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[23 Jul 2008|11:16am] |
The altfriday5 is cooking!
From the ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) altfriday5:
1. Do you like to cook? If so, what?
Not particularly.
2. If you do like to cook, have you always or when did you start? If you don't like to cook, have you tried it without success or simply never gotten into it, or ...?
I *can* cook, I just don't really enjoy it. If I try a new recipe which sounds simple and it ends up taking half an hour or longer, I feel that I've wasted precious time that could have been spent doing something I would have enjoyed more. My idea of the perfect recipe is one that has fewer than five ingredients, takes 5 minutes to prepare and then can be left alone to cook. Slow cooker recipes are perfect for me: throw everything in and leave it alone all day. As a mother of three, I was forced to cook for all the years until the kids grew up and left home; now, I cook for myself because it's cheaper (and better for the environment) than buying pre-prepared food, but I try to cook only once a week, when I cook in bulk and freeze single-serve portions to be used later.
3. What's the most ambitious-for-you dish you've ever prepared? How'd it come out?
I can't remember any particularly ambitious dishes I've tried, but I've rarely cooked anything that didn't turn out to be at least edible. Maybe jam counts as ambitious? I've made jams and marmalades in the past with reasonable success, but I probably won't make them again because of the time factor and because I rarely eat jam any more, though I do eat marmalade every day for breakfast.
4. Have there been fears, hesitations, or items of squeamishness you've struggled with in cooking?
No. I just don't even try things that take long slow stirring or constant watching because I know I'll resent the time taken.
5. If you could learn to prepare one food perfectly the way you like it every time, what would it be?
Oh, I've learnt to prepare several foods just the way I like them, and I make them over and over again: vegetarian spaghetti sauce, beans in pumpkin sauce, chili, dahl, lentil hotpot, thick pea soup, and various others.
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| Winter is getting old |
[22 Jul 2008|01:53pm] |
Up until about three or four years ago, I thought that winter was my favourite season. Then we had a couple of winters which were colder than average, and suddenly I don't like winter so much anymore. I was doing some research to find out what the weather was like back in March of 2002 because I'm writing about something that took place then; from there, I looked at June and July of 2002 and the same months of 2003, and I found to my surprise that the lowest minimum temperature in any of those months was about 4°C, while maximums were fluctuating from about 17°C to about 20°C - and this is the depths of winter! No wonder I've been feeling the cold more recently: we've had record breaking low temperatures of below 0° a few times in the past three years, and it's regularly fallen to 1-2°C. So far the coldest temperature this winter has been .7°, but that's a lot colder than 4°. As long as the minimum stays at or above 4° my house stays at about 15° or above, but when the temperature falls lower, of course my house gets colder too, sometimes as low as 13°C.
Houses in Perth are often built without any heating, and I don't just mean central heating, I mean even built in room heaters; before I moved to my present house, I lived in two rental properties that had no form of heating built in or provided by the owner. Of course, it's easy to buy a portable heater, but the fact that heating is not necessarily built in to the house shows how mild our climate normally is. Also, the coldest weather usually only lasts for a few weeks. When I was much younger, I lived in various rented flats around the Perth suburbs; none of them had heating, and I didn't particularly miss it or think to buy a heater of my own. When it was extra cold I just wore more clothes or wrapped a blanket around myself.
I think I've become less cold-tolerant as I've got older. It's very hard to get out of bed when the room temperature is around 14°C or lower, though once I'm up and dressed in my many warm layers I don't usually feel uncomfortably cold. My present house does have a heater in the lounge room, but it has to be run for several hours before it makes any appreciable difference to the rest of the house.
I thought I was good at layering, but over the last few years I've become better. Silk or wool makes a nice warm layer next to your skin, and wool also makes for warm outer layers, as does polar fleece. I acquired a pair of flannel-lined heavy pants in the US which are wonderful, though wearing ordinary jeans with silk long johns also works well. (I've found that synthetic long johns tend to make my legs itch, and synthetic spencers/undershirts, even the more expensive ones like Damart, just make me feel sweaty and aren't very warm). For a few years I had really short hair, so wearing a scarf and possibly a hat were necessary. This year my hair is shoulder length, so it keeps my head and neck warm.
However, I'm getting sick of putting on all these clothes every day. Now that we're past the middle of July and the days are getting a bit longer, I'm hoping the weather will start getting just a little bit warmer. Even a couple of degrees can make a lot of difference to how comfortable I am.
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| I think I've seen this before, but it's worth doing again... |
[20 Jul 2008|12:25pm] |
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If there is/are one or more persons on your friends list who make your world a better place just because they exist, and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.
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| This is too good not to share: |
[20 Jul 2008|10:02am] |
Spell Chequer
==============
Eye halve a spelling chequer,
It came with my pea sea,
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I'm shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh,
My chequer tolled me sew.
(http://www.mountainwings.com/past/8198.htm)
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[19 Jul 2008|01:44pm] |
What a contrast between yesterday's and today's weather; today it's clear and sunny, though cold. The breeze (not gale, as we had yesterday) feels like it just passed over the Antarctic five minutes before reaching here.
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From thefridayfive
Friday Five -- July 18, 2008
1. If you could change one life-changing event in the life of someone important to you, would you?
If it was something really bad which adversely affected their life ever after, perhaps I would.
2. Which do you think is easier to do, being friends for many years, or being life partners for many years?
It depends on the friend or the life partner. Sometimes being friends might be easier because you aren't with them all the time, so if they do or say things that are irritating or upsetting you can ignore them for the sake of the friendship. On the other hand, if you love somebody you might be prepared to overlook some minor flaws that you would be harder to tolerate in a friend. I do think it takes more work to maintain a good relationship with your life partner than with a friend, simply because you're together for so much more of the time, but I don't think the work is necessarily hard or unpleasant; it just takes thought, time, and effort, but the end result is well worth it.
3. Have you ever walked away from someone you considered a friend?
Yes, two in fact, because they, as Christians, believe that I am going to hell because of my chosen partner.
4. If you had to choose between telling the truth and hurting a friend or lying and making them happy, which would you choose?
If it was something not terribly important I'd lie or at least fudge the truth, for example if they wanted my opinion on a piece of clothing or hairstyle which I didn't like. Anything more important, if I thought the person would later regret not having known the truth, I would tell them.
5. Which would you rather hear--the truth which will hurt, or the comforting lie?
As hard as it might be to hear, I think I'd prefer to hear the truth rather than be lied to and then later discover that I'd been lied to. I've been in the situation where the truth was concealed from me and I found out many years later. I was incredibly angry that my then-spouse had thought he had the right to hide something so important from me under the guise of "protecting" me.
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[18 Jul 2008|03:26pm] |
It was an extremely windy and stormy morning; it got so bad that I turned off and unplugged my computer, printer, and modem for a while. Unfortunately I think something happened to my bread maker: when its time was up, I discovered that the little red light that normally flashes at that point was just shining steadily, and the bread seems to be slightly doughy and undercooked, although still edible, which makes me think the power got interrupted briefly towards the end of the cooking time. I tried turning the bread maker back on and setting it to the normal wholewheat setting and it seemed to be fine, although the test will be next time I try to make bread. Nothing else was affected, so I'm not really sure what happened. I'm also upset because a branch got blown off one of the trees just outside my back door, which I rely on to keep me shaded on hot summer afternoons. There's probably enough of the tree left that I'll still get enough shade, but it makes me sad to see a tree damaged. The tree isn't big enough for the branch to have done any damage to the house, luckily.
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This afternoon I braved the weather, which by then was just very windy but not raining, and went to the post office to get passport photos and then send off a large envelope of documents in support of S's application for a Canadian visa.
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| Born on a Blue Day |
[16 Jul 2008|12:57pm] |
I've just finished reading "Born on a Blue Day: a memoir of Asperger's and an extraordinary mind" by Daniel Tammet. He has Asperger's, savant abilities with mathematics and languages, and a striking case of synaesthesia - (from The UK Synaesthesia Association website: Synaesthesia is a truly fascinating condition. In its simplest form it is best described as a “union of the senses” whereby two or more of the five senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily and automatically joined together. Some synaesthetes experience colour when they hear sounds or read words. Others experience tastes, smells, shapes or touches in almost any combination. These sensations are automatic and cannot be turned on or off. Synaesthesia isn’t a disease or illness and is not at all harmful. In fact, the vast majority of synaesthetes couldn’t imagine life without it. ) The book is called "Born on a Blue Day" because he was born on a Wednesday, and he always sees Wednesdays as blue.
From the foreword to the book:
"Daniel's synaesthesia... is unique in that he 'sees' individual numbers - each one up to 10,000 - not just as a single colour, but also as a shape, a colour, a texture, a motion and sometimes even an emotional 'tone'. When he does his massive calculations he literally 'sees' the answer in his head, not written out in number form as in a telephone book, but rather as a confluence of these shapes and colours and forms into an 'answer' experienced in a newly coalesced shape, form and colour." (p xii).
From this book I discovered that there is an entire culture of pi: people have spent entire lifetimes calculating the mathematic value of pi to many many thousands of decimal places; some mathematicians have favourite sequences of digits from pi, and some sequences have even been named; in an effort to memorise strings of the digits, sentences are composed in which the number of letters of each word corresponds to the relevant digit, for example the sentence How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics! represents pi to fourteen decimal places; and Daniel himself set a new British and European record for memorising and reciting the digits of pi in which he took just over five hours to recite the digits of pi to 22,514 decimal places. He was able to recite the digits correctly by 'interpreting' the visual landscape he saw scrolling along in his mind.
In addition to his astonishing mathematical feats, Daniel is able to learn a new language so quickly that after a week he is able to converse fairly fluently with native speakers. At the time of writing the book, in 2006 when he was 27, he knew ten languages (including his native language, English): Finnish, French, German, Lithuanian, Esperanto, Spanish, Romanian, Icelandic, and Welsh. A documentary, "Brainman", was made about him a few years ago, during which, after just a week spent learning Icelandic, he took part in a live interview on an Icelandic TV program.
I found this book fascinating.
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[15 Jul 2008|01:13pm] |
Yay, rain! It set in about mid morning and has been fairly steady ever since. I got slightly wet coming home but I was prepared, with my umbrella and my waterproof leather boots, so no big deal.
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From journalgems
Journal Gems for the week beginning the 14th of July, 2008
Theme: When you were a child...
1. What was your favourite cereal?
Weetbix, but I didn't get to try many cereals because my mother always bought the cheapest. Therefore we ate a lot of Weeties, which I didn't like much, or porridge, which I also didn't like much. I still like Weetbix.
2. What did you want to be when you grew up?
A librarian.
3. What vegetable(s) did you hate?
Beetroot and cucumber, and still do, though I can stomach cucumber if I have to, whereas I can't eat beetroot.
4. What was your favourite food?
Sausages, mashed potato, peas.
5. What was your favourite subject at school?
English and art.
6. What was your favourite toy?
When I was very young, my rocker (something like a cross between a rocking horse and a rocking chair), and later, my bike.
7. Were you in a hurry to grow up?
Not really.
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| Telephones, gah |
[14 Jul 2008|09:53am] |
First call:
"All our lines are still occupied. To assist the operator, please have the person and section you wish to speak to on hand. Thank you."
Does it seem to you that there's something strangely ambiguous about the wording of that message? If I had the person and section I wished to speak to on hand, I wouldn't need to be making this phone call, would I?
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Second call:
Perky voice recognition menu: In just a few words please state the reason for your call.
Me: A billing enquiry.
Perky voice recognition menu: I think that sounds like a [something muffled that I couldn't quite hear]. Please say yes or no.
Me: No.
Perky voice recognition menu: Do you need an extension of time to pay your bill? Please say yes or no.
Me: No.
Perky voice recognition menu: Okay, is your query to do with the amount of your bill?
Me: Yes.
Perky voice recognition menu: I think that sounds like a bill enquiry. Please say yes or no.
Me: Yes.
Perky voice recognition menu: I'll just forward your call to an operator who can assist you with your enquiry.
... beep, beep, beep, beep - I've been cut off.
I ring again:
Perky voice recognition menu: In just a few words please state the reason for your call.
Me: A bill enquiry. [I rephrased it because at the second try the first time around, the voice had told me it sounded like a bill enquiry, so I thought I could short circuit the process by saying "bill enquiry", but it seems you have to go through the entire menu each time.)
Perky voice recognition menu: I think that sounds like a [something muffled that I couldn't quite hear]. Please say yes or no.
Me, frustrated at having to go through the entire menu again: Yes.
I find it very creepy talking to a recorded voice, not to mention frustrating because the recording doesn't always understand what I say and I can't interact with it to correct the misunderstanding.
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[12 Jul 2008|12:29pm] |
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It's just become apparent to me that YouTube is a mine of old songs, the songs that were popular in the very late 50s and early 60s. I knew that it was possible to find old music there, but it didn't occur to me to go looking for some of my very early favourites and spend time listening to them, until today when S put the idea into my head. The morning passed in a flash...
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| Writer's Block: Dreams |
[10 Jul 2008|07:23pm] |
In the past I've had recurring dreams involving steps or stairs. The dreams aren't usually the same as each other, they just include something to do with steps or stairs and me trying to climb up or down them.
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| Beware! Danger! |
[10 Jul 2008|07:15pm] |
Since I was planning to go on a photography walk in Fremantle in the afternoon, I had my camera with me when I went to FAW beforehand, and I couldn't resist taking a photo of this sign because I liked the contrast between the green idyllic setting (FAW is the white building at the back) and the words on the sign:
( Click twice for a larger view )
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[10 Jul 2008|05:21pm] |
Celebrated my birthday by taking some time to walk around Fremantle taking photos of some of my favourite buildings, plus one of the building which appalls me every time I see it. I hope to get time to post some of the photos tomorrow. Now I'm feeling a bit frazzled and frustrated because there isn't time to do everything I want to do. Let's see: I've got two knitting projects on the go, I still want to write the rest of S's and my story, I'm in the middle of a good book, and I want to do a Fremantle photo essay. Not to mention having to get more papers together for our visa applications, and I've hardly given any thought to the personal essay I have to write for college applications.
On the way home today I stopped off at the post office below Woolworths to photocopy some necessary papers, but the copier kept making the copies at right angles to how they were supposed to be, thus cutting off the bottom half of the documents, so I gave up and came home. Tomorrow I'll go to the library and do it, even though copies at the library cost more.
Last night youngest daughter and her boyfriend came over to take me out for dinner at the grilled chicken place just down the road, then we all came back here and played Trivial Pursuit. Daughter insisted she didn't want to play because she is hopeless at it, but she ended up coming second (after me) while her boyfriend, who is usually good at it, came last. It was a fun evening.
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| To sleep, perchance to dream... |
[09 Jul 2008|12:42pm] |
From journalgems
Journal Gems for the week beginning the 7th July, 2008
Journal Gems for the week beginning the 7th July, 2008
Themed: Bed Bugs
1. Do you sleep on your back, stomach, or side and does it change throughout the night?
I sleep on my side; I usually alternate sides each time I wake up in the night. I rarely sleep on my back, and when I do, I often wake myself up as I roll onto my back.
2. Are you aware of any bad sleeping habits (snoring/tooth grinding/talking/walking) you may have?
As far as I know I don't do any of those things, though there was a period when I was a kid/teenager when I both walked and talked in my sleep. One night I got out of bed and got into bed with my sister.
3. How many hours of sleep do you average per night?
Usually about 7½.
4. Are you a sound sleeper or do you wake up a lot?
I'm a fairly sound sleeper who wakes up a lot. I believe I sleep quite soundly between waking up, but to my annoyance, I usually wake up every couple of hours or so. On a good night I only wake up twice; on a bad night it can be 4 or 5 times.
5. Do you sleep snuggled under the covers or do you kick the covers off?
It depends on the weather. If it's cold I snuggle right under the covers curled up with my head almost covered; in hot weather I might sleep uncovered or if it's cool enough, just covered with a sheet.
6. What time do you usually go to bed?
About 10 pm, as I prefer to wake up early in the morning.
7. Are you someone that falls asleep when your head hits the pillow or if not what do you do to get to sleep?
This can vary depending on how tired I am or what else is going on in my life. Usually I take maybe 15 or 20 minutes to fall asleep, but on nights when I've been absolutely exhausted I've been known to barely remember putting my head on the pillow before going to sleep, while on other nights I might lie awake for an hour before falling asleep. I don't do anything to get to sleep apart from just lie there trying to relax.
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[08 Jul 2008|02:26pm] |
It was forecast to reach 21C today, which would have been very pleasant, but so far it has remained disappointingly far below that with a cold north easterly breeze keeping it down. My little spot at St Pat's is unfortunately unheated and we have to sit there with the door open to the street because the street doctor parks right outside the door while using "my" reception area as his also. It's been very cold the last two or three weeks, with that cold east wind blowing straight in the door. I always dress in lots of warm layers on Tuesdays, because I know I'm going to be cold. The nurse gave me a very old fan heater a couple of weeks ago, but after it had been running for about ten minutes it blew the power, including the power to the street doctor's van (they run a long extension cord from under the reception desk out the door to the van). So I stayed cold that day. Today the same nurse brought me another fan heater which looked to be not much younger than the previous one, but almost as soon as I turned it on it shot out a spark and went off, though luckily without affecting anything else this time. However, later she brought over one of those oil-filled column heaters which seemed to work ok, but they don't give off a lot of heat very quickly, and probably work better in more confined spaces than where I sit at St Pat's. After a while I could feel some warmth coming from it though, and I certainly appreciated it.
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I've finally plugged in the new mouse, and it works. Unfortunately I've got so used to using the right button as the primary button, with my right ring finger, that it's taking some getting used to using it in the normal right-handed way. It seems that it was just the problematic installation of the printer that froze everything up the other day.
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| Writer's Block: Hope |
[07 Jul 2008|03:30pm] |
Sometimes it's very hard to maintain any feeling of hope for the future I want. Life goes along just as it always has, and I can't seem to envisage things changing or S and me ever having the life together that we want. At other times, as we submit yet another round of paperwork to the migration agents, I feel that yes, we are moving closer to our goal.
At the same time, I feel that I'm living in a perpetual state of limbo between visits to be with S. I know I need to maintain my life here while I wait, but I can't seem to feel much motivation or enthusiasm for any of the things I have enjoyed in the past. I want to write; but what to write about? I look at journal writing prompts and none of them inspire me. I think about topical subjects but I don't seem to have any opinion worth expounding. I want to get out there and take photos, but when I do, I'm too often disappointed with the results. Cycling doesn't appeal when the weather is wet or there is a cold east wind blowing. I am knitting, but somewhat desultorily. I find myself sitting at my computer idling reading blogs, following links to yet more blogs or news sites, and although it's all very interesting, informative, and sometimes enlightening, it is in general just a way of procrastinating doing something more useful. I know I can't tell myself that once S and I are together, things will be different. I need to be able to find my own motivation in any situation rather than relying on a change of situation to produce it.
As for the future of the world, I feel like living in complete denial sometimes, because the problem of global warming and the destruction of the environment seems such a huge problem that it must be impossible to do anything about it at an individual level. Yes, I do do what I can, in my small way, to reduce my personal impact on the environment, but how much difference is that going to make if governments can't or won't make necessary changes?
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[07 Jul 2008|01:45pm] |
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It's been very cold (for here) for the last couple of days; the temperature dropped to barely above 0C on Saturday and Sunday nights, and when you live in a house without central heating, it's hard to get up in the mornings and to keep warm once you're up. I've discovered that wearing my short ugg boots without socks is an excellent way to keep my toes warm, since I've got poor circulation and having cold toes has always been a winter problem for me. However, my ugg boots leave a cold gap around my ankles. I don't seem to be able to wear longer ugg boots because they make my legs itch, so I had the bright idea of knitting myself some ankle warmers, which are basically socks without feet. I finished one yesterday and tried it out, and it worked beautifully. My other solution is to wear silk socks inside the ugg boots, which also works, but I do enjoy the feel of my bare feet against the soft wool, and the ankle warmers allow me that pleasure but without the cold ankles.
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| Writer's Block: Water Closets Reconsidered |
[06 Jul 2008|05:24pm] |
A restroom to me means a place where you go to rest. It has absolutely nothing to do with either bathrooms or toilets, which also do not necessarily mean the same thing.
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[06 Jul 2008|04:17pm] |
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I'm so frustrated by my computer right now. I bought a new mouse as well as a new printer a couple of days ago, because my approximately 8 year old printer gave up the ghost a few days ago, after threatening to do so for at least a year. Today I finally got around to unpacking and installing the new stuff, but at first, when I plugged in both the new mouse and the new printer, the computer froze as soon as I turned it back on, so I took away the new mouse and plugged the old one back in, since it was working in a weird sort of way, and tried to install the printer first. The installation seemed to go ok, though slowly, but as soon as I tried to click on the little printer icon that eventually appeared, the computer froze again. I restarted it, but the same thing happened again, so now I seem to be stuck with a new printer that won't work, and a new mouse that I'm not sure I'm game to try to install. I'm on the verge of tearing my hair out...
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