Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 151 - Still Wet

Today it stayed wet.

To illustrate it, I had googled "Miserable under an umbrella"... yes I got umbrellas...

But I also these wacky images:

No I can't see the connection either. Clearly the Google search algorithm was having a goofy day.

Much like mine.

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 150 - Baby It's Wet... and Cold Outside

What a wet, cold miserable day....

I snapped both the pix rushing up the hill to the train station so not the best focus!

Every time I looked out the window the rain was bucketing down, and by 4pm it was dark as night. I usually love this sort of weather, but today it mirrored my mood. My PDR (like a performance appraisal) was a not pleasant at all (my boss and I get on well, but although I know the time has come to move on, and she knows it too, I got the distinct feeling she REALLY wanted me gone sooner rather than later), after recent upheavels at work, I feel pressured to go get another job somewhere else now that hiring at the company I work at has been frozen, and I am awash in anxiety about where to go next.

Naturally my solution to this inner turmoil was to go home and.... eat Clinkers (hard sugary lollies covered in chocolate). Not exercise but lollies... of course.

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 149 - Yum Cha Wake for the iPod Departed

My iPod 'died' on Thursday.

Well, it didn't so much die as simply stopped playing sound through the right channel. I assumed initially it was the fault of the head phoneswhich takes a pounding being used day in and day out, but upon checking at work with another set of head phones faced the horrible realization - trust me, when you love your iPod as much as I do, 'horrible' is an understatement - that the iPod itself was ailing. Thankfully the good folk at Apple Care were more than helpful, and got me an appointment with one of the people at the Genius Bar at the Apple Temple, and so it was that my good friend Fahmi and I found ourselves at Temple this morning, after getting up way too early, talking to the lovely Ash, who went to a great deal of trouble to troubleshoot what was wrong with my portable music device.

Goodbye old iPod and thank you.... hmmm think I am tad over attached?

Turns out that because they are made as a unit that can't be disassembled for repair ( thank you control freaks at Apple!), that my only option was to buy another iPod for $189, which of course I did. I have become so used to having 8000 songs at my disposal that the idea of not having it was anathema. So once again, I left the Temple with a brand new iPod in my grip, and the old one off to be vivisected by Apple for god knows what purpose.

What to do when you have given up your iPod to be chopped into small pieces by sonic vivisectionists? Why go to Yum Cha to have a wake of course! Truth be told, we were starving by this point so Yum Cha at Sky Phoenix on the top floor of Westfield Sydney City seemed like a perfectly fine idea, and a chance to mourn over dumplings and pork buns. It was more expensive that some otehr Yum Cha places we have been to so not sure if we'll go back but the dumplings were delicious, the pork buns soft (I forgot Fahmi doesn't eat pork so I ended up eating all 3! Filling), and best of all, they were different flavours to what we get normally. So yummo scrummo all around.

Full up to pussy's bow (love that phrase!), we headed first to JB HiFi who in this store at least had no music - what madness is this?! -  and then to Nespresso so Fahmi could buy designer coffee in little metallic cups so colourful they even made an Aboriginal art work on the wall of the shop with them. I don't drink coffee but kind of wish I did after visiting there. It's very clever marketing, turning Nestle coffee into a designer brand, and the staff are delightful.

I wish I had drunk some of that coffee because we then headed all the way up Oxford Street to Daly Male, a funky  mens clothing store I love, where I bought a new shirt and belt for Fahmi's party (any excuse will do!), before we stopped for hot chocolate and almond croissant at Swiss Bakerz, run by the boyfriend of one of Fahmi's female colleagues from his old job. Wishing I could just teleport back to the car - we had done lots of walking by this stage and I just wanted to rest some more! - we walked back to the City via HUM music, found the car in the car park (score!) and headed home....

Autumn colour in Hyde Park

...where I promptly synched the iPod up to iTunes making it more than just a pretty paperweight before sprinting across to my lovely guy's place for some R & R, reading Entertainment Weekly and Saturday's Herald. The plan was for a chilled night at his place with takeaway food, but he wanted to go check out Fahmi's 50th birthday party venue, and so after quickly watching the Saturday before last's Dr Who episode, which was a muddled mish mash of ideas desperately in search of a narrative, we met Fahmi at Zanzibar Hotel in Newtown, downed some wines, and pizza & wedges, dodged the dripping rain (we were on the roof top bar) before heading down to level 2 to get ideas on decorating for the party on the following Saturday (red and orange are the colours to be used and it will look faaaabulous, of course!) before waiting for the torrential downpour to subside so we could dash back to the car... and home....

PHEW! Fun day but I am exhausted just typing all that in! Many zzzz's were generated when I finally  made it to my warm, snuggly bed....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 148 (Saturday 28 May) - Big B, Colour and Dee Dee

Today was a crazy day.

I try to avoid ridiculously busy weekends because even though the events I fill them with are invariably fun, and involve catching up with people I love, if you have too many of them they start to feel like an exhausting schedule you have to maintain, and frankly I have enough of that at work!

But, in the end, I have to remember that the things I am doing are far more enjoyable than work will ever be, and so it was with brunch this morning when my gorgeous guy and I caught up with our dear friends, Ian & Ingo, for Ingo's farewell brunch at Cafe C in the heart of bustling Newtown. Ingo is heading back to Germany while he sorts out a permanent working visa in Australia, and while it's going to be very sad to see him go, we are focusing on the fact that he will return and hopefully very soon! (Only down side is they forgot our meals again... not a good track record Cafe C....lucky your food is yummy!)

Our lovely friend, Ingo

Now that's a big breakfast.....and yes I ate it all!

My sligthly blurry but always gorgeous boyfriend

Ian eats his gluten free breakie

My gorgeous guy and I then jumped into the car, headed for Marrickville and hopefully a cake shop that could, in the short space of a week, create and make us a cake for our friend's Fahmi's 50th. I expected this to be a drawn out affair, but the first shop we went into, Marrickville Cakes, run by a darling Greek lady who showed us a couple of photo albums full of cakes (we plan a cake that combines the look of the two cakes below), dialled the wonderfully warm and frriendly Greek lady who makes them for her, and even gave us a box of Greek pastries as we left the store. Who knew ticking something off a To Do list could be so much fun?

The cake sorted, we headed back to my guy's place and..... NAPPED. What a blissful, chilled afternoon and so very needed....

Autumn put on quite the show near my guy's place

Reinvigorated, we dashed back to my place, I got into my fancy schmancy clothes and we headed in on the train with our good friend Fahmi for drinks at The Shakespeare Hotel on Devonshire Street, Surry Hills with Steve's work colleague and friend (by virtue of their shared love of R & B music, Liz and Fahmi are firm friends too) Liz and her friend Jane, then a divinely yummy dinner at Mohr Fish across the alley next to the pub (you're allowed to take your drinks with you so close is the working relationship between the two businesses; the dumplings we had were divine as was the beer battered fish!) before jumping into cabs for a quick trip to The Opera House for a performance by the famed Dee Dee Bridgewater of songs by the legendary singer, Billie Holiday. Fahmi had bought the tickets for us, which he often does when he wants company at concerts, and while I am not a huge jazz fan, I abosloutely had a ball!

Facebook check in photo of my gorgeous guy and Fahmi @ St Peters station

The fish, ginger and shallot dumplings were beyond delicious!! Fahmi thought so...

Dee Dee Bridgewater was so much fun on stage - fantastically talented with a powerful yet sublimely nuanced voice but down to earth, funny, and just plain silly at times. She was a joy to watch, as were the four musicians accompanying her (the drummer and the sax players were both very handsome guys so that helped, as did our 7th row seats which meant up close and personal viewing) and we had a ball!

Check in shot at The Opera House

We emptied out with the capacity crowd, and my guy, Fahmi and I spent time till our train went wandering around the Opera House, and the colonade between the House and Circular Quay admiring all the amazing light shows and light installations in place for the Vivid Live festival, which succeeded in doing what the organisers wanted which was drawing lots of people out on a very cold autumn night. The lights were just stunning, and in the case of the ones where we put our faces up against of the ropes of our piece of luminous artwork, damn near creepy (but in a good way!), and I kept snapping pix right up until the train pulled out.

Customs House @ Circular Quay

Was I exhausted? hell yeah but what a way to get to that state! AWESOME day!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 147 - Getting Chilli with Andrew & Monika

How do you end a relaxed and fun TGIF when in the middle of all my work, I got to have lunch away from my desk with Sammi and other work friends, go shopping at BORDERS Macquarie Centre before it's closed at their 80% off everything sale, and swim to reduce stress?

Why you have dinner with brilliantly good friends from Melbourne, Andrew & Monika, whose wedding we attended back in February just days after poor Monika had been hit by a car while bicycling to work and badly injured. She was an absolute trouper and determined to carry on with the wedding regardless, managed to get through to 10.30 at the reception before calling it a day.

So it was wonderful to see her, after lots of rest, recovery, and rehabilitation back on her feet, albeit still limping slightly, and Andrew, and catch up on all the news over some delicious Thai food at the restaurant my gorgeous guy and I always love to go to, Stir Crazy Thai. The wine was excellent, the food delicious as always and the conversation flowed on and on in that wonderful way that it does with close friends. I had the most wonderful night and I can't wait to get down to Melbourne sometime in July for another catch up.