Day 297 - My hungry rice cooker

I don't know how I've never noticed this until today, but my rice cooker has a face?! And it looks hungry!

Day 292 - Reason #4 why I love Snowflake

Sometimes she likes to pretend to be a decorative object.

Day 291 - Sheep alpaca, nice email, cute stuff at Daiso, Frankie's 50th issue and being catnapped on

Here are a few things that made my heart sing today:

1. Hahahahaha this kills me.



2. Getting this in an email from someone lovely at work just about made my day too.
   


3. Daiso, you and your abundance of cute stuff kill me.

I mean, you can buy chair socks here. Chair socks!!



4. Wooooooooow I wish I had taken the plastic wrapper off my Frankie magazine sooner, their cover for their 50th issue is INCREDIBLE and easily the most amazing cover I've ever seen. It looks stitched - it feels stitched - but it's not stitched. I can't stop touching it!
   


5. Shhhh Snowflake's sleeping. She pinned me down to make sure I couldn't go anywhere awww.
   

Day 289 - "I'm going home now" and smiling cucumber and bag

1. Felix Baumgartner, Austrian skydiver and BASE jumper, broke several world records today by free falling from an altitude of about 39 kilometres. It takes a certain kind of crazy, stubborn and brave character to achieve this incredible feat - I love that he said "I'm going home now" right before leaping off the capsule. As he said, "When you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble. It’s not about breaking records any more. It’s not about getting scientific data. It’s all about coming home." Watch the video of the jump and read more about it on Gizmodo.


2. This is really silly, but my friend Becky posted this photo with the caption "THE CUCUMBER IS SMILING" on Facebook and it just about made my day.
   
   Then I saw this in an email.
   
   THE BAG IS SMILING.

Day 288 - Special delivery of macarons

Joanne dropped by unexpectedly tonight with some macarons from Adelaide's The Mac Factory.

My friends make me fat, but I love them for it!

Day 285 - Ice cream on a bad day

There's no way to sugar-coat this - today was a shit day.

It all started when I woke up feeling unsettled, unrested, annoyed and exhausted. Then hours later I got a call from a cunning elderly woman who wanted to sell me income protection. I know I probably brought this onto myself due to my stupidity as I usually politely answer a few questions when I get these calls as I somehow feel bad for them, but man this woman was a sly old coyote.. after answering a gazillion questions, before I knew it, she was asking me for my credit card details?!

That was when I cracked it. I lost my shit. I don't lose my shit very often and I don't like it when I do - it's like I'm possessed! My crazy angry eyes take over, my tone hardens, it feels like my heart's caught in my throat, I get light headed and I lose control over what I say, heck most of the time I don't even know what I hurl out of my mouth, but usually it's along the lines of "now you listen to me...". But it seemed to do the trick. She thanked me for my time. Goddammit I need to remember to hang up straight away next time.

The rest of the day didn't get any better. There was so much work to do, and a work colleague was being so snarky, condescending and self-righteous that I was so close to losing my shit again. But I managed to hold it together this time. I couldn't wait to get home so that I could give Snowflake a hug (which I did when I saw her sitting by the door waiting for me, and during a melodramatic moment I asked her to never leave me).

So on a crappy day like today, how do I cheer myself up?

Sometimes I indulge in some retail therapy, usually on ridiculously priced clothing or random crap I don't need. Sometimes I buy flowers for myself. Other times I crank up some music and dance and shimmy the badness away.

And sometimes I eat ice cream. Lots of ice cream.

It worked a treat!

Day 283 - My first fried rice

This may come as a surprise because err I'm Asian, but I have never made fried rice before... until today!

I've always thought of fried rice as one of those dishes that requires way too much effort to cook due to all the chopping up, and is too cheap and easy just to buy from the shops. And as sad as this sounds, I've also secretly been intimidated by fried rice (of all things!) - supposedly anyone can make fried rice, but to make really good fried rice apparently involves more than just chucking a bunch of stuff into a wok, and actually requires some skill (gasp).

But I thought I should at least try to be a real Asian and give it a go, plus I had Michelle's home-grown snow peas I had to use up, so I made an 8-veggie (snow peas, mushrooms, green beans, corn, carrots, peas, zucchini and celery) fried rice with bacon (to balance out the veggies). It actually turned out surprisingly well!

I also prepared some sambal belacan to accompany it..

Because everything tastes even more awesome with sambal!