Happy Valentine’s Day!
At the last minute, the Snook and I decided to head out for a Valentine’s Day dinner so we got all gussied up – check us out; I wore the orange bridesmaid dress – and headed to the Lord Nelson, a pub and brewhouse that happens to have a very nice restaurant on the first floor. We sat down and had a look at the holiday set menu. “Shall we get it?” I asked. “But it has a seafood plate as the appetizer,” Snookums said, knowing that I don’t really eat seafood. “I’m game,” I said. A few glasses of wine later, out came the plate. There were four prawns, four oysters (two with strawberries and mangoes on them), two scallops with salmon roe, and an honest-to-goodness Moreton Bay Bug. Folks, I ate everything. I really did. The prawns were really good, but I’d had them before. I wouldn’t say I really love oysters yet, but they’re definitely growing on me. (The ones with the fruit were surprisingly delicious.) I was wary of the scallops for fear they’d be fishy, but they ended up being really good. (And the salmon roe – which looked like little orange tapioca balls and is pretty damn gross to contemplate – really did burst pleasantly in the mouth.) Lastly, the bug, as seen in the photo before you. Hell yeah, I ate that sucker. Cross him off my list. The Snook was absolutely floored that I was brave enough to try everything. The thing is, it was all delicious. I don’t know if it’s just that Sydney seafood is particularly good (which it is), or that I”m slowly developing my taste for this stuff (which I probably am), but I am definitely becoming a fan of the shellfish. Yum. The rest of the dinner was excellent – I had the chicken; the Snook the steak – but not nearly the phobia-challenge of the entree. Pretty cool, huh?
Author: Kris
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I ate a bug.
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Scary Soctopus!
Dude, this HGTV Soctopus is scary.
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IHBT.
Yeah, I’m still being trolled. Look, folks, for the record, my parents didn’t bankroll my Notre Dame education so I could “peddle yarn” for a living. They didn’t bankroll anything. Ask ’em. I was valedictorian and got a decent size scholarship; I worked full-time jobs every summer and part-time throughout the year; and I went into debt up to my eyeballs. Every single loan was in my name. (Actually one was co-signed by my aunt – since my parents couldn’t – but I paid that one off in full with my first Christmas bonus in London.) There were times when I didn’t get my grades on time because I was still waiting for the tuition checks to clear. I still owe about thirty grand, and I’m currently paying that off in a country where the exchange rate is really, really shitty. (Getting better, but still shitty.) So call me an expat snob if you must, but a freeloader I am not. And what kind of jerk demeans somebody else’s job and snottily insinuates that they didn’t earn their position in life? I’m just stunned that there are people so petty and vindictive.
Says the Snook, “Tell him to come to Australia. We have beautiful sandy beaches… with lots of sharks… who have a taste for troll.”
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The Evolution of Personal Audio
Check out this great photoessay on the “Evolution of Personal Audio“. It begins with the personal transistor radio and ends with the iPod. I’ve think I’ve had everything from the ghetto blaster onwards… (Except for the silly iPod snowboarding jacket. Nobody owns one of those.) It’s funny how quickly things date. I remember the Christmas when I got my Discman and how excited I was to have something so “high-tech.” Now when I see somebody on the bus struggling to change CDs while standing up it seems positively archaic.
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Cultural Vigilantes
Quick! Hide your Valentines! Cultural vigilantes are trying to put a stop to Valentine’s Day in India. This could give millions of singletons around the world some very dangerous ideas…
And hey, this is kind of a neat concept. I could be a cultural vigilante. You know what I’d put a stop to right now? The Bill. No question.
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Amazing Race 7
We finally watched the Amazing Race 7 finale tonight… and damn. I’m putting our reaction inside, just so any Aussies don’t get spoiled.
Sidenote: No matter what the haters say, I am SO STOKED for Rob and Amber in TAR8. The Snook and I laughed our asses off at them in the preview. Go the Robfather!
That sucked. We really wanted Kris and Jon to win. They’re just so pretty and nice! I guess Freddy and Kendra aren’t too evil, though. Yeah, she’s ignorant and racist and she apparently lacks the ability to digest food, but they ran a tight race and never even thought of giving up. Oh, and Freddie ate his own puke that one time. He earned it.
We paused after the first half to make some burritos and I ranted about Aaron’s proposal to Hayden. “She’s just so shrill and crazy and bitchy! Why would he possible want to marry her after a day like that?” The Snook hesitated. “I think it was probably just the stress,” he said. “She’s probably not like that in real life.” Huh? Gears started turning in my head. “Why would you say that? Why would you give her the benefit of the– Oh God. I act like that. I do, don’t I? Oh my God, I act like her! That’s why I find her behaviour so abhorrent, right? I AM HAYDEN.” He shrugged. “Welll… You did get kind of nuts occasionally while we were in Italy.” Good grief.
I still think she sucks though.
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Sexy Geography Teacher
Since Eileen asked, here’s the picture of Sexy Geography Teacher in all his glory. (Click for a bigger version.) Now you can see where I got the inspiration. Wouldn’t you have liked to’ve had this guy teaching you about Mercator projections?Further construction notes: This is an actual pieced garment, not something knit in the round (as I usually do). The graph consisted of the back, the two front sections, and one sleeve. The other sleeve is blank. The design is only on the “outer” section of the garment, meaning if you lift up your arm there’s not another version of India beneath it. I can scan the graph if anybody wants to have a look at it.
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Geography Cardigan
On Thursday I gave my latest knitting project its first public airing… I present the Geography Cardigan! I got the idea from an old 80’s knitting book Mrs Morris (the shop owner) lent me as a joke. The tackiness of the patterns really needs to be seen to be believed. (The back cover, for instance, features a guy in suspenders and a bow-tie standing next to a woman wearing a sweater… with knitted suspender and bow-tie motifs. Get it? It’s an OPTICAL ILLUSION. Very clever.) Anyway, I was flipping through it and suddenly there he was: Sexy Geography Teacher. He had a Ewan McGregor ‘tache to go with his acid-wash jeans and the grooviest, daggiest cardigan I’d ever seen. I had to make one. After a period of trial and error I settled on Sirdar Nova as the yarn of choice. It’s not 100% wool, but it’s soft and it was the only thing thick enough to get gauge that had a range of bright colors. In terms of technical difficulty, it was my first ever attempt at intarsia and I bungled it a bit. It looks fine from the outside, but I made the mistake of occasionally carrying the wool across the back instead of cutting and starting a new strand (because it was only a gap of a few stitches, and I’m lazy). I’ve since found out that you NEVER MIX INTARSIA AND FAIRISLE, which is what I was doing. Consider yourself warned. Anyhoo, I also had to invent a way to knit the collar on to the garment since the one knitted to the pattern specifications was way, way too small. But it worked out. I’m actually pretty proud of it! I still need to head to Newtown for some appropriate buttons, but it’s definitely one of my more successful projects. And check out the back! (And as the Aussies keep asking, Australia’s on my left elbow. No, I wasn’t clever enough to do the thing where you reorient the whole world to put Australia on top. Sorry.)
