Fun with bacon

Like everyone (1) I love bacon, mostly I have it fried for breakfast, sometimes with maple syrup ’cause that whole sweet/salty thing is just fab.

So you can imagine how delighted I was to discover a recipe for candied bacon - yup, that’s bacon with a hard toffee coating…

I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

(1) everyone except those who don’t like bacon obviously.

Why knitting is good for those with OCD

I’m at home sick today. (stupid cold, stupid sinuses) The only bright spot is that it’s given me time to re-oganise my stash.  I was in the middle of taking the photos of the yarn, that are linked to the spreadsheet showing what I have, how much of it there is, and where it’s kept when I realised why I love my stash so much.

It’s the perfect play-thing for my OCD.

I can catalogue it in spreadsheets, I can reorganise it based on

• prospective project (all the jumper yarn over there, all the hat yarn here)
• colour (spectrum order, obviously,)
• weight, (cobweb through to Aran) and
• quantity.

And the whole time I’m doing that, I can think about what I’m going to make with it all, and therefore which organisation schema makes the most sense.

Of course, because I’m more of a visual person, no matter which schema makes sense, I always end up with it organised by colour. It just looks better that way.

But that explains why all my recent flickr photos are of yarn.

Update:

Well as I predicted the hard drive did not make it through the back-up process (persistent I/O errors for those of you who care)

However it turned out to be pretty easy to get my entire music collection back from my iPod (I love Terminal – is there nothing you can’t do) So in the end I lost some back-ups, which were easy enough to re-back-up, and movies which meant having the re-rip the DVD’s but again, no big deal.

The new hard drive is a whisper quiet Fujitsu 250GB, in the same kind of brushed aluminium as my MacBook (co-ordination is important).

The BCC was cut out of my leg yesterday evening, it was less painful than I expected, but my leg is feeling a little tender and throbby today.

So, on the whole, noting was as bad as I thought

Bummer

Things that can ruin your day….

Portable hard drive crashing taking with it your 80GB of Music and 40GB of movies.(1)

Getting diagnosed with Basal Cell Carcinoma.(2)

If both happen in the same 24 hour period you are officially having quite a bad day.

(1) I am currently nursing the drive and attempting to make a back-up before it actually collapses on me. I don’t fancy my chances.

(2) It’s on my leg and I’m having it cut out next week. BCC is generally non-maglinant and not a big deal. But they’re still going to cut a chuck out of me which will require stiches and will scar. I’m not concerned about the BCC, I just don’t like pain much…

I couldn’t have said it better myself

As, thanks to GFC, climate change and general crapness, it increasingly seems the world is going to hell in an handbasket, I refer you to the wisdom of the British Ministry of Information circa 1939

Should I stay or should I go…

Every Australian who lives in a bush-fire zones knows there comes a point when you have to decide whether to stay or go. The general advice is that, if you are well prepared, then it is (relatively) safe to stay, to defend your house.

If you’re going to go, you need to go early, before the smoke makes driving hazardous.

The problem they had in Victoria is that the fire moved much, much faster than anyone really expected…

Gary Hughes from The Australia, explains how his family nearly didn’t make it.

The Red Cross are taking donations if you want to help.

What I am doing today…

I’m trying to develop a marketing plan and copy for our direct mail campaign. This would be much easier if the process didn’t go like this.

I write a draft

I fight with the Managing Director (MD) over what we’re planning to do
I fight with the other Divisional Director (DD) over what we want to do
DD fights with MD over why can’t we do more of the stuff that she wants to do

I write a draft that attempts to incorporate both their changes.

MD makes secret changes to DD’s stuff
DD makes secret changes to MD’s stuff
DD has a hissy fit about the changes to her stuff
MD has a hissy fit about the changes to his stuff,
DD comes to see me to explain that MD is an idiot and she doesn’t care what we do it’s just that she knows way more about this than anyone.
MD comes to see me to explain that they are both idiots and we should do whatever I think is best since I’m the expert, but since he has a wealth of experience (and is the boss) he’s sure I’ll decide to do the “right” aka “his” things.

I write a third draft

MD calls a meeting between all of us so we can ‘come to a consensus’
They argue to a standstill.
I doodle in my notebook and think about how badly I want a beer.

Meeting concludes with
“So Lindsay, you’ll get us a fresh draft in the morning?”

No prizes for guessing what I’ll be doing tomorrow.

Not getting any younger

It was my birthday on recently. I turned 37. This caused me a couple of moments of mid-life crisis.

When I turned 27 I started telling everyone I was 30, on the principle that since most women lie about their age by knocking a few years off the big numbers, anyone I told I was 27 would assume I was 30 anyway.

Following the same principle I’m going to have to start telling people I’m 40,

40.

That made me sit back a bit. I mean I’ve just decided to go back to Uni, We’re considering whether we’re going to move internationally again. Aren’t I getting a bit old for that foolishness?

So I mentioned this to my husband, who, with his usual logic said.

“Uh-huh, and if you don’t do those things now, and then decide you’d like to do them later – will you be any younger then?”

…

I hate it when he’s right.

Advertising Fail

One of the things I love about the TV guide that comes in the Sunday paper is the adverts – from Home stair lifts, to commerative plates with pictures of dogs, to spurious ‘dietary supplements’ they represent a world of tat.

But every now and then there’s one that takes the cake. Stand up “Your Baby Can Read” for your award for sheer advertising crapness

Apologies for the quality of the photo

The text is pretty standard for this kind of ad  – but where these guys really take the lead is in their ” As Recommended by Parents, Teachers and Doctors” section

As the text is a little blurry let me spell it out for you. Firstly we have a blurb from someone called “Angelo” about his experience with the program. Then Dr Ann Singer chimes in with

“This program is a fantastic early childhood development tool for helping babies and young children maximise their natural learning abilities”

Obviously this is the ‘Doctor’s” recommendation.

Let’s look at Dr Singer’s qualifications

• BDS (Hons) (Sydney)
• MSc (Perio) (London)
• LDS (Vic)
• MDSc (Ortho) (Melbourne)

That’s right – She’s a dentist.

And we all know how expert dentists are in the field of early childhood development.

WTF?!

I’ve had a cough for a couple of weeks now. Finally got test results back from the lab. I have whooping cough. Because we didn’t catch it early enough* I’ll probably have it for about three months.

Growing up I read a number of stories where children with whooping cough were sent to the countryside to convalesce once they were there they had all sorts of fantastic adventures.

The reality is a lot less fun.

*I actually went to the doctor in the first week I had the cough because I knew someone I work with had been diagnosed with whooping cough – but she wasn’t convinced and then the lab took forever to do the test – so by the time the results were back – too late.