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This is my 200th post on my blog, yay! You’d have thought I’d have so much drivel in me (me!)?
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR! Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Got out and about this week. We hired a car for the day and went shopping. First of all we went to Frosts, a garden centre in Milton Keynes. Some of the shelves were cleared and getting filled with Xmas decorations. IT’S BLOODY SEPTEMBER!!!
There’s another garden centre just a few hundred yards down the road from there, Wyvale. They were doing the same bloody thing!
Anyway, we wanted to look around as we’ve got ourselves a council allotment (strip of land on council property we can use for growing plants/flowers/fruit and veg on). It only cost us about £17.50 for the year. All we had to do was make a £2.50 deposit for keys to get onto the site. It’s a BIG plot of land. I’ll provide a pic later on.
There’s quite a bit of weed on the plot and it’s over grown, so we’re trying to weed it without having to deturf the soil. Em says the soil is rock hard, and not of the best quality, so I’m not sure how we’re going to go growing on it.
We went to Morrison’s supermarket after the garden centre trips. AGAIN more Xmas stuff on the shelf already! Found a lovely cooking magazine there with some lovely recipes. Last night I had a chicken noodle stir-fry. Skinless, boneless chicken thighs mixed with red bell pepper, onion, garlic, chili, beansprouts, straight-to-wok noodles and oyster sauce. It was really yummy, and hot. I was careful only to use the chili flesh and NOT the seeds though, so it was manageable.
There some more fab recipes for us to try in it that can easily be adapted to vegetarian dishes.
Got some DVDs to watch. A BBC drama series called State of Play, with Blackpool star (and soon-to-be Doctor Who Xmas special star) David Morrissey, previous DW Xmas special star (and Life on Mars star) John Simm and Bill Nighy, among other luminaries. It was a highly acclaimed series, so I’m hoping it’ll be good.
Got the first series of Nighty Night to watch too. It was SO dark! I sort of missed it when it first went out and would catch bits of it here and there, but would like to see the whole thing proper.
The other disc is the movie Music and Lyrics with Hugh Grant and my mate Drew (Barrymore). Just fancied seeing it.
I’m SO peed off with the DVD rental place. Just when I got half-way through getting Medium series 2 from the friend of a friend of a friend, they get series 2 on DVD!!! I’ve added it to my rental queue though, as the “friends” copies are not the best.
Watched Ugly Betty last night. SSSOOOO loving that Betty’s back! Oh, and Mock The Week was on too, with Frankie Boyle being his usual dark self!
Sorry, this one’s a bit of a random post.
Bye…
My BFF in America, Kelly, sent me a box of lovely goodies that arrived this morning. YAY!!! Guess who’s going to have choccie chops later!!
I just watch the DVD of Alien Autopsy, the film with Ant and Dec in it. It wasn’t too bad. Not absolutely “laugh out loud” funny, but good to watch. Liked seeing the story behind it.
There was a repeat of the Quatermass Experiment on BBC Four last night. They seem to be repeating a lot of Mr. T’s acting back catalogue on BBC Four at the moment. I watched it when it was repeated in 2005 (it originally went out live while I was away in Oz in 2005) and it was one of the first things to be on TV when it broke DT would be the next Doctor. I think with it being sci-fi based as well, it generated interest to see how he’d be.
I’ve got other DVD’s to watch. The final parts of the first series of Medium, the first 3 episodes of series 3 of Doctor Who and Blades of Glory, which I’ve been wanting to see for ages.
Coincidentally, the new, 4th series of Medium starts tonight on BBC One. I’ve recorded it as I’d like to try and watch the rest of the other series’ first.
Another thing I’m really anticipating is the (long, long, LONG overdue) return of Ugly Betty!! Yay! I have missed Ugly Betty SSSOOO much! God damn friggin writer’s strike!!!
Had a bit of a financial crisis today. Don’t really want to go into detail, but things will be REALLY tight until the rent is paid this month. Bread and jam for the next 10 days, me thinks! We’ll be okay. Just wasn’t something we really needed to happen right now, but you know how things are.
Went out with Em and Gilly (my father-in-law) today to Letchworth for some shopping. We stopped by Lidl first for some budget shopping. Stocked up on grape juice, baked beans (I love the baked beans they sell) and other non-perishables. We bought some vanilla creme wafers from there which we tried when we got home. YUM!
Then it was on to Morrison’s where I stocked up stuff that I like most from there, their facial tissues – cheap boxes at 35p each, but don’t come out of the box all attached together like other cheap brands (ASDA Smartprice being an example) and they are quite soft, for 35p. Got some cream of asparagus cup-a-soup, some cous-cous snack pots, among other things. Sweet things included sticky toffee trifle and lovely, lovely Baklawa, which I had been hankering for for quite a number of weeks now, and they were divine!
We hire a van tomorrow and have a second attempt to buy a new sofa. Hopefully things will work out tomorrow and around this time tomorrow we’ll be in possession of a new sofa, and possibly a chair as well. We were given the money to cover the lounge today as money that was owed us, so we might (if the sofa is significantly smaller than the one we have now) extend to getting a chair as well. Where else but Ikea could you buy a sofa and chair for £108?
Just a short and sweet one for now. I’ll leave you with an image of the sofa and potential chair…
The weather has finally settled itself down after a week of humid, sticky, but dark and damp weather. Today is sunny and cool, perfect!
I have finally been listening to more music. Most of it has been quite retro, as it always usually is for me. I can’t help being stuck in the 70’s/80’s/90’s. I hardly listen to any “new” music. The “newest” music on my rotation of play is Franz Ferdinand. So far it’s been revolving around Bjork and Eurythmics, with a bit of kd lang splashed in.
This is the Bjork song I can’t get enough of at the moment. There’s a line in it I just love…”Since we broke up, I’m using lipstick again. I suck my tongue, in remembrance of you.” How sexy is that?!
The Eurythmics stuff I’ve been listening to is Touch, and Touch Dance (an album of remixes of songs from the Touch album) and Revenge. Here’s my favourite song off the album (I love The Miracle of Love as well).
[youtube=http://youtu.be/KKFIAYQccKw]
I am fully in love with kd lang’s voice. The Cambridge Folk Festival was on over the weekend, and she played there. I SO would’ve loved to have gone, but the tickets were long sold-out and damn expensive anyway! The stuff on her most recent album sound as lovely as ever. She just does beautiful songs and has the voice of an angel. Her voice would make me do naughty things 🙂
Last artist on my rotation id Nick Lowe. Not a person I’d expect to have on my list of music at the moment. BBC Four showed a concert of his the other night and I watched it and really got into his music. I got his latest CD and have it in my playlist.
I’m going to cut and dye Em’s hair today. All the greys are coming out again! I should have my OWN hair cut now. I’d booked an appointment last week to get mine done, then I got man flu, thrush, then my period, so ended up cancelling the appointment. I’ll go this week though. I got myself some dye too. I’ll take a pic once my hair is cut and killed (dyed).
Just got through watching the 2nd series of Blackadder on DVD. There is something scarily sexy about Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder in the 2nd series. I SO love Tim McInnerny as Percy. He’s such a nonce! But you can’t help but feel sorry for him. Still got Brigadoon and Jekyll to watch.
The Tudors was back on Friday night. Yay! I hate to break it to the actress playing Anne Boleyn, but she doesn’t have much time left! Still, she’s got to have Elizabeth yet so I’m sure she’s in a few episodes to come.
The only other show that I’m into at the moment is Bonekickers. They’re making archaeology exciting! I’m sure it is for those directly involved in it. And of course, with it being fictional, there’s a bit of artist licence, so they are making discoveries that probably would not actually happen in real life.
I have to show up Em. For about the last 12 months or so, there has been an ad campaign for this “pure, filtered” milk called Cravendale. They have the most SURREAL ad campaign involving a Tour de France cyclist, a pirate and a cow?! Yes, I know! Anyway, the ads are stop-motion animation and they are growing on me. I couldn’t see why Em would get so much pleasure when these ads came on air, but over the last few months I’ve begun to see the appeal.
The premise of the ad (in case it escapes you) is that the cyclist, the pirate, and the cow wake up and want to have their morning glass of milk. The cow goes to the fridge to pour out 3 glasses of milk, but guess what? There’s only enough for one! NNNNNNOOOOOOO! So, they decide to have a game of musical statutes to determine who gets the glass of milk. The cyclist cheats by putting a paper cut-out of himself there, so in the meantime he can drink the glass of milk. Naughty cyclist! I love the pirates reaction when he realises he’s been robbed!
Here’s the other, which makes a little more sense once you’ve seen the first one.
The thing I love most is the cow. Why would a COW be craving milk THIS MUCH?! This second clip is much like how our trip to Hitchin was the other day! Except we didn’t end up in a milk truck, just a ditch!
I think I’ve already come out of the worst of it. The DT’s for DT have subsided. I still think the man is WELL hot, but just the total irrationally obsessive behaviour has subsided a lot.
Still totally hooked into the theories of how this series of Doctor Who is going to end though. There are so many theories going around. Like (regarding the regeneration) the Doctor will split in two (two Tennant Doctors), a second Doctor played by either Christopher Eccelston (back to 9th Doc) or David Morrissey will happen. Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) is a Time Lord…I could go on and on. It’s a LONG wait til Saturday. Some people are convinced that David Tennant continues to play the Doctor as they’ve seen filming in Cardiff in which he’s involved in. But Em made a very valid point that if you (the BBC production crew) didn’t want leaks, you’d still have DT on set, even if he was no longer involved in the process? Anyway. there are more pressing things to get on with…like actually becoming bankrupt. Today is the day, says Em. The procrastinating is over. It’s bankruptcy time! We’ve got an online grocery shop arriving soon. And yesterday we actually went out – I mean outside – in the sun! We went into town to pay some bills, get some things, etc. I had to pay our broadband and TV license. I nearly had a heart attack! I had £25 to pay on the broadband and £11.80 to pay on the TV license. I paid the broadband first then handed the assistant the TV license card and said “And can I pay £11.80 on this please”, she said “80 or 18” I said “80” (I thought she was confirming the final figure). Anyway, she swipes the card, puts in the figure then says “That’ll be £118” (which isn’t even 80 and 25 quid together anyway, WTF?). I just stood there dumbfounded. Then she said to be “What did you want to pay on it again, 80 or 18?” I said “£11.80” and she was like “Oh!” and I was thinking “Yeah, give me a friggin heart attack, woman!” Worst of all was when she finally got the figure right and it was time to pay, she had to use a calculator to add 25 and 11.80 together!!!! Lord have mercy! You have NEVER seen queues as long as we get at the town’s post office. You lose the will to live just LOOKING at it sometimes! Poor Em had to line up so we could put money on our pre-paid credit card and get proof of posting on some DVD’s. It took her 20 minutes to get served. We bought a pair of shoes each. We have matching shoes! How autistic are we going to look going out together in matching shoes? There were some cheap T’s too, so Em got two of them. We went wild spending a whole £14 on ourselves! Our mall is SO damn overcrowded. I get agoraphobia just walking around it, it’s so bloody full of people. And there’s never really a time of day when it ISN’T swarming with people. But, it was nice to get out and actually mingle for a while. Today is going to be WELL hot. TWENTY SEVEN degrees man!! Woah, has summer returned? And it’s Wimbledom time as well. Unprecedented! Anyway, I’m off.
I saw this on TV the other night and thought, “My Lord, no wonder we’re a national of lard arses!”
I like cooking and in particular I like the results of cooking, but I hate the mess it leaves behind. So a few weeks back I decided to do a one-pot meal. Mozzy (see the Who’s who tab at the top of my blog page) had given us a little one-pot slow cooker. Frigging slow alright! I started to use it, but it was obvious it would take HOURS, if it was going to heat up and cook stuff at all (sorry Mozzy, but I can see why you didn’t use it yourself).
I quickly aborted using it, for a trad. saucepan on the stove top. After cooking it, it came out LOVER-LY! I’ve made it several times since, and it’s SO damn easy, I wanted to share my recipe. Ingredients: 250-400gm of meat (depending on the cut of meat, and or how “hearty” you want your meal), of any type you desire, gammon, lamb, beef, chicken, pork (I’ve not tried it with pork yet, but will be tomorrow night), roughly cut into 1cm chunks.
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and chopped into small cubes
1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped into small cubes
2 tablespoons of uncooked long-grain white rice
1/2 cup of frozen peas
1 vegetable stock cube dissolved in 475ml of boiling water
Vegetable/olive oil for frying
Salt and pepper to taste.
