up next with The Incredible Hulk and The Tawny Scrawny Lion never got a look in!
  It was another lovely warmish autumn evening so we sat outside.  Mr Smart's nephew brought out his own plate and one for me, one of his very own.  I was very touched so I kept using it, even after the adult plates were brought out.  He's such a bright little happy kid.
  At one point during dinner and conversation Mr Smart's nephew started a little game with me.  He climbed down from his chair and tapped my knee then started crawling away towards the safety of his uncle's feet.  My part in the game was to try to tap him back before he got away.  I succeeded, and the game continued, with escalating squeals of delight.  I like that 'auntie' duties include getting kids riled up right before bedtime.  But bedtime came, and after he'd been put back into bed about three times, his door was closed and the adults were left with conversation.
  Movies came up, as they invariably do, and I started a list of movies I want to watch but haven't seen yet.  It rapidly ran out to several dozen long and it just keeps growing!  We decided to keep it from getting one bigger though, and we tidied up the table and went inside to watch 50/50 which is a Joseph Gordon-Levitt film about a young man who gets cancer.  It was mostly good, a few plot holes here and there, but moving, saddening, thought-provoking, funny and charming.  It made me wonder how I would go coping if someone close to me had such a serious illness.
  After the movie Mr Smart and I headed back to his place for the evening.  It was a somewhat complex evening after that.  I have been having trouble resettling into things after the issues Mr Smart and I had in early April so we ended up having a fairly productive chat brought on by my feelings of paranoia.  Fortunately, talking things out always makes me feel better, so no sleep was lost.

  Wednesday's food was:

• Breakfast was a 45g Carman's Original fruit-free muesli bar and a 35g Carman's yoghurt apricot and almond muesli bar.
• Morning snack was a green nashi pear.
• Lunch was a 300g tomato, lentil and bacon skinny soup with a toasted wholemeal English muffin spread with one portion of The Laughing Cow cheese spread (17.5g).
• Afternoon snack was an Imperial mandarin.
• Dinner began with a glass of shiraz accompanied by some blue vein, quince paste and pumpernickel bread.  The small hand you see in the photo is a big fan of the pumpernickel bread, he was less enthused when he decided to try the cheese.
• Next course (not pictured) was about four or five barbecued marinated chicken wingettes.  Very succulent and tasty.
• And finally, the delicious main course, tasty barbecued steaks with a cajun spice rub, broccoli with flaked almonds and chilli and barbecued corn.

  I may have to leave it there for tonight.  It's getting late on Sunday 12th as I write this and I do have to remember that I have work in the morning!  More blogs tomorrow!
  Jess