Guilty pleasures - Part 1

Food




I love eating. Here are some of my food guilty pleasures.


Eating an entire mini wheel of camembert cheese in one sitting.


Microwave popcorn - so unhealthy but so tasty



Smoked salmon - I can eat strips of this stuff by itself.



Coffee gelato




Glutinous rice balls (the onese filled with seasame)

And salsa and corn chips (I can eat an entire packet of corn chips with salsa in a city as my boyfriend found out to his loss).


Others include:
olives
feta cheese
cheds (so good)
strawberries
marinated eggplant, mushroom etc
CAPERBERRIES (not capers...but caperberries..there is a difference)


These are just a small sample of my foody guilty pleasures


What food guilty pleasures do you have?

Yesterday

Yesterday was a mixed day





I got up at 6.30 to go to my field site (that is early for me!). My second bus was late (grrr) and the bus driver was sooo slow. Like 40 Km the entire journey! And there was this noisy creaking noise the entire trip which drove me crazy and prevented me from reading!





Then when I arrive there...I was late..and to make matters worse I must have misread the tidecharts or something because the water was higher than expected! So I hurriedly glued labels on the my limpets and took some measurements...Then I had a couple of hours to waste there...so decided to go for a swim :) :) I hadn't brought my swimmers so stripped to undies and t-shirt...and splashed in..And boy did it feel good!!!! No one else around just me and suprisingly clear ocean. So cool and refreshing. Thankfully there were no old ladies glaring down from me from the golf course above my field site :)

(This is not from yesterday but from my holiday in the Northern Territory...but I think it illustrates the clearness and refreshing nature of yesterday's swim)

Anyway...on the way back I home I discovered I had failed to bring a drink bottle. Very silly of me...really getting dehydrated after at least 4 hours in the sun. So when I get back to the city...I go the ATM to withdraw money to buy a bottle of water...and wait...what...you have reached your daily withdrawl limit...what...I havn't been near a bank or ATM today,..i have been in the middle of nowhere! So i go in...and yes...someone had taken/stolen $1600 from my bank account!!! And because it was done that day (yesterday/Thursday) I had to wait till today to start the formal fraud investiagtion (transactions don't show until the next day). Now $1600 is quite a lot for me so I was very upset.



But it is all sorted now. They said I will get my money back. Yay!!!



So a not so nice end to my day

Food in compartments

I love having a meal with lots of little compartments. Like...japanese bento boxes. Sometimes when I am at work and i feel like a different meal to my usual sushi roll I will go to somewhere slightly more fancy and have one of these. Not the sushi bento boxes...but the really cool ones with a mini main meal and salad and sometimes a desserty thing and miso soup and yay!!!!

I also discovered on Little Sooti (http://littlesooti.blogspot.com/2009/11/dylans-candy-bar-new-york.html) a really cool lolly tacklebox by Dylans Candy Bar New York which was also pretty groovy.

Yum cha is also pretty kind in a compartmently way...lots of small little dishes.

Hmmm...i think I should do a cheese compartment dish someday for a picnic :)

Farewell holiday in Tassie

Before my boyfriend left for Antartica we had a quick trip along the east coast of Tasmania. Some caravan parks are the biggest rip off. For example one place charged $25 a night...and then it was extra for the use of the bbqs...and (even worse) you had to pay extra for a hot shower!!! Even more ridiculuis is that we found parks in towns with free bbqs and at St Helens you could get free hot shows at the wharf area!!! Anyway, enjoy the pictures

Frecyinet National Park. We spent a peaceful morning here in a beach with no one else - eating fresh oysters and reading books.

An echidna scrambling away at the side of the road

Bay of fires. Beautiful beaches to wander around and no one much around though apparantly heaps busier in the peak season

Beautiful lichen coloured rocks

Me walking through temperate rainforest.

My Birthday

My birthday was on sunday. Not the most exciting of birthdays. I spent the day cleaning before going to have a much needed back massage - soooo good. I did get some kind of unusual presents though



Blackwood chopping board - smells so nice and is really smooth and gorgeous looking. I love things made from native wood!

A sheet of unused skittle wrappers. From this place in India apparently

A bag made from unused chilli sauce wrappers. So groovy I thuk. Will save for a special day :)

Things I learnt this week...

a) Birthdays are made good by having people to spend it with...This is the first year I have not been excited by my birthday's imminent approach (tomorrow/Sunday). Nothing planned. Probably just go to hang at home reading/movie watching or go to a NSW vs TAS cricket match by myself and take a book for back up. Part of the reason for this non-excitement is the lack of people to celebrate it. Most of my friends are all either studying for exams or out doing field work stuff. And my boyfriend is on a boat/in Antartica. Sigh.

b) Do not wear one of your favourite t-shirts when doing field work. Yesterday I was out supergluing tiny labels to my limpets. I was wearing this really cool t-shirt whilst doing it. And low and behold I got my special magnetic protractor glued to my t-shirt. You think I would have learnt by now

c) Make sure you bag is zipped properly up when there is food in it. Also a lesson I learnt yesterday whilst out in the field. I had this tasty pizza thing in my bag packed for lunch. I left my bag in a nice dry spot after getting all my gear out of it. I was in a rush so didnt really focus on making sure was all nicely zipped. I turn round and later and see my things sprawled everywhere and the topping of my pizza thing stolen by a silly bird. No lunch for me. Meant no food for from 10 till 5.30 when I got home.

Blame the supervisor - Progress report on honours

from www.seashellsofnsw.org.au

Sigh. My first experiment was going great. I had collected my data - taken 600 measurements of limpets over 2 days and 3 "sites" - and it all looked pretty good - mostly. The data suggested that limpets DO face a particular direction - downwards.

So i go and talk to my honours supervisor and he says "maybe go out for a third day". So I dutifully go back and out and take another 300 measurements and then analyse my data. Ba baaaaa (that is the quiz incorrect noise). My data now has basically no nice pattern in it any longer! Which means I have to rethink my next experiment which I had already designed and was ready to go!

I am obvisously not 100% happy. But a struggle will only make me stronger/better * fingers crossed*

In need of a massage

What I would really like is a personal massaging person.

Everytime I go out into the field I come back and the next day my back is so sore it is painful to move. This is because of the ultra ackward positions I have to get into to measure my limpets.

Now an alternative to going and paying for a massage every week woiuld be to buy ones of those massage machines - you know the ones you hold and they vibrate on your back type thing.

Except...

I can't stand the feeling of the machines vibrating in my hand. It drives me absolutely crazy.

So does anyone have any magical massaging advice?

Anyway that is my rant for today