I'm trying to ride my bike to work most days, but on the days I don't
I catch the cross river ferry and have to put up with views like this :)

We moved in on august 9 and are well and truly settled in and
unpacked. It's been great so far, other than a couple of extra
financial burdens thrown in at the last minute.

The first of these was a rates increase. We're still not sure how much
they're going up by, but the suburb as a whole is going up 27% - among
the highest in Brisbane.

The second was an interest rate increase before we'd even made our
first payment. They've since dropped the official rate, but we haven't
received that cut just yet.

But after Riverfire a fortnight ago it is all worth it :)

We had a fantastic view of everything and had a great night all up.

That'll do for now - Wipeout is on :)

So that it might inspire me to get back to blogging I have set up
blogging from my iPhone :)

I have lots to talk about with lots going on lately so I'll do a few
small updates in the near future to get caught up.

I haven't updated for a while because I've been a bit busy lately, and not entirely because of GTA IV :)

Em and I have bought our own place! :D

It's a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment at Kangaroo Point with a great city view. It was one of the first places we looked at over a month ago, when we weren't yet serious about buying a place - I still have a few months left on my lease, and Em had all her money in a term deposit. All the places we looked over the following weeks didn't quite compare back to this place for one reason or another. So we were rather surprised to find out after 5 weeks on the market, not only was it still for sale, but the owner had dropped the price!

Even though we were still not serious about buying, we both felt that perhaps this was a sign we should get serious. So we did :)

After 3 or 4 days of negotiating, we managed to get the owner down to a price we were happy with. It's now been about 10 days, and after the building inspection came back all good last week, I got the call late yesterday afternoon to say our finance was all good too. So it's now official!

It doesn't settle until July 3rd, so it's not quite ours yet, but it's all but there now.

This is one of the few times in my life I'm actually looking forward to moving! :D

Kitty and I are at Emily's tonight (and maybe until further notice) after the hot water heater in my unit decided to leak water through half the unit.

Thankfully none of my stuff got wet, but I'd reckon the carpets are ruined - basically the water got under the carpet and as we walked on it the water was drawn to the surface. There was actually a funny few minutes while I stood there looking at it going "wtf?" cos I couldn't work out what was going on. The kitchen floor was too dry for so much water to have come from that direction, so I couldn't think of any way it could have got wet... then it dawned on me what was on the other side of that wall. (I only really thought of it because I remembered the episode of the Sopranos where Tony's basement floods after the water heater dies)

Good thing a safety switch was installed only a few weeks ago, otherwise all that water might have been live - the switch had tripped and refused to be switched back on so something was definitely waterlogged.

I'm not sure how long it will take them to repair the damage, so we might be here for a few days yet.

:(

Today marks the six month anniversary of my initial injury. It seems to have gone by so fast, yet so slow. 

Labels: achilles

I bought a jar of Patak's vindaloo paste (hot) a few months back that I've put off cooking while Em was here because she's not trained up on hot foods (yet!)

Tonight I was struggling a little finding something to cook that appealed to me. My eyes settled on the jar and I figured tonight was the night. :)

I had a brief moment of wondering what I was getting myself into when I opened the jar and almost couldn't breathe. I figured it's concentrated stuff, so that's probably to be expected.

After simmering for 45 mins or so the rice was done so I served it out and had the first mouthful...

ZOMG HOT!!!

I think my nose started running that second. I realised right then and there that my curry skills were about to be put to the ultimate test. Not only was I faced with the bowl full in front of me, but a quarter of a jar serves 2 people, and I'd cooked up half a jar's worth! So I have at least 3 more generous servings ahead of me, not including tonight's.

Normally when I cook for myself, I put the leftovers in a couple of containers, and finish it off in the next few days. For instance, last week I cooked a green curry chicken (another of my hot favourites!) and had it for dinner and lunch for the next 2 days straight. Yes, I like green curry chicken that much :D

This, however....

I'm a little scared to have too much of this in too short a time span for fear of what it might do to my digestive system. :/

I guess the good part of this is that the leftovers should last for a while - I can't see anything surviving in that! :)

Labels: cooking

I'm a huge fan of icanhascheezburger.com and have always been tempted to share some of my favourites here, but sadly I enjoy too many of them for that to be possible.

I'm making an exception for this one, though, because I still get such a good laugh out of it! :D