Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 112 - 4 Hot Cross Buns, 5 Small Easter Eggs, a 1 km swim and French Film

We started Good Friday off with a lovely long lie down, a rarity these days with all the extra work day my special guy has been putting in to keep up with his many projects, but wonderfully decadent, and followed it up with the first of MANY hot cross buns. I was going to maintain some discipline and stick to just 2 of them, but with all those yummy buns on the plate (boom tish!) how could I resist eating 3 1/2 of the delectable once-a-year treats? 

The weather was delightful and as we sat on the balcony watching our neighbours across the way going errand crazy - who knew that Good Friday was wash your balcony day? - a single red balloon went floating past, floating gaily (no red balloons are straight I think you'll find) across the blue sky before finishing up, somewhat unceremoniously, in the bushes of one of the ground floor apartments.

My lovely guy headed home to do some cleaning - he's barely there with all this work in Bathurst and wanted to catch up on his bleaching and scrubbing (see Good Friday is domesticity day) - and I chilled before he came over, and we headed into the City, with Waz and Fahmi, to see a movie at Dendy Opera Quays, My Afternoons With Margueritte, which was a gorgeous feel good French movie. Buoyed up by the warmth of this slow moving but heartwarming tale (Waz enjoyed a short kip somewhere in it I think), we had dinner at India Quay - food was average but still tasted good, and far better than just about anything else I have eaten in the tourist precinct - with dessert at Gelatissimo (yes two scoops of course....why stop at just one?!)

An awesomely lovely start to the Easter weekend....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 111 : Zara, Easter eggs, and Imogen Heap

Yep a real mixed today, people and let's start with my adorable niece, Zara, who looks like a complete replica of my sister (her mum) at the same stage (she was cute as a button too.... OK what does that mean exactly? It soulds lovely but what is it saying really?). Here's the latest pix of her with my Dad and her grandpa.....

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It's Easter eve and apart from the fact that everyone is kind of working and kind of not, all at the same time, it's been deadly in the calorie zone. So far, I have eaten 2 hot cross buns, 2 small Easter eggs and that's just the start of things. Goodness knows how much I will consume over the weekend but I can take a fair stab at things - there's 18 hot cross buns in the freezer and fridge, any number of Easter eggs (not counting the ones my guy may give me on Sunday) and all sorts of meals out. I am planning to swim each day (bar Saturday when we're heading down the South Coast for some R & R) but I think that will only hold things level.... ah well, Its Easter. relax, for next week, we diet!

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Tonight off to see Imogen Heap..... love her. Can't wait.

Dr Who's Companion Sara Jane is Dead

Apologies for yet another pop culture obituary but yet another of the icons of my childhood has died, and while I wasn't a massive Dr Who as a child - he scared the bejesus out of me! - I did like Sarah Jane as a companion and Tom Baker as the Doctor and so she was always a favourite of mine.

By all accounts she was a lovely person. RIP Elisabeth Sladen, you will be missed.

Here's the obituary from the ABC website:

Doctor Who star Sladen dies

Cult role: Elisabeth Sladen with Tom Baker as Dr Who (handmadelife.blogspot.com)


British actress Elisabeth Sladen, best known for her role in cult science fiction television series Doctor Who, has died after a battle with cancer.

Liverpool-born Sladen, who was 63, first appeared on the BBC show in 1973, playing the Doctor's assistant, Sarah Jane Smith.


Sladen went on to star in her own spin-off children's show, The Sarah Jane Adventures, the latest series of which was aired late last year.


She made several guest appearances in the revived Doctor Who series with David Tennant.


"I absolutely loved Lis," former Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies, who created The Sarah Jane Adventures, said.


"She was funny and cheeky and clever and just simply wonderful."


Doctor Who's lead writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat, has also paid tribute.


"'Never meet your heroes', wise people say. They weren't thinking of Lis Sladen," said Moffat.


"Sarah Jane Smith was everybody's hero when I was younger, and as brave and funny and brilliant as people only ever are in stories.


"She was exactly as any child would ever have wanted her to be. Kind and gentle and clever; and a ferociously talented actress but in that perfectly English unassuming way."


Sladen leaves behind actor husband Brian Miller and daughter Sadie.

So Cute Hallmark Wants to Adopt Them

So naturally after pouring out my heart to all and sundry (hey sundry loves my posts thank you!), I give you cute animals... well, really, cats with just two exceptions.

Naturally....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 110 - Thoughts

I don't like work any more.

No, not work per se although that would hardly be a news flash now would it? No, what I don't like any more is working in the area I am working in, which until recently I did like (soured by a recent massive run through with a woman in the area), doing the job I am doing, and thinking endlessly about where else I could go to. My problem? I don't like the corporate world. Never have done, and never will, which is likely while I am so attracted to the Dilbert cartoon and it's hilariously sedatious, and truthful, take on corporate life. I know it's drilled into you to be sensible, and adult, and hold a normal job, but frankly what I really want to do, with an increasing urgency that explains my lack of passion for pursuing a corporate job of any kind, is WRITE. be a novelist. Be creative.

Now, I don't think for a second that should I achieve this goal, and I really need to pull out all the stops to make it happen, that my life will then be an endless gravy train of nirvana-like fabulousness, but at least I will be doing something that is truly authentically me. Perhaps I am having a horribly cliched mid-life crisis - which by the way make perfect sense to me now; it's not the sense that life is screaming past though it is, but that you are living a lie that is slowly killing you and you need to do something to be real and be who you are, something I started years ago very successfully by coming out as a gay man but which needs to continue - but the reality is it's not me being ridiculously unrealistic or self-indulgent, but rather needing to live a life that makes sense to me, and matters.

Right now, it all feels like a big fat waste of time, and I hate that....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 109 - First Day Back At Work... Egg Me On!

First day after my much needed time off, and it was, surprisingly, not awful...

Yes I woke up at 3.30 feeling nauseous and anxious - what a superb way to start any day I say! - but this was taken care of with a 5.30 walk around the neighbourhood for an hour which got the endorphns flowing, cleared my mind, and got me to the train on time. There was no management meeting today so while I still had to prepare the Dashboard (trading report), it wasn't to the usual 2pm meeting deadline so I could take my time and not stress about it, like I normally do with such panache and gusto.

The day ended quite nicely with a fun dinner out with my bestie gal pal from work, Sammi at a Japanese eatery called Kansai in the City - $28 for all you can eat, and while it was YUM, I think perhaps we may have eaten a tad too much, stopping mere slivers of salmon from exploding all over their cute little eatery - and easter egg shopping at, of all places, Priceline, which actually carries a really yummy selection of eggs including the all important, and second only to Cadbury Creme Eggs, white Lindt rabbit (which bears an uncanny resemblance to their Christmas chocolate reindeer... not the same mould you say? I suspect so!) which I craved at that point.

So all the Easter eggs bought - I just need some hot cross buns or 200.....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 108 - Erskineville Dreamland

I have had a week off work, and I am due back into the gaping maw of the cubicle factory tomorrow.

I am none too thrilled about it, who really is, but just how little thrill there it is, and just how much anxiety is attending this paucity of excited apprehension, was brought home to me overnight when I had a repeated dream that I had to take my boss's 3 year old daughter to Singapore (my boss and her other daughter having left on an earlier flight with her husband for some reason) and I was late packing, and getting to the airport, even rushing through a Woolworths supermarket (passing many people I have known throughout my entire life) at one point to get to my bedroom, where my sister Rachel was perched atop a wooden wardrobe, listening to music.

Apart from the fact that I simply didn't sleep well at all, the dream was to say the least odd and unsettling, and spoke to the fact that I would rather take high tea with Tony Abbott than go back to work tomorrow. OK, well maybe that is taking things a little too far, but you get the idea.....

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That night the wonderful reality that is life with my darling man asserted itself and we had a lovely night eating at a favourite Chinese restaurant, Happy Chef, and strolling King Street before hugging and heading home. Every time I am with my lovely guy, the It Gets Better campaign rings loud and clear in my mind - high school was a living hell as I was teased for being gay but life has just got better and better since then, and my gloriously beautiful guy is the pinnacle of that. I am a very blessed man.

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 106 (Saturday 16 April) - Mamma Mia! Here My Guy and I Go Again!

We saw ABBAWorld in Melbourne and decided we had to see it again when it came to Sydney and we dragged along 4 of our besties who loved it just as much (well the youngster in the group, 28 years old,  probably tolerated it more than loved it, but he at least let us wallow in our nostalgia during the 2 hours we were in the exhibit at the Powerhouse Museum).

We finished off our trip back to the 70s with look around the rest of the museum, a drink at The Pumphouse, and dinner at Uighur Cuisine, which featured odd to almost non-existent service but great food (and it allowed us to make a political statement too since China is oppressing the Uighurs and we ate at a Uighur restaurant in the heart of Chinatown).