100 Days of Awesome: Days 48 - 53 - ... *crickets chirp* ...

I really am getting unpardonably lazy with this. Six days in one post. That's practically a week, and, I must say, vastly impractical when it comes to actually remembering the awesome aspects of your days! But I will try my darndest, and I think I'm going to have to do it backwards for this to work. So...

 

Day 53 was awesome because:

1) I had an awesomely productive day at work;

2) I was given the opportunity to eat as many lollies I wanted out of a 5L tub, and only took 5 small lollies, which I have to say is a pretty awesome effort for me;

3) I had an awesome impromptu workout in the form of unloading about half a tonne of coldmix asphalt from the back of my ute;

4) I got to hang out with my BFF Nessa, who is a pretty awesome human being;

5) I ate this awesome dessert of ice cream with frozen raspberries and dark chocolate ganache, 2/3 of which were effectively leftovers from that wedding cake I made:

 

Nom. And,

6) The Kiwi saved the day by going to the supermarket for me when I got stuck in traffic on the freeway. Many (four) hands make light work! By which I mean, we have four hands between us, not that he has four. He's a bit quirky, but he's not an alien!

 

Day 52 was awesome because:

1) I had another awesomely productive day at work;

2) I spent a couple of hours reading the book my hairdresser lent me, which is just as well because my haircut is booked in for Friday and I still have a couple of hundred pages left! So it was an awesome achievement, considering I'm not the world's fastest reader, and awesome that I got to spend the evening reading, which I love. It was slightly less awesome that I had kind of delusional nightmares about it - it's a pretty creepy book so it was quite a restless night for me. But still, I love reading!

 

Day 51 was awesome because:

1) I had yet another awesomely productive day at work; and

2) I had a really awesome yoga class. Which kind of turned into a group therapy session, because my instructor says "tell me everything" at the start of every class, so I told her about my dad. She threw in an extra line than she normally does when she was getting us focused for the class, about keeping our thoughts on the yoga mat. I suspect that was mostly for me. She's a pretty awesome instructor, and it's a lovely, sharing class and an awesomely warm, friendly and welcoming environment.

 

Day 50 was awesome because:

1) It was Sunday!

2) I had a really good sleep in;

3) The Kiwi made me Eggs Florentine for brunch. Looks like picking a fella who did part of his chef's apprenticeship was an eggcellent idea;

4) I saw my dad, which wasn't great because he's quite ill, not himself, and has shaved his beard off and pierced his ear (the beard shaving is an especially big deal because I've never seen him without a beard, nor has my mother, and she's known him since he was 21! It was kind of disturbing...). But he's still my dad, and he still gives awesome hugs, so at least there was that;

5) We took the scenic route through Sutton Grange to Bendigo, which was awesomely pretty, but which unfortunately led me to discover that Collier's Chocolates no longer seem to exist, which was the entire purpose of taking the back road;

6) I had a really awesome Bee Sting from the Beechworth Bakery (they're a custard-filled pastry, for those not in the know);

7) The Kiwi came up with me, not to see dad, but so that I wasn't alone afterwards. He really is an awesome guy;

8) My friend Sara from uni texted me to see how the visit was, which was really sweet of her. I really do have awesome friends; and

8) The Kiwi and I went out for Vietnamese on Victoria Street for dinner, and we had a pretty awesome soup and an array of entree-type things. Nom.

 

Day 49 was awesome because:

1) It was a Saturday! I had another nice sleep in, which was definitely awesome;

2) I went to a birthday lunch of a uni friend, and it was really awesome seeing everyone and finally meeting one of my friends' two-year-olds... which kind of shows how long it's been since I saw Sara!;

3) The Kiwi and I became "Facebook official" Which means, I really, actually have a boyfriend! Ooo-ooh! *giggles* (I won't explain how many levels that is awesome on, because you'll probably throw up. I mean, you already know that he's supportive and you're about to find out that he cooks for me, so the rest will probably be positively nauseating for you...);

4) I decided it was finally time I stopped being such a slacker and cooked dinner (The Kiwi does it more often than not, which I have to say is pretty awesome), and I think it turned out pretty well if I do say so myself; and

5) The Kiwi and I spent the evening just hanging out. I darned the elbows of my cardigan (I really do like to party hard on Saturday nights...), and it was awesome finally having it done after about a year of avoiding it... which explains why the holes have gotten so big! He had bought strawberry tarts - my favourite - for dessert, and we sat around talking, eating tarts and drinking whisky. There was nothing particularly exciting about the night, but it was still awesome.

 

Day 48 was awesome because:

1) It was Friday! And Fridays are always awesome!

2) The Kiwi came to my place for dinner and we hung out with my housemates Rohan and Nyssa, who I have seen way too little of lately, and of course my awesome li'l Housebaby, Layla. Pizza, self-saucing pudding and the M*A*S*H trivia game made for an awesome night with awesome people.

 

I have to say, it's good that I can actually recall the awesome things about my days almost a week later. It means that things are really positive for me, and it's not all down to The Kiwi (although he certainly helps). No, life is just awesome right now. Mostly. And the bits that aren't awesome are made up for by the support from the awesome people around me.

 

What awesome things have y'all been up to this week?

 

100 Days of Awesome: Days 45-47 - I Got The Music In Me; Turkish Delight; and I'm Really Paid To Do This

Something happened on Day 45 that hasn't happened in quite a while.

I picked up a guitar.

And I didn't pick it up and just muck around for one or two songs. I did that the other week, when I was trying to teach The Kiwi to play his own guitar, and that's probably what started it for me. Partly because it rekindled my affinity to it, and partly because he has quite a nice guitar to play, and it doesn't hurt my fingers like my own one does, so it's actually a pleasure to have it in your hands.

 

It's also a pretty darned sexy instrument. Not sure if it's exactly this one but I think it might be:

I really got into it. By which I mean, like, five or six songs. Or maybe it was even a couple more than that. But I was playing, and I was singing, and I was loving it. I'm pretty rusty, and I never really had great technique, but The Kiwi's dog didn't howl in distress which I think is a good sign!

 

I'm telling you this, because it is by far one of the most awesome things that has happened to me all week. I'm just so happy because I have found my music again! It was really, truly dead for a while there, and it's really nice to have it back. I'm even finding myself singing randomly, for no reason, and it's probably only a matter of time before I start singing along with the music playing in the supermarket again. Yep, that's an again. I used to do it, before the music died. Bet my fellow shoppers are thrilled to bits that I'll be back at it again ;-)

 

Day 46 was Kiwi Interrogation Night for my housemates and two of my BFFs (incidentally, also former housemates of my housemates, and the way I met them to begin with), which in all honesty was just the seven (can't forget the Housebaby!) of us going out for dinner with the intention of getting to know The Kiwi a bit better. The good news is, he seems to fit in fairly well and didn't rub anyone up the wrong way so far as I could tell, which was awesome. We had Turkish. Mmm, hot meat and dips. How can you go wrong! The quantities were pretty awesome as well as the quality, which meant that I couldn't finish my meal... and yet we still journeyed across the road to Cold Rock afterwards, where I managed to fit in a serving of Turkish Delight ice cream with Malteasers mixed in. Pretty awesome combination - obviously very sweet, but the maltiness of the Malteasers kind of took the edge off. I'd probably actually consider peanuts next time...

 

On Day 47 I was reminded of one of the more awesome perks of my job - being able to claim reimbursement for a hot chocolate. I basically had to drive 45 minutes to get someone to sign a Deed of Release, and we had a coffee while we were at it to keep things friendly. So I was pretty much paid to drink hot chocolate and chat to a nice lady. And then I popped into my BFF Alice's house for half an hour for lunch - she lives around the corner for my office and is on holidays at present, so it was awesome to be able to catch up with her. She also fed me some really awesome chilli!

 

My evening plans came undone when I realised I didn't have my gym gear with me, which I had carefully packed... and then left on the floor :-( So I was bummed about not finally fitting a workout in, but the payoff was that I got to read a few more chapters of a 650-page book my hairdresser lent me back when I had surgery, and which I am feverishly trying to finish before my appointment next Saturday! Creepy book, but awesome. It's by Joe Hill (Steven King's son) and is called NOS4A2. Apparently it is pronounced "Nosferatu", which is the name of a German vampire film/rip-off of Dracula from the 1920's. And there was a couple of Haigh's chocolates with my evening cup of tea, and Haigh's are pretty awesome, too. Nom.

 

So between finding my music, and Turkish (food AND delight), and being paid to drink hot chocolate and chat, it's been a pretty awesome couple of days.

 

What awesome things have you been up to?

 

 

100 Days of Awesome: Day 40-44 - Morrrrrre Caaaaaake, Ribbons, A Wedding, Some Chocolate and Yoga

Whoops. I actually fell asleep writing this on Thursday night/Friday morning. After my 21 consecutive waking hours on Wednesday/into the wee hours of Thursday, I expected to feel somewhat less energetic than I did on Thursday night... and yet, aside from a small dummy-spit, I was still going strong at midnight, some seventeen hours after I had arisen!

Day 40 - Thursday

I put the fondant on the wedding cake I was baking on Day 39 after work. I thought the sheer scale of it was pretty awesome... until the groom texted me at about 10:30pm after I posted this picture on Facebook (note the scale of the 2L juice container):

He did not, it appeared, find the cake to be as awesome as I did, and had a small freak-out about the dimensions of it. Bear in mind that he had no idea what the end product would look like, besides "white fondant with navy blue ribbon" so it's quite possible his mental picture was very different to mine!

After I shouted my least-favourite swear word and possibly startled The Kiwi, I remembered that a) the groom hadn't seen the other layers of the cake that would allow him to accurately judge the proportions of the cake; and b) people who are to be married quite shortly tend to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic and nervous about relatively inconsequential things. So I took a deep breath and calmed myself, explained about the other layers, and told him to trust me because I wouldn't let a friend have an ugly cake. He settled down, which is just as well, because I was about to lob the fondant rolling pin through The Kiwi's nice, glass French doors! Bear in mind that I had only had 8 hours' sleep in the last two nights and was already stressed out about providing them with a beautiful cake, so it's not all that surprising that I was also a bit on edge. And it's awesome that I didn't end up damaging any property in the process... ;-)

This is what I sent to give him perspective of the scale:

I wasn't quite so happy with the way the bottom layer turned out (it's really hard to handle that much fondant, so I've learnt a hard lesson there about when size counts!). But the top two were pretty awesome in the end, and I had them all covered before I went to bed on Thursday night, as I had planned, to give me time to re-cover them if they were horrible. And I didn't need to. It's awesome when plans actually come to fruition :-)

The bottom layer was mud cake with dark chocolate and raspberry ganache filling; the middle layer was fruit cake for the happy couple to keep for a year; and the top layer was a gluten free orange sponge with dark chocoalte ganache as the filling.

Day 41 - Friday

You'd think that getting ribbon on to cake would be a relatively simple affair. But it's actually nowhere near as easy as it sounds! The big base ones were easy enough, but despite liking the clean simplicity of oit, I wasn't quite satisfied with what I saw:

I know a lot of it is because of the angle of the lighting, but to me you can quite clearly see the separate layers where the fondant sagged over the filling, and that's not cool, man! So I had to find a way to detract the eye's attention from it. Luckily I had an assistant to help get the ribbon placement right-ish:

That's right, my assistant has a cake for a head.

Once the placement was about right I made up a template to keep the levels consistent, marked the lines I wanted the ribbons to take using a pin, and then "glued" the ribbon in place. I was a bit surprised at how long it took, but it felt like a pretty awesome achievement at the end of the night. I was well and truly ready for bed, and when I lay down my feet were so incredibly grateful. It felt awesome to be horizontal, and passed out into a deep sleep in about two seconds flat.

Day 42 - Saturday

This was The Big Day! The cake was transported with no trouble at all, the bride's florist gave me offcuts from the bouquets with which to decorate the cake, free of charge, and it stopped raining in time to carry the cake to and from the car. Awesome!

All this time I had assumed the cake would be set up in a dark corner, and only be the focus when the cutting happened. And then I walked in and saw this and realised that everyone would be looking at it right away - right in front of the bridal table:

(Except obviously the cake wasn't already there at that time).

Eep! No pressure!

So I fussed over the geometry of the layer placement, and fiddled with making flower arrangements (something I'd never done before, but now that I have, I'm seriously wondering how florists get away with charging so much for buttonholes and table decorations...), and I think it turned out quite awesomely in the end (although the leucodendron on the bottom kinda let the team down a bit, I feel).

Off to the ceremony, then to the pub to wait for the reception. I had gotten drunk, sobered up and was hung over by about 8pm, so I had a quick, five minute nap in my chair at about 8:30pm and ended up feeling awesome again. Lovely wedding (still haven't been to two that were anywhere near alike), and an awesome opportunity to spend time with awesome people.

Day 43 - Sunday

Started the day with a free facial, which is always awesome. Moved on to spending the afternoon with my BFF Ness and having a cup of tea, some chocolate and a good natter. It's always awesome hanging with my homies! And then off to Richmond for some Vietnamese with The Kiwi, including this awesome Tom Yum soup, which is exactly what I needed on that cold night.

Day 44 - Monday

Ya know, it was a Monday. Eh *shrugs* But there was a yoga class at the end of it, which was awesome. And dad was hospitalised again, two whole days after being released this time, which, although distressing for all concerned, was actually awesome because it means he's back in the system where he can get treatment and hopefully be stabilized. It's frustrating because the clinical staff never, ever listen to what you have to say about the patient and whether they are ready to go home or not. I imagine if they actually had to support a mentally ill family member they might not be so offhand about what families have to say about the needs of someone we've known our whole lives, but I suppose it's not entirely their fault - the health system isn't really set up for chronic mental patients. So hopefully the psychiatrists are actually competent enough this time to see that three admissions in under two months might actually indicate serious mental illness and a need for proper treatment. I won't hold my breath... but it's awesome that he's in the right place, which is a start. Hopefully the new Mental Health Act doesn't screw us over completely. I'm not sure that anyone really thought through the implications of giving a patient more say over their treatment when they don't actually have the insight to perceive that they're ill... Keep your fingers crossed for me!

So on that less-than-awesome note, what was awesome about your weekend?