What Is This? October 25, 2009
Posted by graciek in Going Out, Life in General, Sydney.add a comment
Out and about around the City today and took lots of piccies. Question is – what is this a photo of?
Facebook Glitch October 23, 2009
Posted by graciek in Life in General, WTF?.Tags: facebook glitch
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The weirdest thing ever just happened on Facebook. We have our friend Lisa visiting us and I’ve been letting her use my laptop to check emails and go on facebook, etc. I went onto facebook and it told me I had a friend request. Duly I clicked on the link – strange I don’t know this person and she has no friends in common with me. As standard – I clicked IGNORE. Went back to my homepage and it was a bit odd as the person at the top of my news feed wasn’t one of my friends. However everyone on the feeds below was and the photos stream were my friends’. Strange I thought this must be a glitch so I pressed on the home button again. Weird, now I have a news feed with no one I know on!! Also my thumbnail next to the status box is not me, it’s Lisa’s. The photos on the right are still my friends though and it definitely says my name in the top bar. Yikes – somehow I’ve mutated into a Lisa/Grace facebook entity. Sure that’s not supposed to happen. So pressed logout and it went straight into Lisa’s profile. It was like somehow Lisa was already logged in, then I managed to login ontop of that, facebook got confused and merged our news feeds. It was quite amusing and I only wish that I had taken a screen grab of it. Slightly worrying though, imagine if it had been a public computer!!
Egg-free Carrot & Pineapple Cake October 22, 2009
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Decided to do a bit of baking again this afternoon. Really wanted to make a cake or cookies but realised that we have no eggs left (not even a small one hiding in the back of the fridge). Here’s the recipe:
-175g of self-raising flour (I used about 100g of wholemeal and 75g normal)
-50g of raw brown sugar
-1 large grated carrot
-1/3 of a medium sized pineapple diced finely (I had some fresh lurking about in the fridge I guess you could use a 250g tin drained)
-Handful of sultanas
-1 tsp of vanilla essence
-1/4 tsp of baking powder
-2 tsp of white vinegar
-125ml of water
-50ml of vegetable oil
For the icing:
-125g of cream cheese
-100g of icing sugar
-1tbsp of cold water
-Orange zest
Mixed the dry ingredients together and then added the fruits and liquids. I didn’t bother with the hand blender, just mashed it about with a fork. Poured into a 9″ cake tin (used spray oil to grease the tin first). Bake at 180 deg for 40 mins then allow to cool. Mix up the ingredients for the icing and spread on top of cake once cooled.
Another Scorcher in Bundeena October 21, 2009
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After 3 weeks with my MIL visiting and it being unseasonably cold, damp and all round unpleasant weather it’s been wonderful sunshine and blue skies since she left on Thursday. Today it was another lovely day and we had our first over-30 deg day for some time. As it was my brother’s day off we spent the day with him at his pad in Bundeena (which is a lovely little remote township in the Royal National Park in Sydney). Headed off to the beach with little Evie and remembered (first time since Jan) to bring her bucket and spade set. We had ice creams and went down to Horden’s Beach first and enjoyed the lovely clean sand and Evie paddled around a bit in the creek. Yet again she found another boyfriend, this time, a Thomas the Tank Engine toddler to play with. Headed over the ferry pier, over the rocks and onto Gunyah beach. Gunyah is a lovely small beach and it’s always very quiet as noone (apart from those who live nearby) know it’s there. The house was boiling when we got back and even with all the windows open and fans blasting air around the humidity didn’t really drop till around 10pm (just in time for sleeping thankfully).
Day Trip to Kurnell October 20, 2009
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As we have a visitor staying with us (yes, another one) I decided to take us out for a little drive for the day to Kurnell. We finally found the Visitor Information (d’oh stupid roadworks meant we ended up almost in the refineries there). There’s a lovely short walk, around 1km circular, that takes you past a number of monuments and viewpoints. It took us around 1 hr to walk round as little Miss Evie decided she absolutely did not want to be carried and that she was adament she would walk. Sadly Evie’s walking consists of “tacking” left and right all over the place, and stopping every 10m to sit down or inspect a twig/stone/leaf. The concrete path there also had polished stones embedded in it so that was another delight for Evie to stop and try to pick up. We eventually got round to the Cook monument where by I got fed up of Evie’s dillydallying and put her on my shoulders. Our friend Lisa suddenly jumped up and started waving her hands about. I was so confused. Apparently a big magpie was dive bombing poor Evie. Evie was shrieking away with laughter as I was spinning round trying to see what it was and Lisa was prancing about like a mad woman. We must have a looked a sight! As we walked past a number of other monuments we wondered whether these spots were exactly where Cook might have stopped or whether it may have been further round the bay. Either way it is an absolutely lovely place to walk round and the small museum there was quite interesting. Drove round the rest of the park and stopped off at numerous spots to take in the vistas. Finally got hungry and went down to the Silver Cafe for a lovely greasy spoon style chippy and then across the road to play on the beach for a while. Evie enjoyed picking up shells.
Beginners’ Art Class October 19, 2009
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I started my art classes today. After experimenting/playing with painting I decided to enrol in an evening art class at a community college in nearby Oatley. Having no idea what to expect I was a little nervous but also exciting about learning some new (or in fact, any) techniques and seeing if I can actually draw something that looks like it’s meant to!! Did some of the theory/basics first and worked out I need to go buy a lot of materials (but thankfully am sure I can find most of them in the $2 shop). Then set about trying to draw some shells. I picked 2 v difficult ones to draw. One was spiralley and spiky and the other was very curved and had to make look 3D. In the end I ended up with something that looked like a pineapple and something blob shaped (ah well, I can only improve from here, I hope). Actually quite enjoyed the evening and was quite relaxing.
Bon Voyage October 15, 2009
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Mum and Howell left to go back to Blighty today. It was like a grey cloud hanging over us all day. I took them to Oatley Park for the morning just to get their legs stretched (preemptive anti-DVT measures he he) and also for Evie to go to the playground. Evie was particularly clingy to her Nana and she knew something was up. I guess it’s worse as this time we don’t know when we’ll see them again. Our next planned trip back to the UK will be 2012 and by then Evie will be 4! We always knew it would be hard for everyone when we decided to upsticks and move to the other side of the world but it’s always so happy when we see family and friends again, but doubly distressing for us to all be parted again.
Gymea Afternoon Trip October 9, 2009
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Another pretty soggy day again!!! Poor Mum and Howell have had such rubbish weather all holiday. Not only has it been wet, it’s also been cold too. Brrrrrrrrr. There was a short break in the rain in the afternoon so we decided to get out of the house for hubby’s last day off work. We went down to Gymea. First stop – the Hazelhurst Galleries. Bugger – they’re changing the display tomorrow so the gallery itself was closed. Decided we didn’t really just want to go to the gift shop and cafe so moved on. Went down to the Camelia Gardens. As we got there the weather became glorious. As usual, I totally forgot that it closes at 4, so we whizzed round in less than an hour. Actually the nicest part was the part at the bottom just outside of teh park. There’s a lovely waterfall going down into Gymea Bay with loads of ducks (and really cute fluffly ducklings at this time of year). The weather changed again and pissed it down as we got back to the car. We made a quick stop at Nina’s Chocolates and spent ages deciding what chocolates to get. They were all so beautiful, but expensive ($8.60/100g) so we had to really agonise over which ones to pick.
