Melbourne area
Min 11 Max 22 Showers increasing. Possible rainfall: 0 to 6 mm Chance of any rain: 80%
Partly cloudy. High chance of showers in the evening. Light winds becoming south to southwesterly 20 to 30 km/h in the morning.
Fire Danger - Moderate
Sun protection recommended from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm. UV Index predicted to reach 11 [Extreme]
Happy birthday to me 🥳
Happy birthday!!! Whatcha doing to celebrate?
Happy b’day!
Happy birthday to you 🎂
🎂
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday! 🥳🎉🍾
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Happy happy birthday! You 100% deserve to be lounging around with a book today too
Yay. 🎈🎁
Happy birthday! 🍰 🥳
Happy birthday 🎈🎂
Naww, お誕生日おめでとう! 🎈
I just had such a beautiful morning. Met up with my chess buddy at what has become our regular cafe in Prahran, got a nice spot in the sun. Had a lovely cheese and egg omelette with avo. Played for two hours and didn’t feel bad for taking up seats for so long because it wasn’t that busy. Walked back to her place to meet her foster cat who was very shy.
Then I decided to walk home instead of tram because the weather is PERFECT. Did some shopping on the way, and because I felt amazing I decided to buy a scratchie and won $17. Walk home took about 1h15m and I feel amazing right now
That sounds like such a wonderful day that even I feel uplifted and happy reading it 😊
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+1
yay for wins 🙂
Was up at 4am for another spew. Drinking on Saturday really messed me up. I can’t go hard like I used to. Didn’t help that I didn’t have enough water ugh.
Got some decent sleep last night though, the cat came and snuggled with me after my toilet trip which was just blissful. He nudges the doona with his head and paws my face to ask me to make him a cubby. Best friend in the whole world.
Mickey is so adorable ❤️
He’s the best lil buddy
🐈 💖
We all would be so much happier with a Mickey-cat in our lives 💗
Even when he nips at you
They’re love bites - what I tell myself when he has my knee-skin between his teeth 😂
Last day of work before Christmas is over, yay! Due to my work schedule my family is celebrating a day early, so tomorrow is Christmas Eve for me. Then back to work for real Christmas Day. It always feels slightly odd to be on a slightly different timeline from everyone else, but it is the time spent with family which is important, not which day it is on.
I wish to register a complaint about bars & cafes who choose plain mdf boxen as seating… My elderly butt wants some upholstery!
Oh ain’t they terrible. I feel like I have to shake myself off like cat after sitting on one of those.
I have my own inbuilt upholstery and still find those things uncomfortable
Likewise
ComfyAnd cute!
Tonight was a very interesting experiment (and unfortunate lesson). The males of the house wanted Hungry Jacks, but Miniest wanted ravioli. So I ordered the takeout and got to work cooking the ravioli and making a simple Napolitano sauce to go with it. Her ravioli was ready and eaten with dishwasher loaded while the dasher was still waiting for the order. Then when the order arrived it was missing half of the items! Mr P’s burger was soggy and cold and his drink wasn’t cold. Had to reorder and wait again. A lesson that so-called “fast food” ain’t fast at all sometimes, and you’re better off with even a simple thrown together home cooked meal than that garbage.
I’ve gone off the whole uber eats thing. If it isn’t cold, missing items, the driver put his dirty fucking hands in my meal and started snacking on it.
I’ve decided if we’re going to have that kind of thing then we have to eat it there, seems to be the only way they don’t stuff it up. Too much disappointment for the money spent.
The boys need their head checked for wanting such rubbish when you make such delicious food (and you offered - not like they’re demanding home cooked meals from you at all times even when takeaway would give you a break).
Boyo is quite Uber Eats-pro after a single male life, but whenever he suggests it I’m like “okay, but we could just do x instead” and it always turns out better than when I’m lazy and go “sure, get that.” So very few things are worth getting delivery, no matter the app. Burritos are absolutely the expcetion.
I’ve got the big three drive throughs nearby at spaghetti junction so I’ll just go and get it if I’m eating it. I only really go if there’s a good deal in the app which I can’t uber anyway.
No sleep gang checking in. Frustrating. Too many thoughts swirling.
I fell asleep listening to audio book, the events of the book influenced my dreams. It was very scary.
I’ve looked at so many house layout plans I’ve started dreaming the things
I had an exciting dream that culminated in a competition at a country show where you voted for your favourite potato.
Was there taste testing, or was is more of a potato beauty contest?
It was potato and coleslaw vs potato and gravy. I’d prefer gravy, not a big coleslaw fan. Bit odd really. I do need to buy potatoes tomorrow though.
I’ve been trying to get AI to create a potato beauty contest picture. This was the best I could do.
Apparently AI has trouble differentiating between a potato modelling and a model of a potato. And one just gave me a photo of a topless woman on a catwalk, I have no idea where the potato came into that one.
She’s got ‘potatoes’?
I dreamt I was climbing the stairs of Cirith Ungol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuH3YAd32B8
Crisis averted, I spent the entire late arvo and evening sans phone thinking I’d left it in various places, got home just as Marge hit and still couldn’t find it, major panic thinking I’d need to retrace so many locations in the dark and rain - thankfully I could whatsapp someone on my desktop to call it and found the damn thing sitting on the top of the loo. Honestly!
I’ve done a shit tonne today including sneaking into the office to use the dishwasher for the collection of takeaway boxes I’ve accumulated in the last 4 weeks and doing 2.5 hrs of work while it dried; I’m so tired now and need to put new sheets on but God, if this evening wasn’t a message from the universe to stop procrastinating and set up the new phone already… urgh!! Shops, sheets, dinner, phone, sleep. I got this.
BTW it says 13C outside, still feels like a stuffy 23C in my unit despite windows open all day, goddamn this stupid heat box.
BTW it says 13C outside, still feels like a stuffy 23C in my unit despite windows open all day, goddamn this stupid heat box.
Yup. Love that uninsulated apartment living 🙄
Very glad you found your phone! I lose mine at least 3 times a day lol; it’s black and so is a lot of my furniture, so it camoflages well 😅
Ugh and is yours carpeted as well? Haven’t lived in an almost fully carpeted joint for ages and it’s driving me mad.
My new phone cover is bright red precisely to reduce the likelihood of this happening. My new phone that I have still yet to set up… and might not get done tonight as I’m only just having diner and frankly need the energy for work.
Yep!! Carpeted and carpet moths!! FML lol!
If your phone is advanced enough for voice activation you can call out to it and ask where it is.
Or if you’ve got a smartwatch many of them have the ability to electronically ping the phone from the watch.
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I say Hey Siri, where are you.
She’ll reply with “im here”
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So, I didn’t realise that the place I work at does annual reviews not 12 months after you start but at the end of the calendar year for everyone (when I was booked in for a “review” along with everyone else I thought it was just an end of year chat). It went really well - I got a bit of a pay bump in addition to CPI increase which was a really lovely way to end the year 🎉 after how things went down at my old workplace it is really nice for a change to feel appreciated in a meaningful way!
housing musings
Even then, as a single without parental support and years of lower wages/saving due to being on various visas, I still don’t think I can get anywhere close to housing security without being able to save dramatically on rent while working at least 3-4 days a week.
Work has intimated that I could work remotely (and they clearly want me to stay on, so keen to be flexible).
So in Jan I’m going to seriously float the question to my aunt and uncle about staying there for 3-6 months. It’ll be challenging working fully remotely interstate and living under senior relatives’ roof, but it seems like the only way forward if I want to escape rental hell any time soon.
It does feel pointless working towards a deposit when it’s like scrabbling desperately for a ticket to a train hurtling towards an inferno (re: climate change). I’ve accepted I won’t be a homesteader and I’ll be the first to go if society collapses. So this won’t be part of some permaculture self-sufficiency dream.
Part of me also just wants to go fuckit and break off, travel for a while…
But I also am increasingly wanting a stable home base as I see my parents generation might be gone within ten years, and I don’t want to float forever.
Just want some stability before shit hits the fan regardless - without feeling like I need to bust a gut and be shackled to work to make it happen either. Two bedrooms, sunlit and a small garden in a nice enough community - it sounds incompatible with wanting to not be trapped in a mortgage for decades… right? Right? (insert prequel meme)
I don’t know what the calculations would be on making it all happen yet, but I think starting that journey is definitely on the cards for 2025. So many chapters are closing, this represents a way out, something definitely needs to change…
Okay, off to the kids clothes shop to hopefully get this overcharge resolved without any fuss, then heaps of washing, laundromat, and a bitta work.
E: the overcharge thing went really well, turns out there was a further 20% off the already discounted price so I got $33 back. Worth the trip! 😎
Also cheesed off someone by “stealing” their parking spot but cmon they were trying to turn right into it across Station St, Fairfield - I didn’t see them, it’s technically illegal and I doubt they would’ve made the angle park without mounting the median and maybe nearly collecting a cyclist. It was just a 30 min park anyway. It’s a shit area to park but deal with it.
I hope the new year brings you more hope, clarity and stability. 💜
I hope so too! It feels like good things might be on their way, most hopeful I’ve felt in a while. That said, last time I felt this way was 2019-2020 (despite the fires and early news of covid) so I’m hoping I don’t jinx 2025 🥲
You’re not going to jinx it. You’re gonna blossom.
In your opinion what is the worst alternative milk out there? For me it’s coconut milk. If you add that to hot chocolate it does not taste like a Bounty. It tastes like Reef sun tan oil.
Coconut milk is for curries, not tea.
Preach. I vomit at the idea of coconut milk as a cow milk replacement for tea and coffee
Slightly alternative take: alternatives to coconut milk. Evaporated cow with coconut essence is utterly unacceptable!
How does one evaporate a cow? Do you have sharks with laser beams or something?
Yes. And a hamster with goggles running an industrial salad spinner.
Almond!
I second almond. Can still remember my disappointment that it didn’t actually taste like almonds, which I love.
Almond milk. Dunno why but it fucks my stomach up.
I don’t mind coconut milk or cream as long as it’s used in cooking like curries or coconut rice but I hate desiccated coconut in meals.
I think almond milk or soy milk.
Have tasted almond milk in coffee and it made it taste funny but I had no choice at the time.
I can only tolerate good soy milk, if I must (now that I think of it it’s been a longgg time) Fuck all the rest. I drink black coffee most of the time, and if I occasionally have one with milk it’s always cow milk. I don’t eat cereal and the non-animal yoghurt etc is weird.
Fresh made soy milk is delicious and is nice when made into desserts. But it’s not a substitute for cows milk.
non animal yoghurt is just horrible
Fellow black coffee drinker here and I actively dislike any milk in coffee. Why is it sometimes weird when people are doing a coffee run and ask us why we only want coffee and hot water and if we’re sure?
Ya idk. That doesn’t happen very much anymore for me at least.
One of my favourite ways to have coffee is iced long black - made with sparkling water. 😍
Yeah they’ve started making a lot of non-dairy icecream and yogurt from coconut milk.
It’s already so expensive and perishable I rarely ever buy it and because of coconut milk it now tastes gross too
Edit: Almond milk is both watery and kind of perfumed. Don’t like it.
I’m also not wild about oat milk, yogurt or icecream either. Porridge is good just not as a stand in for these
almond milk is an ingredient in old medieval recipes but not as a replacement for cows milk
Second this. I can do coconut as desiccated or flaked - churned into mulk is so not my thing. And I avoid soy, almond and oat milk unless dining with vegans (which rarely happens). Gimme honest cow juice - full fat for preference. And my cholesterol is considerably below the average for my age so the Purity Police can just shove it up their jumper. This does not include the genuinely lactose intolerant of course. But there are so damn many people out there doing I’m A Special Little Petal that the red mist comes down over my eyes with very little warning.
My kid prefers lactose free milk which means cows milk without the lactose. So many times barista will say “yes. We have soy, oat…”. 😡
Feels. I don’t mind lactose free cow milk - nearly indistinguishable imo. I just can’t stand the posturing over plant based mulks by the terminally inane. A genuine reason to use plant based is fine - it’s the posers that make my blood boil.
Rice milk is absolutely putrid.
Rice milk is for hair.
Out of those I’ve tried (soy, almond, oat), soy is at the bottom, oat at the top.
Interesting! I much prefer soy milk over cows milk and find oat milk so sweet that it’s a luxury / occasional thing.
Oat milk sweetness isn’t all made the same, there’s unsweetened versions you might like more. I usually buy the barista varieties to have with coffee, sometimes over cereal, they’re not overly sweet. On its own is not nice.
I’m a cow milk drinker, but too much in a day makes my stomach upset, so I sub with oat when needed.
Same. Anymore than 2 cappuccinos a day makes me queasy sometimes but I can drink tea all day long because I only have a splash in there.
Alternative milk?
That’s what it’s called in the biz. I dunno. Give me the full fat mama cow juice any day.
God I love a fresh full cream.
I remember milk when it was delivered everyday in bottles with foil caps.
There was no such thing as skim or homogenised and the cream would settle on the top and was delicious with breakfast cereal.
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Netting up more apricot branches today. Takes waay longer than doing the whole tree as one.
But they’re getting close!
Big tree this year. Hoping the netting works and will do some apricot hawt sauce.
Looking good. May apricot tree was easy this year as it has apparently died.
they look so delicious
Apricot hawt sauce sounds fantastic. Memories of some Hot Spiced Peaches I could never find again
The turkey has arrived. 6.836 kg
That’s still smaller than megachonk Ted Cat
And how would you cook that monster? 😂
Wait, how heavy is Ted?
he was 8.2 kgs. I got in big trouble from the vet, Ted is double what he should be and is now on a diet
husband kept on over feeding plus Ted steals food.
So for 6 months of Ted’s diet Bill got slimmer. Now they both get reduced portions and Ted is finally losing weight while Bill has stabilised.
Far out what a unit!
Only 8.2… my mother had a cat that got up to 15.5kg. He was a farm cat, very big frame, big paws and head, probably still the biggest non feral cat I’ve ever seen. But he was very strongly food motivated and an absolute chonker as well. Mum would never listen to anyone about feeding anything. She fed the pets biscuits and chocolate and cakes as well as their normal food, plus they had food out constantly 😠We were one of those households where the mum and dad were fat (actually obese), the kid (me) was fat, the dog was fat, the cat was fat etc. She is solely responsible for my lifelong battle with diet and weight gain and comfort eating (which my parents did in abundance, with mum virtually baking constantly). Pippa (cat) was famous for an incident where the doorbell rang when I’d just pulled a freshly roasted chicken out of the oven. Mum and I went to the door and spoke to the person briefly, and came back to the cat up on the bench scoffing hot chicken like it was his last meal on earth, even though it was steaming hot. He knew we’d be back soon and he was really going for it. I grabbed him and dragged him away and he was actively resisting and grabbing mouthfuls as I pulled and almost dragged the chicken off the bench! Needless to say none of our pets lasted much longer than 10 years 😔 She shortened all of their lifespans considerably. I salute you for caring enough about your pets to actually restrict the food. It’s a pain to enforce and they’re little buggers about it but it’s for their own good.
Whoa. How are you cooking the monster?
Dry rub marinade the night before. Butter under skin on Xmas morning. Chuck it in the oven for 5 hours or so. It will cook faster this year because we are doing the stuffing seperate. (I baste every 40 minutes or so).
The resulting gravy. OMG it’s almost the best part.
Shut up! Enjoy!
Potentially doxxing where I work but I’ll be out of there soon, I don’t really care. Christmas always brings out the crazies.
retail shenanigans
Customer: you should be stopping everyone who exits the store like they do at Costco.
Me: I’m trying my best but our exit isn’t set out like their one. I can’t stop everyone.
Customer: well you’re not doing your job properly.
Me: OK
Another customer: this is a 17 year old girl and she’s doing a great job, don’t listen to her
(I’m quite a bit older than 17, time to start the anti-aging so I look 17 for as long as possible?)
First customer: calm down, you sound so angry. I’m a clinical psychologist that works with children.
I wanted to say and probably a shite one at that.
customer shenanigans 2
customer returns a pair of thongs and I go to put them with the clothing returns
Customer: I can put those away
Me: no, don’t worry about it. We can put them away
Customer: scoffs I do it all the time for people at Coles and they love it. This is the first time someone has said no. Let me do it, I like being helpful.
Me: thanks but you don’t have to, besides, they don’t have a hanger on them
Customer: raises voice why are you picking at me? I put the hanger away in a specific spot in the store, let me put them away.
Me: gives up
She ended up actually putting them back. The register people said she had to be served at register 1 and not any of the others because she has a thing with numbers.
another one
The manager that was on decided to close the door 10 minutes before closing. It had been dead for the past half an hour. They aren’t supposed to do that but anyway. We all go to clock off and leave at closing.
There was a customer behind the door.
Customer: your website said you close at this time. Why is the door closed?
Manager: incomprehensible
Customer: this is ridiculous, I should get the item I want for free.
Manager: you can’t get it for free but I’ll let you buy the item.
OMG eye twitches
I’m sorry you had to go through that :(
I don’t know how you survive this crap day in, day out - thank goodness you’re leaving soon!
Woke up to find her like this. Fell asleep again for about an hour. Still like this.
We’re still learning about how shadows work.
Wait till you get to see how mirrors work.
But how do magnets work
Magic?
