The Long Weekend

Our Easter long weekend was mostly a lot of lazing around. This year so far has been go go go for both of us, a lot of family outings, quite a bit of work for me, work and uni for the other half, just busy-ness in general.

Living in an area where a lot of tourists – referred to by some locals as another T word much less flattering – visit on long weekends, public holidays and school holidays, a staycation is your best way to avoid long queues, busy restaurants, sometimes badly cooked meals or meals you had to wait a very long time to arrive, and much traffic.

Once I left work on Thursday, we did not go near another shop and I will not until I go back to the shop tomorrow. Part of that is thanks to getting back into meal planning and a fortnightly shop.

We did go out for one long walk down to our former neighbourhood Callala Bay / Beach. We chose that instead of Huskisson as they were having a rather large event. They do have quite a good network of walking and cycling paths down that way now, so it is always a more peaceful option we can use if Husky/Vincentia is crazy busy.

We are never quite sure if a decision will be a good one until we are on our way there. In this case we feared the worst because the traffic was quite heavy on the way down but once we got there the people all went different ways and the walking paths were mostly free of insanity.

We did a 10km run/walk. I like to split my 10kms into two halves because the first 5km is where I usually run – in this case it was the first 2km and then some sprints – and the second 5km is a bit more leisurely. It was very hot out – almost 30C (86F) so we paced ourselves.

Part of this was through the neighbourhood known as Benton Sands which is a very lovely development. They have a community centre and pool and I believe the plantings were all supposed to be Australian native plants which does make for a more natural environment. It also does mean a bit more hayfever at this time of year, at least for us.

We passed this large group of swans feeding. I’ve never seen this many swans in one place at one moment before.

We ended up at the Boat Ramp on our way back to the car which is always great entertainment on a long weekend. It was absolutely packed with cars and boat trailers. BOATS AKIMBO. Absolute madness!

At home there was much coffee..

And cake.. which made me fit in another 5km run on Monday around our home block, in which I encountered a very large spider just hanging out on the ground for no apparent reason and let out an incredibly loud scream as a surprise to myself and though I did not ask I suspect also as a surprise to the spider. I went back and took a photo, which I suppose is a step in the right direction towards not being quite so terrified of those creatures. I will not share it here because That Is Not How I Roll.

At home there was The Bus at least once a day, AKA Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I’m not much into the Marvel universe at the best of times and I couldn’t tell you anything about the movies but I love this show and their bus – aka the massive plane – is super cool.

I also binged Season 5 of Bosch which was deeply excellent, caught a few episodes of various shows which I am watching weekly at the moment in particular Line of Duty, LOVING Project Runway with Christian Siriano as the mentor, 24 Hours in Police Custody, COPS, and my one hate watch, Sister Wives. I like the wives, I just HATE the guy and therefore it is beyond my understanding how he has collected up 4 wives who can stand to spend as much as one minute near him.

Sephyroth and I caught up for a lovely video chat in which he updated me about a work conference he went to, sounds like it was awesome. I caught him up on all our happenings here.

I brought home the work laptop for the weekend so I could try and clear out some extra space on there, deleting useless games and various Windows junk which nobody wants or needs.

I also sat down with the Spreadsheet Maestro AKA The Other Half and we created a couple of things which will make my work life a lot easier. I’m fired up and super excited to get back to work today, then I have a couple of days off in which I will run quite a bit, and then a little more work.

How was your weekend – long or short? :)

coffee, exercise, food, Home, television shows

As much as I love cows..

there comes a point at which you have to wonder, do they love us back? How many sour milks does it take to turn a once great relationship to thanks but no, I’ll take a bottle of water instead?

So I’m at that point now. I’ve bought one too many 600ml flavoured milk drinks that have turned out to be no good. As much as I love drinking it, from now on the only milk I’m drinking is milk in my coffee, or flavoured milk I make myself.

coffee.1

While on the subject of drinks, I have a coffee machine which if you went out to buy a new one today it would be at least $1000 or more. It’s worth every cent when you love your coffee. This machine is great – you press one button and it grinds the coffee, makes the coffee into the little round ground up coffee nugget, pours the water through the ground up coffee nugget and then dumps the ground up coffee nugget into a little bin at the side of the machine. Then you press another button and it gets the steam ready to froth the milk. That bit we do manually but you can get attachments to the machine to do it for you as well, depends how lazy you are.

We’ve had the machine for almost two years now, since Christmas 04. I would hate to think how many coffees it has actually made but not one day has gone by where we have not made one each. This machine has paid for itself roughly 6 times since we bought it, in coffees we have not had to buy.

coffee, country life, cows