Creamy Lemony Perfection

Need I say more? This lemon pudding cake followed a fresh and vibrant concoction of greens, radishes, mushrooms, cucumbers and gorgonzola. I'm a lucky girl :)

My mates Gail and Mark often photograph their food, which has always amused me. Gail and I were reminiscing the other day about the food we ate in Paris. I have a vague remembrance of fantastically tasty food, but recall very few details beyond the Yogurt incident and a very succulent pork dish. Gail remembers it ALL because she has photos of every meal we ate.

Laundry

I have today off :) I'm filling my free morning with extra exciting things like sleeping and laundry. Not at the same time. I've done six loads of laundry and now the only dirty clothes in the house are on my body. Of course, the bigger job is putting it all away, which may or may not happen today. This afternoon I'm driving down to Eugene to have a girly day with my friend Gab. She's looking for a couch, so we're going furniture shopping, and possibly to a movie and definitely to dinner. I'm thinking steak. Yes, I'm a hypocrite when it comes to food. I don't bring non-local meat into the house, but when I eat out it's too complicated to find something on the menu with no meat or eggs that actually tastes good. So steak here I come.

I had a lovely walk with my friend Chad yesterday. He has recently given up his on-line gaming addiction and is filling his time with more healthful pursuits, one of which is a daily walk. Yesterday I finished work early, actually before dark, which is rare for me, so I tagged along. We walked along the bike path between Witham Hill and Harrison which is a 10 minute walk one way, which we did round trip twice. It leads through a wetlandy sort of area. We were there right at sunset. It was absolutely lovely. The sky was brilliant and the frogs and geese were so loud. It was great. I didn't take my camera though. Sorry.

I have too much crap

I had the day off work today and decided to clean my closet. This is never a good idea. I should learn. At the moment I'm taking a breather. (stalling) My closet looks exactly the same. My room however does not. The bed is piled high with clothes that need to be hung, there is a huge pile of rubbish to be disposed of and a smaller pile of things to be gotten rid of somewhere other than the dump. Closets are like holes in the ground. Once you've dug a hole the dirt that comes out of it never fits back in the same hole. Closets are the same. Where did it all come from?!

raise me up

Apparently no one has gotten a raise at work for over a year :( The company is in contract negotiations with the union, (which frankly seems to be unending. Are we ever not in negotiations of some sort?) and the result is a raise freeze. Goody. Apparently when they figure it all out we will get back pay for the raises we were supposed to have had all this time. I am not holding my breath. Poor Debbie, our accountant, who will have the wonderful job of figuring everyone's back pay from their hire dates, all 90 something of us. She REALLY deserves a raise. But it does irk me that after 2 and a half years I am making the same rate as Don, who was hired 2 months ago. I'mthankfultohaveajobI'mthankfultohaveajobI'mthankfultohaveajob

AWWWWWW!!!!!!!!

My little pink sheepy exudes hearts if you tickle her abundantly.

RS

I taught Relief Society today. We have started a new manual with the new year, very back to basics, so much so that the lessons are about a page long, as opposed to 3 or 4 pages in the old manual. It makes for a lot of creative and interesting discussion, because there is a lot of extra time to fill. I was worried that no one would talk, but silly me, I should have known better. There were so many comments that we went over time and I had to stop the discussion and skip the closing hymn. My ward RS is great :) The lesson topic was God. I told you it was basic. We mostly talked about what led each of us to believe in God, the nature of God, our relationship to Him. We also had an interesting discussion about the hubris involved in believing that science is infallible, or that we know so much that we can't be wrong. I myself have been wrong so often in my life that I am always keenly aware of the possibility that I am mistaken about any and everything. You will rarely if ever hear me say I am 100% sure of anything, including religious matters where the custom is to say 'I know beyond a shadow of a doubt..." I don't know anything beyond doubt, not even things that are tangible and provable. My perception is always suspect. I doubt everything. But I believe things wholeheartedly. Belief is not knowledge, and knowledge ends the necessity for faith. I'm quite content to be faithful and believing, as opposed to knowledgeable. Knowledge brings too much responsibility and I am nothing if not lazy ;D

baa

Ok, I know I'm a weirdo, but is not that little sheep the cutest thing ever? She laughs when you click on her with your mouse :) And I like the Mormon Radio link too. You can listen to Motab while you read my words of wisdom. (cough cough).

$

I'm about to show my laissez-faire attitude to the small details of my working life. I just discovered today that I haven't had a pay raise since I started driving city bus. We're supposed to get them every six months, plus every year on our hire-date anniversary, so I should have had 4 raises since I was officially hired. (8 if you count the year I drove for them before being "officially" hired.) How is it possible that I am just now discovering this omission, you ask? Generally, as long as I get a paycheck and it seems approximately the right amount, I'm not too fussed. But having now discovered the error, I plan on making a pretty big stink in my bosses office on Monday morning. They owe me a heck of a lot of back pay, as I see it. Schmucks. If I weren't already totally fed up with our new company, I probably wouldn't make too big a fuss, but for crying out loud. First Group are the biggest bunch of tightwads on the planet. They have stopped paying for tissues, garbage can liners, soap for the bathrooms, cleaning staff for the building, the daily newspaper... and the whopper of the pile: they wouldn't pay for the septic people to come and service the tank so we had sewage backing up at our facility and our boss had to pay for the septic service out of his own pocket. I will exact every iota of back pay from these criminals. I hate that we are now run by this huge multinational company that is so far removed from us on a personal level that they are capable of not caring about sewage at their facility. Alas for the days of small local ownership. I know, I know... I need a new job.

Fish

YAY!!! My fish are working again :D I've missed them. I dunno what happened to them but for awhile there they disappeared from my blog. Now they are back with their wiggly graceful beauty. Yay!! (Easily pleased, am I not?)

We've just finished watching Cranford on PBS. What a lovely bit of fluff. I love Judi Dench. She's a dish, and a joy to watch.

Go All Blacks!

I totally want to go to the Rugby Word Cup in 2011. I was thinking to do the Milford trek for my 40th birthday in February, but perhaps I'll postpone it till September and kill two birds with one stone. One only ever has one 40th birthday. I've got to milk it for all it's worth, eh? Prime tickets to the match I want to see are $450 nz :-O perhaps I'll have to settle for the nosebleeds for $120. Clearly I plan on becoming independently wealthy between now and then.

Resolve

I miss New Zealand today. I wish I were there.

I wish you were there too. I wish we were all there together.

Resolutions... Hmmm. I can't decide if I think they are healthy and helpful or if they are part of a continuous cycle of disappointed expectations and unreached goals that chip away at self esteem. Goals are important. Setting achievable goals and reaching them is self affirming. But how often does one actually keep New Years resolutions? How often does one feel like a failure looking back over last year's list and realizing that it didn't even take a month for them all to fall by the wayside? I'd say about once a year.

My friend suggested several resolutions for me, among them to get another job and to visit New Zealand this year. Those almost seem mutually exclusive to me. Not much chance of me being able to afford a trip to NZ without a good paying job, and not much chance of me getting time off to go gallivanting to the other hemisphere at a brand new job. I think I will make no new resolutions this year, but I will set a goal. I'd like to hike the Milford track in the not too distant future, like within a year and a halfish. This involves smaller goals in the nature of saving and training, so I don't die in the wilderness.

Well, church will come at an unnaturally early hour tomorrow :( so I'd better turn in.