Travelling

I'm travelling a lot at the moment. Tomorrow for instance, I am off to Portsmouth for the day for work, and at the weekend I went to visit family. I've got lots more UK trips planned for work in the next few weeks. Not to forget my daily travel to work. I'm feeling quite exhausted, so my blogging isn't very frequent at the moment.

Here is a cute little kitten that sneaked (snuck?) into my brother's house. Unfortunately, his cat, whilst happy to play with the kitten outside, is too territorial and chased this poor kitten under the car. Talking about animals under cars, I nearly killed a squirrel whilst driving along a country road this evening, it is the third kamikaze squirrel in as many months, they just come out of no-where. Luckily it managed to run across the road in time.

The weather here is really too hot, and we haven't put on the heating for months. Our flat is on the top floor, and the heat rises from the floors below, making it like an oven. We can't open the window much as VH and I both have hay-fever. This is a small downside of the summer. Anyway, I'm going to not write much now as I have to be up at 6am tomorrow :-(

Feel-good Friday

I've noticed that other blogs have 'Feel Good Fridays' with music videos. I considered being different and blogging about 'Musical Mondays,' but it's Friday night and I'm in the mood for music. Here is my favourite song of the week, Gabriella Cilmi's 'Sweet about me.' I always listen to the radio whilst driving (ie. a lot!) and I love it when this song comes on. I actually like most songs that play, I think listening to a song so many times makes you familiar with it and love it, even if it isn't the kind of music that you would normally listen to.

Creative Carrie

I had a fun day at work today... we had an arts and crafts afternoon, and there were a lot of activities going on. I made a fascinator, amongst other things. It wasn't as impressive as some fascinators that my colleagues made, but unfortunately I don't have pictures of them to put up. Without the comparison, I don't think it looks too bad though. Some of the fascinators I think could be worn to weddings, or Ascot. Not mine, however. I wouldn't be seen dead in it (not that I have any weddings or social events to attend!) but it was fun to make & nice to get paid making it. This is why I love my job. :-) P.S. Please see Ms Cocoa's post below.

Update

Hello everyone, just thought i'd update you all, have been away from blogging for a while as i am expecting some guests (the in laws) any moment from abroad. Also the weather has been so nice for the last few weeks, i have been going out and enjoying the sunshine. I met alot of new people too, i think its much easier to make friends when you have a small baby, like i randomly was chatting to a lady in the park who also had a small girl. She turned out to be a clinical child psychologist and I made a potentially useful contact!! The other day we were walking by the riverfront outside the apartment and i met another mum and baby and she lives 2 floors above me!! We subsequently went to a mother and baby group together which was fun, her baby by the way is 22 pounds at only 7mnths! I could hardly lift her she was so chubby- but cute!! Also we went to a BBQ by one of Dentist Hubby's colleagues, it was alot of fun, I have never been to a work-do like that before and it was nice. I feel i am missing out a bit though now, on the whole contacts, and meetings and academic get togethers and things you share when you are working. (Like the other day Dentist Hubby drove a carful of his colleagues over to Haymarket for a huge conference event, and it sounds like they all had a fun roadtrip and day, filled with presentations, and yummy lunch, and generally a memorable event.)
For the bbq I took along a huge tray of lemon meringue cupcakes and coconut cupcakes, and everyone loved them- they were all finished very fast! So i finally know what other people think they taste like now!
x

Chilikopita

Veggie Hubby and I made a special version of our favourite Greek dish, Spanakopita tonight, which I have dubbed Chilikopita as I put chili powder in it accidentally. I meant to put in nutmeg! I fell in love with Spanakopita through my Greek friends; it is a filo pie with spinach and feta in it, and it is absolutely delicious. Chili isn't such a bad addition to it actually, and it wasn't too spicy. I haven't added a picture of the filling, as it didn't look aesthetic enough. The picture below is of a nicer one we made back in 2004 in Montreal. It was one of the first times we made it. Spanakopita goes nicely with a Greek salad.

Today, I saw something which reminded me why I am vegetarian. I was watching 'Shipwrecked' (a reality TV show with people in their early 20's on a desert island). There was a debate about whether or not they should kill their pig, 'Chops' which had become domesticated. The pig was very sweet, and just like a dog, it had learnt commands like 'Sit' and was affectionate and got excited about human company. I was very sad when there was a 6-4 vote in favour of killing it. Even VH thought they shouldn't have killed it, and was sad too. This however did not stop him from eating a pork Brussels pate as soon as the programme had finished.

Holiday!

I booked VH and myself a holiday this evening. I have something to look forward to now, a trip to Brittany and Paris... :-) This means that VH and I will be on holiday for our first wedding anniversary. We never managed a honeymoon, for various reasons (as neither of us had a job at the time and VH didn't have a visa). Our situation now is much better than it was a year ago.

I think we may go to Malta sometime soon, as I am craving a beach holiday, and VH has never had a beach holiday. Even though I am keen to go somewhere more exotic, like the Caribbean, Malta is more affordable from here. Actually I really, really want to go to Australia, I feel a real affinity with it despite never having been there. Perhaps it's because I grew up loving Australian soaps, koalas and kangaroos. Having said that, however, I am really excited about my trip to France, because of the people and a certain friendly black dog I will see there.

Back Home!

I'm back home at last after an exhausting couple of days travelling up north and back... I'm glad to be back home. Some things I learned/saw on my trip:

• A HUGE, fast-moving spider in my hotel bedroom.
• A very large lady half naked in the train station ladies room, she was wearing a see-through bra, yuk!
• A newsagents sign saying 'Flasher Binman Jailed.' This is quite worrying, does it mean that there was some strange man hiding in and jumping out of bins flashing passers-by? Or a binman flashing people whilst collecting the rubbish. What a disgusting combinitation, and what a relief he is jailed!
• Some taxi drivers are useless as they don't even carry cards for receipts.
• Travelling through the London Underground with a very heavy suitcase is hell, as there are few ramps/escalators/lifts and lots and lots of stairs! Thankfully, there are a lot of pleasant gentlemen willing to help a poor lady out.

New Blog Features

I added a few new, exciting features to my blog. Firstly, I added a new blog list that is really a RSS feed rather than just a link, as it shows me who has updated their blogs, so I don't need to go onto a blog and find that it still hasn't been updated ;-) It's really neat.

Then, I added a little poll to see how many readers I may have. So far, I have only 5 votes, so I figure this blog isn't that popular. :-( Not that I do much to improve it's popularity, as I don't want to tell my friends or colleagues about it, it's just for me really.

I also added some links to sites where you click and the sponsors donate money to charity. I linked to 'The Animal Site' which I do try to remember to click each day, but quite often forget. Hopefully, by having the link to this site on my blog, it will remind me to click it, and all the other related sites (e.g. The Hunger Site) every day. I also saw a new little game, on The Free Rice Site, that tests your vocabulary whilst giving 20g free rice to charity for each correct answer. So, you can improve your vocabulary whilst donating free rice, how fab is that?

Another weekend over...

11pm on a Sunday night. Another weekend over. Not that this week will be too bad, mind you, as I get to travel for work, stay in a expensive hotel at the expense of my employers. I've never been had a job that I love before, but I feel really lucky to have my current job.

So, this weekend was fairly uneventful, but it was sunny. The highlight was speaking to my eight-year old niece who I haven't spoken to for ages. She was very chatty and explained how her friend has a swimming pool in her house, and a bookshelf that rolls back revealing a secret passageway. Sounds fun, my niece has a better social life than her aunt it seems.

Book list

I am currently reading The First Wives Club by Olivia Goldsmith which is taking me ages. Perhaps it is because I am too busy with my job and other things to read, or perhaps the characters are just too shallow and superficial. I have a huge pile of books to read too, and VH was ordering some books on Amazon the other day, so I thought I'd order a couple too that I am curious about including The Book Thief and What Was Lost. It will probably take me a year to read all the books I have at my current rate, but when I see a book I want at a good price, I can't resist it. I have a lot of travelling for work next week, so perhaps I'll have the chance to make a small dent in my pile.

I was wondering how well read I am. Here is a Telegraph list of the top 100 books; I've read 26 of them completely. How many have you read? There are others that I have read quite a lot of like The Complete Works of Shakespeare, and The Bible; others that I have seen an adaptation or film of but not read like Les Miserables, Lord of the Rings, Oliver Twist and Tess of the D'Ubervilles; and others I can't remember if I've read or not, like the Jane Austen books, The Hobbit and some of the children's books. Most of the books that I have read, I read ages ago, either as a child, or in depth through studying them at school, but I feel quite up-to-date with the modern 'classics' on this list.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8= Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
8= His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce 7
6 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Quorn picnic egg appreciation

You can probably tell by the amount of times I blog about sweet foods like cake how much I love it! Chocolate is my number one favourite food. However, it has a new close contender ... the Quorn picnic egg. This has to be one of the best savoury snacks out there, even better than a bag of crisps. In fact, they are so nice that they are becoming a delicacy - we have only found them in one shop (Waitrose) and they are usually sold out. VH goes in to look daily for these rare scotch eggs, and today he got lucky, there was one pack remaining. They are like Fabergé Eggs.

As a child, I loved scotch eggs , but as a vegetarian I haven't been able to buy ready-made scotch eggs, so I was over-joyed when I saw this new product in the supermarket a few weeks ago. They consist of free-range egg mayonnaise in a Quorn 'sausage' meat, covered in bread-crumbs. I have tried to make my own vegetarian version of scotch eggs with VH in the past, but they turned out as catastophy scotch eggs. Unlike these perfectly formed, delicious Quorn eggs.

I am glad that they have made the eggs picnic-sized with egg mayonnaise with them, as I don't like scotch eggs which have a hard-boiled egg in the centre. As well as having egg mayonnaise rather than a whole egg in the middle, they also benefit from having Quorn sausage meat rather than real sausage meat in them, as they taste the same but without the pig bones. I encouraged VH to try a real scotch egg recently, as he had never tried them before (I think they are British) but he was put off as the meat had some bone in it (or cartilage, vein or something - VH isn't sure exactly what it was). Gross! With Quorn picnic eggs I don't miss meat at all, I think they are tastier than the real thing, and healthier too.

Cars are evil!!

Driving has been on my mind recently ... it stresses me out so much sometimes. I wish there was better public transport around here, so I wouldn't have to drive at all. Cars are so convenient, I couldn't live without mine now. However, they are evil in so many ways, and two of the worst possible ways as they are: a) bad for the planet, and b) bad for the people who live on this planet (e.g. road traffic accidents).

Another reason that cars are evil is that they bring out the worst in people. I see so much abuse on the roads. For instance, a couple of days ago when it was very hot and car windows were down, I saw a man yell something as he passed a woman on a roundabout who wasn't positioned correctly. Yesterday morning, I was driving in obeying the speed limit exactly and saw a guy behind me pulling rude hand gestures at me because I was going too slowly for his taste. I have to hope these people may not be so bad if you met them, and somehow being in a car makes them psychologically act in a different way, as I don't think so much rudeness is encountered as on the roads. I always try to let people out and obey speed limits but feel like I'm a minority sometimes, and some drivers should improve their road manners.

Also... Big Brother 2008 has started. I have to stop myself from watching this rubbish, I haven't watched it yet (one day in!) and am going to try to not get sucked into it this year. VH doesn't like it, and it is probably a waste of time, even if it is something relaxing to do after work.

Finally, what is up with the weather these days? One day it is hot, the next day there are torrential downpours. Today was quite nice at times. It's nearly the longest day of the year, I love it! This is the reason why I love summer so much, the sun and long days. It makes everyone happier, even if my hayfever did start yesterday, my eyes are all red and I keep sneezing....

Hairiest man in the world

I am feeling ill, very very ill, i just a a sandwich for breakfast and i sprinkled some rock sea salt into it, URG bad bad idea, i can still taste the crunch URGGGggggg.
Ok so i have been having a blog vacation for a while as basically CutyBaby has been a bit sick with a bad cold/bug. It all started with some random sneezing, then in the night she woke up at 2am and was somewhat delerious with fever as she started talking about cupcakes (i taught her that) and then started listing all the words she knew- it was a long night!! Then the next day she seemed ok. We found out that Almost Dentist Hubby passed the big exam, yay! So he is now Dentist Hubby (in theory) in practise he is Oral Surgeon Hubby, ANYWAY the next day we decided to celebrate and went to a nearby coastal location. It was nice to see the sea, and have a walk along the beach, it was also nice that it was so quiet, just alot of nice old couple sitting outside their beach huts. But then through the course of the day Cuty Baby got worse and in the end we went home early, she had a fever of 41 oh no! After a good long sleep i thought she would be fine the next day, but it was even worse. She had about 6 tantrums, continuous crying, no food, no milk, and in the end i had to read her the Bristol Zoo and Gardens visitor guide book (dont ask) about 6 times till she fell asleep!!!! Anyway she is getting better now, but it is definatly no fun having flu-ey baby.

Speaking of documentaries i saw a good one last night, 'The Worlds Hairiest Man' on C4, the link is here, http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/T/the_worlds_and_me/index.html
i was interested in this as recently on the news i saw a photo of a little baby born with a rare condition called Werewolf syndrome. They showed a family in mexico that had many boys suffering from this condition and the boys were actually performing in the circus and earning a lot of money. The worst was an 18m old boy with a face full of hair who was also in the circus. This was a bit shocking as Cuty Baby is the same age, its difficult to imagine 'exploiting' your childs 'defect' in such a public manner to make money. I know many parents around the world have children born with many strange conditions and they certainly do not resort to displaying them in a circus. But have we moved on from the freak shows of the past? I wondered what was this documentary then if not a freakshow? I guess its just that, a documentary which we are watching privately in our home, and learning about a condition that we maybe did not know about before, and I for one realised that whilst these boys have a lot of hair, they are just normal people. I am glad we have moved on from Freakshows in this countries, and circus's are just for entertainment or true skills and talents, not unfortunate defects.
xxx

Miserable Mondays

I hate Mondays. Today was rainy too which didn't help (except bizarrely at lunch time when it was sunny enough to eat outside). Only four more days until the next weekend.... though I am much happier having a job than not having one, so I'm not complaining (too much).

As I haven't posted a picture for a while, here are some flowers VH bought me this evening. As we don't have any pets, we need flowers sometimes to brighten the place up. Especially if it is a Monday.

Confessions of a couch potato

I have been such a couch potato this weekend. I don't think I've watched as much TV as I did yesterday.... in fact in general I don't watch much TV anymore, but perhaps I watch more than I think. I must get out more...

So, yesterday started off with watching the Neighbours omnibus.... which I got kind of bored with, I can't watch it for that long. So, I was switching between that and Shipwrecked. Then, I watched the Lost Finale. I did leave the TV for a few hours in the afternoon when I went out for a coffee with Veggie Hubby to another independent coffee shop, and again regretted not going to a big chain. Above this little shop was a 'clinic' offering alternative therapies e.g. past life regression, future life progression, HypnoBirthing, and many other pseudo-therapies with weird names. The 'therapies' don't come cheaply either, at a whopping £60 per hour. Next time when I want to buy an over-priced coffee, Starbucks it will be.

In the evening, there were the two reality TV finales, making a four hour marathon. In I'd Do Anything, I didn't really have a favourite, it varied week on week depending on who was there. My favourites (Francesca and Sarah) got voted out early on. Last week I thought Rachel was great for the first time and she became my new favourite, but then she got voted off. Out of the final three, Jodie would have been my second choice, with Jessie first. I really think Jessie outperformed Jodie last night, in every song. However, I am not disappointed that Jodie won, especially as she obviously wasn't a favourite with shallow Cameron. So, it is quite satisfying that the 'People's Nancy,' won. In 'Britain's Got Talent,' (which I haven't been watching that much) I thought that a lot of them could have been worthy winners, and I was pleased for George that he won, as he was one of my favourites.