Horsing Around

Last week sometime, I popped into The Local on my way home for my regular afternoon catch up on the way home from work. I was just heading off home when one of the locals said “Don’t go home yet, one of the managers is bringing in her new horse”. I was intrigued and made further enquiries, which is when I was told the manager was bringing in a horse she’d bought that afternoon, and it was currently travelling with her in her back seat. Given all this I can actually understand why the Publican laughed and said Sure when she called to say she’d just bought a horse, it was in her back seat, the pub was on the way home and could she bring it in to say hi. Clearly, he thought she was mad. As did I. I stuck around anyway – it’s not every day a staff member from The Local goes completely barmey. Then she arrived. With her new miniature horse.

That horse is full grown. As she strolled into the bar with it, the Publican’s eyes boggled out of his head. Several of the local drunks checked their beer glasses, and possibly decided that was enough for the evening. The horse was not as tall as the bar stools. Most hilarious thing I have seen at The Local all year.

Edited to add: Here’s his front view. He has a shaggy fringe so it’s a bit hard to see his face!

Good and Bad

Good.

This weekend, The Boyfriend and I are headed to the South Coast of NSW with my baby (ok, not so baby – my younger) brother. The Boyfriend and I are going to a wedding in the area on Sunday and decided to shout my brother dinner at Bannisters – the new Rick Stein restaurant on the NSW south coast – on the Saturday night in exchange for a lift from the holiday house to the wedding and back on Sunday. That’s why the three of us have Monday off next week, for a non standard long weekend.

Bad.

Before the weekend away, we need to attend a funeral for a local.. how to describe him… a guy who lived a few blocks away that had different life choices than myself; who was in trouble more times than not (as in, the most positive story I can think of to illustrate this without getting all into stuff that’s not my business is that he just got allowed back in The Local after several years being barred for selling wacky weed in the beer garden), but that we knew reasonably well, and many of our friends knew and loved. It’s a respect thing in part, but I must admit when I walked past his house on Friday and he told me a few very funny (and inappropriate) jokes I would never have imagined a heart attack would have been the end of him by the Sunday morning. I had the hard job (“because you have that geeky internet thing at work, right?”) on Monday of emailing a few out of town folks to let them know what had happened – I am NO good at emailing bad news, my email even ended with “Insert some kind of non awkward closing sentence here”.

Good.

Well, funny at least. I went to see the COO of my division today. He had asked me to put together a 1 page summary of a specific work issue: status, what was happening to resolve it short and long term, etc etc. I put some hours into getting it right and headed over to my weekly catch up with the big boss. He was cross. He asked silly questions. After we got through only 2 sentences of text, he paused and said “Well, I have asked 10 questions already. That tells me this document is not clear at all”. I was really annoyed he wasn’t getting it, and answered with “Well, I understand it perfectly. Perhaps you’re just stupid?” Luckily he thought I was joking (which OF COURSE I was) and even ended the meeting by telling me I was a star as I left his office.

Bad.

Let’s forget any more bads, and just end on the good. (Am now writing this in permanent marker on my arm, just to remind me through this busy stressy week ahead!)

Home Alone

I’ve had a somewhat unwanted housemate for the last 3 months. A friend, who at the time was desperate, promised it was only for a couple of weeks – you know the drill. 3 months later it was starting to wear a little thin – I’d only been back in my house for a week before Mr Onlyforafeweeks arrived. I hadn’t had time yet to wander around in the nude. As you do. Well, as I do anyway – why would you wear clothes to clean the house, for example, when you’re only going to get all sweaty by the time you’re done.

Mr Onlyforafeweeks got very cheesed off with me last weekend when I had sent him a very blunt message advising how selfish and rude I thought he was to not turn up to a BBQ lunch I had invited him to (an invitation that he had accepted, and that I had catered for when preparing food), preferring instead to go to the local pub for steak-in-a-glass.  It wasn’t the first time, so I called him out on it.

Seems like he’s gotten so enraged by my message that he has not spoken a word to me since. Or a word to The Boyfriend, even though they were supposed to be good mates. I did hear he was planning on moving out this past week – there is nothing kept a secret at The Local, after all. He hasn’t managed to let me know he’s moving, however his clothes were all gone by Thursday, and the house has been peaceful ever since.

Yesterday I was chatting to a friend at The Local about how lovely it was having the house back to ourselves again – and without thinking, I said “Yep, I’ve been wandering around all day in the nude, it’s been just lovely”. He raised his eyebrows and nodded as he replied, “Yep, I heard there’d been a  big car accident on your corner.” I was quick to retort “Oh, not from me wandering around in the nude, I had all the blinds closed. Although I suppose it might have been from when I forgot what I wasn’t wearing and went out to check the mailbox.”

Let Them Eat Cake

Yesterday The Boyfriend’s mum gave us a chocolate cake. I shit you not, the thing is the flattest cake I have ever seen. I am not sure how I managed to thank her and then wait to laugh until I was safely home. The funnier still part is that her next door neighbour cooked it and gave it to her.

I’m wondering if The Boyfriend’s mum’s neighbour was trying to say something by giving a complete fail-cake to her. I’m wondering why The Boyfriend’s mum would say in actions, if not words, “Thanks for taking our son off our hands, here, have a shit fail-cake because we don’t want it”. She gave me half a banana cake too, and then said in response to my thanks, “No worries, it’s dry and burnt on the bottom, by the way”. heh.

Check out the chocolate cake – it barely reaches the first joint on my index finger – and I have short stubby little fat sausage fingers. I’m thinking I might whip up a heap of cream and make it into some kind of swiss roll.

Almost the end of the week, which can come around any time now, and hurry. The end of the week means meat. We need to get through some more meat at our place. This was our haul from last Friday’s meat raffle at The Local – 4 meat trays full.

Roll on, weekend, I need you!

Snippets

On Friday I accidentally won another huge beef roast at The Local. I’m getting pretty good at making roast beef now, that’s for sure. Although I am getting a bit sick of roast beef sandwiches. This week’s roast was 2.5kg (5.5 pounds) and it was boneless so not any part of that weight was from a bone. Last week’s was even bigger. Luckily, I am not thinking of turning vegetarian any time soon.

The last 3 weeks have been rather boss-free at work, with him being on holidays. He’s back today. Something tells me I won’t be getting home early all week this week. Or coming in late. Gee the last 3 weeks were good though.

This financial year is the first year I am in charge of a budget at work. We are 1 month into the financial year and I have discovered already items that are regular charges that I did not budget for. This should be an interesting learning experience!

This is my little Ned. Ned likes to fall asleep while reading books. Ned was named after Ned Kelly the bushranger.

I booked a holiday in December. A cruise. It was a bargain price or I probably would have opted for something more exciting. I found out that someone from my work has booked the same cruise. Actually 2 people have – they both work at my work. I am friendly with them because I learned long ago to be nice to people at work, and they will remember that and help you out when you need it. If I didn’t have to be nice according to my rule I would say they are both wombats (waste of money, brains and time). Must spend next 4 months working out avoidance strategies and studying the layout of that ship.

Meat

I love a bit of raw meat. However winning 3 huge meat trays at The Local’s raffle on Friday night has produced somewhat of a meat glut in the house.

On Sunday I roasted the world’s largest roast beef. I’m great at roast lamb and roast pork but had only ever tried roast beef once before. That time? I threw it in the bin and got a pizza. This time I harnessed the power of the interweb, and googled “how to cook roast beef” before commencing. Apparently you cook it in a slow oven, not medium like a leg of lamb or pork. Actually, not even just apparently – it is true, I sealed it on high for 20 minutes then reduced it to a low oven temperature and slow roasted it for 4 hours. It was so delicious and tender. Roast beef sandwiches this week for leftovers have been an added benefit. Although only on day 2 of roast beef sandwiches and with about 6 bajillion slices of roast beef yet to get through I am concerned I’m over it already.

What on earth am I going to do with the rest of the meat? The freezer is so full of meat I ended up writing a list of what was in the freezer. It’s something like this:

• 1 pack of 8 sausages
• 1 pack of 4 sausages
• 1 pack of 4 huge pork chops
• 2 packs of 4 big lamb forequarter chops (which I don’t like much – might have to casserole these)
• 1 pack of 3 T Bone steaks
• 4 rashers of bacon
• 2 packs of 5 lamb stewing chops
• steak and mushroom pie filling (home made and frozen ready to pop in a big pie crust)
• chicken and leek pie filling (also home made but only enough for a snack size not a huge pie)
• 1 packet of mystery meat. No idea what it is. Looks like it might be steak. After finding this, I labelled the rest as I froze it.

That’s just the bits I remember. Shame I really feel like chicken tonight.

Lucky Coins

On Saturday I melted this 5c piece to the ice that was forming on the taps at The Local.

By Sunday it had a thick glassy sheen of ice over it (and its two friends that I had also added after taking the photo). I suppose it is wrong that this was what I was most proud of myself for over the weekend.

Last night (early this morning?) I woke sobbing after having a terrible dream. The Boyfriend found it very hard to understand why I was so cranky with him. After all, I suppose it was all only in my dream that we went on a road trip to meet up with his other girlfriend and he couldn’t understand why I was so upset. (That’s the short version – in reality it was a very long and complicated story and involved a vast array of characters.) Odd how dreams can seem SOOO real! I blame the Steak, Mushroom, Guinness and Oyster Pie I made for dinner. (Or perhaps I just wanted to show off about they yummy dinner I made last night.)

Toilets and Teeth

Work has been keeping me pretty busy lately. At least I am finally starting to feel like I can do the job. You know I can always still make time for popping in to The Local. Last night I put my footy tips in on the way home. Someone’s been drinking in the toilet again. Weird. Who does that? Then again, I suppose, who takes photos of toilets with drinks left on them with their bad mobile phone camera.

I suppose it’s no worse than the photo I took on the mobile phone last weekend at The Local. One of the local boys was worried someone would take his beer. So he put his false teeth in his glass. Mmmm, tasty.

Pig Out

I think I must have swine flu. Why? Because I ate like an absolute pig yesterday. Perhaps it’s related less to swine flu though and more to having stayed out too late the night before drinking beer and watching the State of Origin match at The Local.

I have a habit of eating my way out of a hangover, but I did outdo myself yesterday. I had the following:

• Junior Whopper burger with cheese
• Toast with cheese spread
• Home made steak and mushroom pie
• 1 Jam filled Krispy Kreme doughnut
• 2 Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts. One of which I bought for another girl at work but found I ate it before I had a chance to give it to her.
• Cheese and crackers
• Garlic bread
• Large-ish bowl of pasta

Yes, I know you all think I am a pig now, but there was no way I was leaving a post up about my poor underwear choices over the long weekend, was there!

Any Other Time I Would Have Been Angry

Yesterday I was on my way to work. I was feeling pretty tired and second hand after a late night cheering up a friend with a broken heart. I must have looked a sight. Of course, there was no seat available on the train – there never is when you really need it!

It was pretty chilly and I was wearing a read coat that only buttons up high and flares out to mid thigh level. A bit like this one, but possibly less fitted around the waist.

A young man who was sitting near me caught my eye and very politely said “Excuse me, would you like my seat?” Halleluiah! I gratefully accepted, on account of the fact that I felt a million years old, had not enough hours of sleep behind me and a raging hangover. As I thanked him and sat down, he frowned at all the men nearby and murmered something along the lines of how he hated it when men did not stand for pregnant ladies.

I was torn for a split second while it computed in my brain. Flared coat that is not fitted around the belly. Tired looking woman. He thought I was pregnant! It took only a moment to decide between telling him he was mistaken and giving his seat back or leaving it as it was. I smiled at him really sweetly as I thanked him and rubbed my belly in the way I have seen pregnant women do. I like to think I made his day for his thoughtfulness – he would have bragged that all over the office. He sure made mine, and I got an extra 25 minutes of shut eye on the trip that was desparately needed. And I paid back karma wise by making myself almost miss my train home that afternoon by stopping to let work security know someone had left their headlights on in their car which was parked in the work carpark. Oh, and it made a screamingly funny story to tell later at The Local.