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This is GENIUS: The Jelly Belly Wine Bar. A wine magazine has put together recipes using Jelly Bellies that allow you to sample classic wine varietals and styles. And ha! Some of them use Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans to add a touch of “dirt” and “grass.” Just be sure to avoid the f**kin’ merlot. (Link courtesy of the Sydney Food Diary.)

Kevin just pointed me to a ton of pictures from the upcoming Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie. Man, Mad-Eye Moody is givin’ me the serious creeps. He reminds me of that scary witch in The Dark Crystal. The rest of the pictures are linked on The Leaky Cauldron. Unfortunately I think everybody in the world’s trying to look at them at once, because it’s taking ages to get the others to load…

It’s been a bad day.
The cat woke us up scratching on the bed at 3:20 a.m. (We shut her in the bathroom.) I’d set my alarm early to get up and go for a run, which means that I woke up every ten minutes thereafter in anticipation. When I finally did get up, I felt sluggish and my throat was sore. The arm on my sunglasses broke. I couldn’t find my iPod headphones. Nevertheless, I headed out for half an hour of shuffling around the park. My nose ran constantly. (How do you runner-types deal with this? Whenever I’m out on a chilly morning, my nose runs. That made me feel like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. By the end of my first lap, I was seriously considering blowing my nose on my sleeve. (I didn’t.)) Once I got to work, I discovered that we were short-staffed AGAIN today due to sickness (which made everybody who did come in that much grumpier). And then the Excel spreadsheet I’d spent three days working on got corrupted and broken and I couldn’t open it at all. And suddenly I noticed that I’ve got a full-on head cold forming here. Everything sucks.

But then my wonderful clever husband managed to retrieve the data from my file and provided the one ray of sunlight in a terrible, no-good, very bad day…

It seems to me like this scientific study linking mothers who smoke during pregnancy to offspring with anti-social behavior seems to dance around one very big elephant in the room: Women who don’t care enough to practice good prenatal care probably won’t care enough to raise their kids well, either. Occam’s Razor, folks. Crappy parenting is a far more likely explanation than some sort of inherited “bad behavior gene”.

A couple weeks ago I asked the Snook where he wanted to go eat for his birthday. “Let’s eat meat,” he said. “It’s time to drink the Grange.” I gasped. “Are you sure? Is it a special enough occasion?” “Whenever you open the bottle,” he said, “that’s the occasion.” And so it was. We ended up heading out to Kingsleys Steak House (the King Street location) in search of prime beef rich enough to pair with a 29-year-old $700 bottle of wine. (His brother-in-law gifted him the bottle some years ago and it’s been in storage ever since.) That first picture is me and the Snook right before we left the apartment. I have to say though, my first impression of the restaurant wasn’t that great. We were seated right in front of the staircase – prime traffic area – and it seemed kind of busy and touristy. Like, there were kids eating there. (Fair enough, but when I go out for a special dinner I don’t expect to see sprogs.) The food was pretty damn good though, and our service – though not exceptional on a Neil Perry level – was unpretentious and attentive. Normally they don’t allow you to BYO, but we’d made prior arrangements that we were “bringing something special” and the waiter seemed to know what he was doing with the decanter. While we waited for the Grange to “breathe,” we tucked in to damper roll (home-baked bread) and shared an entree platter of Oysters Kilpatrick, Chicken Liver Terrine, and Deep Fried Camembert. (That’s the second picture.) For the mains, I had the filet mignon and the Snook had the ribeye with prawn. My only real complaint about the food as that my filet was way, way redder than it should have been for a medium-rare. It was just plain old rare. I ate it anyway, as it’s not a big deal for me, but I definitely didn’t expect it that bloody. (The Snook’s medium-rare ribeye was much more to my liking.) It was excellent beef though, and the wine – much to our relief – hadn’t turned in to vinegar. I’d like to say that the subtleties of such an expensive wine weren’t wasted on me, but in reality all I can remember was that it was pretty nice and I got pretty tipsy pretty quickly. For desert I had the creme brulee and the Snook had ice cream, which the waitress was kind enough to bring with a birthday candle in it. Wasn’t that sweet? And now I’m full as a tick so I’m going to bed. I have a feeling that I’ll be using my “Get out of Weigh-In Free” card this week…

Note for the fashion conscious: What do you think about the colour of my top? I just got it the night before and I’m terrible at shopping for myself. It’s a very light teal blue and I just thought it made an interesting contrast with my hair. I was also skeptical of the boatneck, but it seemed flattering in the changing room so I went with it. Please be brutal with your assessment; I need to learn.

Stitch ‘n’ Pitch: Now that is a brilliant idea! Of course, if they ever officially introduce it at the cricket I’m going to take credit. (Link courtesy of Jeff.)

Sorry Sis, but I just found a great site discussing the ending of Half-Blood Prince and I have to share it. It’s in the comments though, so you won’t be tempted to look at it. (Don’t even mouse over the link. The URL is a massive spoiler.) And if anyone wants to discuss it, let’s remember to include spoiler warnings to keep the home page clean…

Australia has officially banned the sale of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas… which actually makes me want to finally play it.

Damn. ParkerWatch 2005 is officially over, and I have lost. The fabulous Ms. Posey has managed to elude me. According to my sources, she showed up at the shop yesterday to collect her fugtastic tapestries… right about the time I was at home, up to my elbows in homemade chocolate birthday cake for the Snook.