Moments

In case you were wondering what I've been up to lately...

Firstly some baking fails... 

This is a tart shell that I dropped after baking.

These are supposed to be cake-pops (they tasted ok, just looked a little odd due to lack of decorating skills)!

An unpleasant surprise when collecting the mail...

Clearly we have very small mailboxes for our apartment building. Unfortunately a (potentially disgruntled??) mailman took this to mean it's fine to wedge a DVD delivery in to the point of it being broken and stuck. D'oh. The place I'd ordered the DVD from nicely replaced it however, even though it wasn't their fault!

A beautiful day at Little Bay...

This is a lovely beach not that far from where we live that I had no idea existed until last month! I know where I'll be in Summer...

Dinner for our three year anniversary...

Mini sliders at Rockpool Bar and Grill Sydney. YUM. P.S. How has it been 3 years already!!

I'm now a Dr! My graduation was on Friday November 8th.

Excuse the lopsided hat and gown situation!

Celebration dinner after my graduation...

Devonshire Tea Crème brûlée at The Devonshire. Awesome.

Things definitely have not been boring lately!

Husband Quotes: Sleep Talking Edition #4

Yesterday was the Postgrad Conference I was involved in organising. It was a very long day and I'm glad it's over, but it went fairly well.

Anyway, I didn't get home until 11pm and went to give Husband (who was of course asleep) a hello hug. When I did, this is what he said:

"I don't want any frittata!"

Considering I made frittata the other week, and he'd never even heard of it before then, I can only assume that he didn't care for it that much if he's dreaming about avoiding eating it. He had no recollection of saying it until I (of course) teased him about it!

Oh dear, another cooking fail then I guess...

...though I thought they tasted OK! [pic via here]

Snippets v2

I tried to make blueberry muffins. I didn't nearly explode my kitchen this time, so that's a win. However the muffins were pretty awful to be honest. I think I need to admit that baking-wise I'm a one-trick pony with the banana muffins and stick to them (I think Husband agreed, but implied it in a much more diplomatic way).

After a few weeks off, I went for a run today. Hopefully I stick with it this time and run more regularly because I do actually enjoy it - once it's over.

A paper that I submitted to a journal came back with the decision "revise and resubmit". I was expecting it to be rejected so this is a pretty good outcome. The changes I have to make are a bit irritating but oh well. The editor said my paper has the potential to be quite important, which was very encouraging because I've definitely been thinking lately that my research sucks!

I'm on an organising committee for a conference in November. I was able to conveniently forget that fact for most of the year, but now that it's pretty soon I don't think that's possible anymore. 

My two-year wedding anniversary with Husband is a week away. I feel old. We haven't organised anything particularly spectacular to celebrate since we had our weekend away a couple of weeks ago as a present to each other. It's weird because it feels like two years has gone past extremely quickly, but at the same time it feels like we've been married a lot longer - in a nice, comfortable way, not in a 'this is really dragging on when will it end' kind of way!

Lastly, I've been laughing a lot at the below youtube clip. It's pretty old, but I love the guys' enthusiasm for rainbows! It has also been turned into a song, which unfortunately has been stuck in my head for a couple of weeks.

 

"What does it mean!?"

Feel free to share any snippets of your own in the comments. You know you want to. 

Snippets

Snip·pet (noun): A bit, scrap, or morsel

I applied for a job today. The position is to be a lecturer in biological psychology at a university in the UK. It took pretty much the whole day to write the application so now I'm exhausted. Good thoughts, prayers, crossed fingers or whatever would be appreciated! 

I don't really like my hair cut now after all. It was good for a few weeks and I received some really flattering compliments (including from you guys - aww thanks). Now it's grown to an awkward mullet-esque length and I'm stuck between deciding to cut it again and just letting it grow out. 

My home laptop has died I think. It's had a good run of about 3 years and luckily I was suspicious the end was nigh so made sure to back everything up. Hopefully I will get a new one soon - my supervisor has nicely allowed me to borrow a lab laptop for a bit so that's what I'm using currently.

Shot from last year's city 2 surf.

The City-2-Surf (a 14km run) is less than 3 weeks away and I have definitely not trained sufficiently to expect to run very much. I enjoy running and I know exercise should be a priority but it is a bit difficult when I've got so much thesis-ing to do! My friend and I have decided to walk most of it, which considering it's 14km is still pretty reasonable. Hopefully we'll still dress up as sporty zombies from the 80s!

I got to be involved in one of my favourite things - a trying on clothes montage. As I mentioned a while ago my sister is getting married next year so my mum and I went with her to give opinions on about 12 wedding dresses. Although fun and some of the dresses looked really lovely on my sister, I believe that the montages on tv/movies do not adequately portray how long and exhausting the day ends up being!

Disturbing fact: foot spas at pedicure places have lots (and lots) of feet cells of previous users clogged in the jets. That certainly does not make me want a pedicure anymore, or help my foot phobia one bit.

Ahh this is so comfortable soaking in other people's feety grossness [via].

My most recent baking disaster the other day saw me ruin yet another pot attempting to make custard. It was burnt so badly we've had to throw it away. That makes three now... oops. In a recent baking success however I made banana bread muffins which were awesome. Husband and I agreed it was the best thing I've ever baked (which perhaps considering the baking disasters doesn't say much). 

I got a 'revise and resubmit' from a journal for one of my papers. That's much better than a rejection so hopefully they'll accept the revisions!

OK that's probably enough snippets for now. Sorry for a not overly coherent post but... eh.

Switch

If you saw my previous post, I was all 'woo productivity' and 'yay thesis' (how annoying!). Well, that definitely isn't the sentiment this week. Both Monday and yesterday were complete write-offs and today has not started the best either. I'm attempting to work from home however it's almost time for me to make my overly time-consuming elaborate lunch so I can procrastinate further.

I'm not entirely sure how or why this switch occurs from going really well, to kind of crappy. Maybe I just need a break. At least I've been assured that this reaction is fairly common in PhD land!

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got this to prepare...

Just kidding, but it does actually look pretty good (from here). 

Does this sort of thing happen to you? What do you do to get back on track? I could definitely do with some tips! 

'Tis the Season for Cooking Mishaps

...well by me, anyway. I guess I shouldn't be overly surprised considering my burnt icecream and chocolate 'dog poo frisbees' of the past, but I thought maybe this time would be better. 

So this is what I'm attempting to make, stained-glass star cookies for Christmas presents for friends:

Excuse photo quality, it's a photo of the cooking magazine I'm using.

I was excited to get started because this is the first time I've needed to use my mixing machine thing (technical term). So I'm not entirely sure why this happened...

oops.

See that wonky bit of metal on the left? Yeh, that wasn't like that when I started. The machine has two holes for two beaters, so I put both in, and they clashed. One emerged the victor (clearly not the one pictured). Was I not supposed to use both? Is one a spare? I really have no idea. 

So anyway I started just using the machine with the non-broken one. Then I realised the metal bowl was getting scratched. See that plastic little cover thing on the top of the pictured beater (which I assume is used to protect things from being scratched)? Well the other one doesn't seem to have one... ANYMORE (? or I'm hoping it never did but I can't remember). So I had to search through all the cookie dough looking for a weird bit of plastic. I haven't found anything. 

Thank God this batch is the test bach. I'm going ahead with cooking them (just waiting for the dough to refrigerate for a bit) just to see how they turn out. Don't worry friends, you aren't going to be getting these ones with the potential bit of plastic.

Well stay tuned for an update, I'll let you know how the cookies turn out!  

**Updated after the jump**

Fun vs. Sensible

After the excitement of agreeing to go away next year to the US and thinking about all the places we'd go, we then had to think of the serious (boring) stuff - like will we actually be able to afford this? I do think if we're careful in our spending the next year it should be ok - but considering I'm planning to submit my thesis before we go (aargh!) I will not actually have a scholarship when we get back. So we need to plan for having money for when we return also.

I'm hoping that the 'saving for something fun' thing will be a bit more motivating than the 'saving to be sensible' plan of the past has been. Apologies if this is not super exciting, but here are some things I plan to do to make this dream a reality:

The Husband Questionnaire

Even though my blog is 'science, spouses & silliness' I think I tend to focus on the silly part the most. So today instead I have decided to talk about the spouse part. While reading through a friend of mine's blog: Lord Girl - I came across a challenge (based on this website) to work at making my husband more of a priority. Obviously I think any successful relationship is a two-way street, but it's not going to work at all if I try to change his behaviour instead of looking closely at my own. But of course I had to put my own psych spin on it and have thus come up with my own questionnaire for him to fill out: The [husband's name] Questionnaire.

Here are a sample of some of the questions:

As if I didn't already know what he'd like me to cook!

• What are your favourites out of the meals I've cooked?
• What are some meals you'd like me to try cooking for you?
• What things do I do that make you feel the most respected?
• What things can we do to make our house a haven?

Also I wrote a list of things I do in our house and relationship and have asked him to rank order them in terms of importance so I know which I should prioritise. For example, there is no point in me spending ages cooking elaborate meals for him every day, if say he'd really just prefer I use that time to spend with him!

A true psych questionnaire requires administering it to many many people to be able to do statistics on what the average person is like. However in this case I don't care about the average person - just my husband (who could be a total outlier for all I know)! Though I do think that I can check test-retest reliability by asking the same questions again in a year's time haha. However priorities do change so the reliability might be low too but that's ok!

Gosh I am just unable to escape being a nerd, hey.

Cookies!

So the lovely Kirsti from A Quick Succession of Busy Nothings had a competition on her blog (check it out, it's great), and I won! The prize was to be sent some of her homemade oatmeal choc-chip cookies. Yay! Husband was a little concerned that an internet person now knew our address, but considering we actually went to visit one of his internet friends when we were in England I don't think this argument sticks hehe. Anyway, I was quite excited on Friday to find the note from the post office saying I had a package waiting for me (don't worry, I didn't leave my keys in the mailbox this time). We recently moved, and so I didn't realise that our local post office is not open on Saturdays. I was a bit disappointed that I had to wait until today to pick up the package. When I picked it up this morning, this is what I found:

YUM. They are super tasty. Thanks so much to Kirsti (cookies entitle you to be allowed to come hide in the lab in event of zombie attack), and now I'll try to think of a way to pay it forward!

P.S. Kirsti please let me know if you want the container back hehe.

New Ice-cream Flavour: Burnt (or, why I had to throw out the saucepan).

my icecream maker

I was very excited to get an ice-cream maker, particularly as I am trying to make things without sugar. My first few attempts were fairly average, mostly flavoured ice. However one day I was definitely in the mood for ice-cream, and decided to make chocolate flavour. When I started mixing it together, I thought the cocoa looked weird, coming out in little clumps, but whatever. It wasn’t until it was actually in the mixer, churning away that I caught a glimpse of what looked like a wing. Yes, those little clumps were BUGS. And sadly, I had tasted the mixture too. So I had to tip out the entire mixture (and rinse my mouth out for a long time).

I was a bit disheartened, but still determined to have my ice-cream. Chocolate was out, so vanilla it was. However now I didn’t have enough cream for that recipe, so I decided to try out a different recipe that required a lot more cooking time on the stove. For some odd reason, the whisk kept getting stuck on the bottom of the pan, but that didn’t deter me. Quite a while later I decided to investigate the cause of the sticking and realised that the mixture was starting to caramelise on the bottom. But caramelising is ok right? Surely the mixture would just taste a bit caramel-y. So I kept cooking. It wasn’t until I poured out the mixture for it to set in the fridge that I saw the bottom of the saucepan. BLACK. I tried scrubbing and scrubbing but realised that it was a lost cause. But hey, at least I still had the ice-cream! Sure it smelled slightly weird, but I was certain it would taste fine. So I went through the churning process and got my ice-cream. Finally. It tasted… interesting. Not really the caramel flavour I was hoping. But I persevered, eating nearly a whole bowl before I gave up and admitted that the primary flavour was BURNT. So I had to wait for it all to melt so I could tip it out. YUM.