music for working and living

I've rediscovered music, which has been just lovely. I used to be a bit of a music nerd, and there was a time when I would go and see a band more or less every weekend. But since I started listening to podcasts on my way to work my interest in music has dropped off a bit.

Over the last few days at work I've spent a lot of time basically just filling in spread sheets and other mindless bits and bobs, and to help pass the time I've been listening to my iPod set on shuffle. And the change to my state of mind has been amazing. I mean, I still hate my job, but since I've reintroduced music into my life I feel much less miserable about it. I never realised how emotionally important it was to me. It doesn't have to be the highest-falutinest stuff, just something that connects for whatever reason. 

...and you're next!

The dreaded cankles (now including graphic illustration!)

I've been hanging around on the internets even more than usual lately because I have a cankle.

This isn't a great photo (I say that as if there's such a thing as a good photo of a swollen limb), and it doesn't convey quite how repellent it actually is, but you get the gist.

Apparently I have a cyst in my knee sack (that's how it was described to me) and aside from being massively uncomfortable if not outright painful, it has made my whole leg puff up and makes me walk slightly lurchily. And I'm not even allowed to complain about it at work because my work friend had leg cancer a few years ago and she's permanently lost all sensation in her foot which makes her limp all the time, and so I feel sort of as if I don't really have anything to complain about. Until I come here, where I let it all out. (I am also not allowed to mention my husband in any context because my other work friend is going through a soul destroying divorce. I'm starting to run out of socially acceptable things to discuss.)

There's no treatment for my cankle except rest, so I've been sitting still even more than I usually would over the last few days. And I've been looking back over my journal from the last week, which where I found this list of things that I've found interesting or just that I've found, and which I haven't really got  any idea of how for how I could share them any other way. Stick around, I did a bunch of interesting stuff last week and I'm going to tell you all about it later. But first these things.

Here we go;

1. I've been typing web addresses into the search bar lately because an environmentally friendly Finnish person told me that every time you google something it uses as much energy as making a cup of tea (the fact that I have had my laptop on for two straight days does not figure in this calculation). And I've noticed that when I'm at work I commit a Freudian slip when I type in Australian addresses, usually rendering them as www.sitename.coma.u. 
2. Did you know that there is a nun doll museum? Or that there's a thriving market for nun dolls? I didn't, but now I feel the strange urge to own a nun doll. Or just to say it over and over again; nundollnundollnundoll...  
3. Why is that that the sweets in chemists' shops are always the kinds of sweets you don't see anywhere else, but which are incredibly soothing and make you all nostalgic and moony? Black jellybeans! Wagon Wheels (I didn't even know they made them any more!). Eucalyptus drops! Diazepam! No, wait, they keep that one locked up in their pharmacopoeia and I have to endure suspicious looks and pointed warnings about not mixing it with booze before they'll give it to me. But I reckon that if Wagon Wheels required a prescription they would work just as well.
4. I go past this ad every day on my way to work (it takes up the entire window of the optician), and it makes me laugh every day. It looks like the most massively uncomfortable social gathering you'd ever be unlucky enough to attend. The kid is hiding behind his grandma, but it's no good, the creepy uncle has reached behind her back to rub him on the shoulder anyway while grandma prattles on unrelentingly about her childhood. The couple in the middle have clearly fallen nastily out of love but are putting on a show for the family. And the girl on the left is obviously butting into the conversation with a poorly timed 'what are you taking about?' just as the couple are exchanging muttered profanities through brittle smiles.

The other notes in my journal say 'cuthbert', 'edible dormouse' and 'which book', for reasons that I'm not really  sure I remember, so you've earned a reprieve until I can remember why.

I'm not sure if this is brilliant or a reflection of the decadence of our society

but this is my new favourite thing to look at. It's a tumblr called Things Organised Neatly, and it's pictures of (can you guess yet?) things that have been organised neatly. 

Have you had a stressful day? Feel as if your life is spinning out of control as you hurtle headlong into a quarter-life crisis (oh sweet Jesus, I'm another year older and I still don't speak French, or have a drivers license, or understand how to use Facebook)? 

Take the time to peruse some pictures of carrots that have been lined up symmetrically, or at the contents of someone's handbag that have been soothingly arranged by size.

Breathe in. Breathe out. It will all be OK.

That fucking moon!

Over on The Awl they've been covering the supermoon in a series highly scientific and brilliantly written pieces. Only suitable if you are not easily offended by gratuitous foul language or unhinged rants, and if your sense of humour stalled somewhere around prepubescence. 

The subway reefs

I love this story about how old subway trains are reused;

They get chucked into the sea to serve as man-made reefs for sea creatures. I don't know why, but it strikes me as quite poignant in an odd way.

it's the longest possible time between now and my next birthday

I love birthdays, and not just my own. I get so freaking excited about them in general. I mean, I love it when everyone has to be nice to me and buy me things, but I like being nice to people and buying them things, as well. It isn't just because I'm a shameless narcissist. 

And I had a lovely day, even though it was a rainy Monday and I had to go to work. The upside of the rain was that the traffic was so bad that I ended up sitting on the bus for a whole extra hour. Now, for some people that would be annoying. But me, I'm a glass half full type. Yep, that's me, always finding the silver lining... what? Why are you laughing?

Anyway, the silver lining here was that I had a whole extra hour to listen to my new favourite podcast, Answer Me This (occasionally foul mouthed banter, which is my favourite kind of banter), and I also ended up having a work day that was shortened by a whole hour, hooray! 

Then we had dinner at my favourite steak restaurant, and I was showered with gifts, which makes a nice change from the sorts of things I'm usually showered with. Amongst the lovely things I received were the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography (Jesus but it's huge) and a very nice tagine, which I will be taking for a test-tagine on the weekend. 

Jo promised to make me a monkey cake, but he had to work later than he'd thought, so when I got home from work, this is what my much vaunted and anticipated cake looked like;

Barely a monkey cake at all.

But I left work early today because I was sick (sick of work, am I right?! No, in all seriousness, I did feel a bit wobbly which is nothing to do with my consumption of birthday booze. I have some sort of fluey thing and also a swollen foot for some reason, so I chucked it in and went home).

And I took it upon myself to en-monkey my cake, with I think quite spectacular results;

Hell. Yes.

Now that is a monkey cake to be proud of and the only downside is that I'm reluctant to cut into that cheerful little face. 

All in all, a satisfactory birthday. Thanks everyone for making it a adequately enjoyable time.

Spanglish!

So this will only really make sense if you speak a bit of Spanish, and  if you don't you'll just have to take my word for it that it's quite amusing. All you really need to know is that the question being posed is 'what are some common English phrases?' One helpful fellow has replied with common situations and what you should say in response. Just say the words in all caps in a strong Australian accent.

What to do with a bushel of figs?

I am the deliriously happy recipient of a shopping bag full of perfectly ripe figs, and as soon as I saw it come through the door my mind started to tick over the possibilities. What to do with all those lovely little globular delights? Other than devour them greedily, while refusing to share them? 

As appealing as this option is to begin with, one must acknowledge the, ahem, moving nature of too many figs in one go, and it is sensible to space out your figular consumption. 

My next thought was a marscapone tart or goats cheese cake (yuuuum), but I didn't have the ingredients on hand and was too lazy to go and get them. 

So, a cake it had to be.

I have seven bazillion cookbooks, but not one of them had a decent looking fig cake recipe, so I turned to the internet. This one seemed to fit the bill (i.e. I scanned the ingredients list and found that I had everything) and I plunged in without really reading the recipe. I know, a rookie mistake. If there's one thing every cook should have tattooed on the back of their hand it is 'THOU SHALT READ THE RECIPE THOROUGHLY BEFORE THOU PICKEST UP THINE WOODEN SPOON'. 

I launched in quite happily and everything was going well up until I hit this part;

Whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt. Put the sugar and lemon zest in a bowl and rub them together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and aromatic. Add the butter. Beat butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition. Pour in the remaining 1/2 cup honey, add the vanilla extract and beat for another 2 minutes. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing only until they are incorporated.

  

I misread this paragraph (because I bring to cooking the same slapdash halfarsedness I bring to everything in my life). I do think instructions should be laid out a bit more clearly than that, but I can't blame someone else for my laziness. Anyway, I did everything in the wrong order and mixed the poached figs into the cake instead of scattering them over the top. This made it all much goopier, and I had to compensate by adding extra flour to the mix, and I think that contributed to the cake being a bit too doughy, but overall it came out well enough. The cake itself is not too sweet, and the figs are lovely and gooey. It makes quite a lot of syrup, but I imagine it would be really nice on ice cream as well.

Here's the recipe, as it ended up under my attempt;

What goes in

For the poached figs

3/4 cup port or sweet wine

2 slices of lemon (cross ways)

1 cup honey

10-15 fresh figs, quartered

For the cake

1 1/2 cups plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup cornmeal/fine polenta

170g butter, cubed

3 eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Zest of half a lemon

Dash of cinnamon

Pinch of salt

What you do with all that stuff

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a 24cm round cake tin or similar

Make the poached figs first. Put the port, honey and lemon in a saucepan* and bring to the boil. 

Lower the heat, add the figs and simmer gently for five minutes, until the figs are just starting to get a bit pulpy. 

Remove the figs from the syrup with a slotted spoon and set aside. 

Simmer the remaining syrup until it has reduced and gone thick.

Next, make the cake.

Sift the dry ingredients together

Add the butter, rub in until the mix resembles breadcrumbs

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well each time

Add the honey (oops, I forgot this when I made it, worked out well without it though)

Pour the batter into the cake tin, and spread the figs over the top - they should sort of sink into the batter a bit as the cake cooks

Bake for 45 minutes, until a clean skewer doesn't come out dirty

Leave to cool for ten minutes or so, then carefully turn out onto a cooling rack

Serve with the syrup and cream or ice cream. 

The, when everyone has had some cake and left the table and you think no one's looking, cram a big slice in your mouth. Someone will be looking, of course, and you'll die a little inside because they've seen you dribbling crumbs, but it will be worth it. 

* You could just give up at this stage and drink the port instead of buggering about in the kitchen. I wouldn't judge you for it.

Things I saw this week

I love you with all of my sole...get it?

The most exciting thing to happen to us this week was finding this stick insect in the kitchen. It was pretty big. It made me think of the old joke 'what's brown and sticky?'*, which makes me think of the time we tried to tell that joke to a Portuguese guy who didn't speak great English. I really wish I could have those thirty  minutes of my life back. Turns out puns don't translate well.

Caption: Landscape with Enraged Ox. It certainly is. I got in trouble for taking this picture at the art gallery of NSW. What is it with me and gallery attendants?

*A stick

The world is a strange and wonderful place

Headline: Flamingos drop from Siberian Sky: Locals Mystified. 

I can't think why they would be. Stupid Siberians, unable to comprehend why tropical birds should be landing on their shivering shoulders.* 

(P.S. I googled this story, and this popped up;

It's my birthday on Monday. I'm just sayin')

*I apologise unreservedly for this unwarranted racial slur. 

New goal: stop whining

Don't worry, the maladjusted cynic you know and tolerate isn't going anywhere. But I am sick of hearing myself whine about how much I haaaaaate my job. So today I will be telling you about some other things.

First of all, these fun things from our trip to Canberra a few weekends ago;

You might have to zoom in a bit for this one

Also cheering me up this week; bits of conversations I have overheard on the street, which I can only hope made more sense in context;

• OH MY GOD! If there was a fire, I would, like, totally die.
• Man, that's so much better than ten burritos.
• It was so sad, we had to wrap each other in toilet paper 

All in all, it hasn't been a bad week. I'm starting to hate my job less. I am no longer terrified of the entertainingly unpredictable mood swings of my boss, and I have a work buddy to have my lunch with. I have been to some proper business meetings, like a real live grownup (one of them was with someone at the Art Gallery of NSW, and I have to admit I got a huge kick out of that). I have learned that, while on paper I work five days a week, Fridays are unofficially a write off. Everyone turns up late, we all have lunch in the pub, then we spend the afternoon doing as much work as we are capable after a lunchtime wine, then at four in the afternoon the drinks trolley comes round and we watch TV/play on the arcade games/trawl the internet etc, with impunity. I have learned that the currency of my office is Cheezles, and that if you get in the way of someone trying to get to the Cheezle bowl on a Friday afternoon, you will get your ass knocked down. And I have learned that I can get a later bus to work but still get to the office on time, meaning that I can sleep in for half an hour longer in the mornings.

If it wasn't for the actual work, I would be loving my job.

more gloom

Why does one have to work? WHY? To quote The Clash, as one should always do in moments of extreme emotional stress;

It's no good for man to work in cages
Hits the town, he drinks his wages
You're frettin', you're sweatin'
But did you notice you ain't gettin'?

Word.

Seven working days in and I am over this shit. The work is not hard, but it is, how can I put this...soul crushing. Marketing is really not for me. I am far too emotionally fragile not to take rejection of my carefully thought-out schemes personally. I spend all morning thinking about how I can help various people have businesses that suck slightly less, and then when I tell them how they can be more awesome they shoot me down. It's just like high school all over again, except that my hair is way better these days.*

Even my diary seemed to be conspiring against me today. It's the Permaculture Diary, bought  because it was marked down to $4 in the ABC shop, and because I felt that professional people should really own diaries. Because it is designed for rudderless hippies (which is why it was on sale - hippies don't need day planners) it has little inspirational quotes scattered throughout the pages, and today's was from Kahlil Gibran; "work is love made visible". 

To which I say: Suck it, Kahlil.

I got my first job as soon as I was old enough to work, and up until I ran away to Spain last year I had basically never had time off. Having had five months of holidays, I am ruined for life. I mean, getting up every day at the same time? I can't cope.

The one thing that made this day not completely awful happened on the bus on the way home from work. I was slumped up in my seat by the window, not really looking at anything, when I noticed that in the lane next to the bus was a car with a kid in the passenger seat who was leaning out the window and waving wildly at the bus. I gave him a little smile and a wave back, and he looked as if it had made his day. Did you ever play that game 'sweet and sour' on car trips? It's a great game for when you've become too bored even to play counting games, and when you've lost the energy even to squabble. Basically, you wave at people, and judge them 'sweet' or 'sour' based on whether they wave back. We used to love it, but I never thought at the time that, just maybe, I'd made someone's day a little bit less miserable by doing it.

So thank you small child in the ridiculous Lexus 4WD, you will never know how much that helped me today.

*My 'best friend' in high school used to tell me on a regular basis that my haircut made me look like Fabio, and that I had hairy toes. If I knew how to get in touch with her, I would send her the bill for my anxiety meds.