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Notes from a bemused canuck

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Keeping calm and carrying on. Kinda, sorta.

Posted on June 15, 2009 By admin 1 Comment on Keeping calm and carrying on. Kinda, sorta.

One week later and I’m walking – well, limping, really – but at least I’m back at work. My ankle is strapped in and I’m wearing my hiking boots (which do nothing for my foot odour) so it’s not too bad. I don’t need to take painkillers any more and the swelling is mostly gone. There is still a kick-ass bruise on both sides of my ankle but it’s now multiple pretty colours and that’s also going away.

We spent the weekend in Leicester. Good news, we have curtains! They cost a damn sight more than we expected them to, but at least we have something that Katy and I can agree on. It should be the last big thing we need to spend on. It needs to be the last big thing we spend on, because we’re broke at the moment and since Katy’s maternity pay is ending next month, our budget will be tight for the next few months. Joy, joy, stress, stress, stress. Really, it’s doable but we’ll need to be frugal – something we’re really, really bad at doing.

We went to see two movies: Coraline and Terminator:Salvation. Coraline is really funky and I’ll be buying it when it comes out on DVD (see? not frugal!) T:S was very meh. Ok, but nothing spectacular. They did manage to tie in nicely into the first and second movie, but… dunno. I wasn’t hanging on the edge of my seat. BTW, when did the movies become so expensive??? Tickets for two adults for a matinee, two medium soft drinks, the smallest popcorn available (which was still bigger than a whole portion of microwave popcorn that I usually share with Katy) and a small ice cream: £30!!! How the hell do teenagers afford that? I mean, shite!

We got our new sofa on Friday. The thing is f’n HUGE! I knew it was big and it knew it would fit, but seeing it in a giant showroom doesn’t do it justice when you imagine how it’s going to look in your living room. I had to ask the delivery men to put the old couch in the back shed because they said that it wouldn’t fit in the office. I think it’s partially that they didn’t want to be arsed to make it fit through the door, but they have planted the seeds of doubt about getting it in its proposed resting place and that doesn’t make me a happy bunny. More to come later when we attempt to pry it in :)

The BenBen was a bit of a handful this weekend. We think his teeth are giving him grief. It’s coming up to the right time and he’s showing some classic signs of it. He’s drooling on everything! And I mean droooooooooling. My clothing gets soggy just looking at him. We’re going to go see a dermatology nurse about his eczema. Hopefully it’s something he’ll grow out of and it’s just being aggravated because of the heat at the moment. We’ll see what she has to say.

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Quote of the day

Posted on June 15, 2009 By admin

If I have to check all my assumptions, I’ll never get any science done.

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F*CK. Also, ouch!

Posted on June 8, 2009 By admin

In a show of great skill and talent, I have managed to lose the ability to walk in a straight line and have spectacularly wiped out on a walkway at work and have twisted my ankle in the process. I’m currently sitting with my foot elevated and wrapped in ice. Taking advantage of the fact that I’m a walking pharmacy, I’m felling a lot better after taking ibuprofen, paracetamol and codeine. Still, god damn it, I do not need this shit right now.

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Our cats are more random than usual

Posted on June 8, 2009 By admin

Tolstoy has taken to sleeping in the most random places ever in the past few days. Normally, he’s sleeping under the Poang in our bedroom but in the past 3 days, we’ve seen him:

– on the couch (which he never does)
– under BenBen’s cot bed (he’s usually *in* it)
– behind the scratching post we just put upstairs (it’s always fun when he attacks your feet in the middle of the night when you’re not expecting it)

And this morning, we found him sleeping on BenBen’s play mat.

Random animal :)

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Meat + flame = GOOD!

Posted on June 3, 2009 By admin

BBQ Chicken Salad

With the weather being so nice recently, the BBQ has had a good dusting off and has seen more usage in the last week than in the last year :) I think that having it so close to the back patio door will be a good thing. We had Bratwurst, veggie kebabs and steak last Sunday and we had BBQ chicken salad last night. If the weather holds out for tonight, it’s going to be burgers :)

Oh, and as a side note, makes a really good BBQ sauce :)

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Britain’s got talent

Posted on May 31, 2009August 28, 2019 By admin

I’m happy Diversity won, but at the same time, I think that it’s a shame and a farce that Stavros Flatley didn’t even place!

Quote of the moment: You’ve got to have some Greek in you somewhere. No one is that cool who isn’t a big Greek.

The dance act is quite cool though, so they’re going to wow the Queen :)

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New peeeeeeeeeeectures!

Posted on May 28, 2009May 28, 2009 By admin

I’ve finally pulled the finger out and gotten some pictures online. You can go browse the galleries on the website and see:

Pictures of the EMBL Staff Association Retreat to Edinburgh: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/edinburgh_may_2009/

A really cool collection of night-time areal pictures of London: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/london_from_above/

Some recently added pictures of Mr BenBen: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/ben/

Of the last gallery, let me give you some teasers :)


  
  

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[Recipe] Seared Tuna Nicoise salad

Posted on May 28, 2009 By admin

Tuna Nicoise

Salad

* 450g baby new potatoes
* 300g fine French beans
* pitted green olives, sliced in half
* cucumber, cut in slices
* red onion, sliced into rings
* radishes, sliced thinly
* Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
* Classic vinaigrette
* 2 baby gem lettuce, separated into leaves
* 2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for frying
* tuna loin steaks, about 100g each
* 2 large eggs

vinaigrette

* 125ml extra virgin olive oil
* Juice of ½ a lemon
* chopped chives

method

1. Boil the potatoes for 10-12 minutes until tender. Drain well then halve. Splash with olive oil and sprinkle with chives and sea salt. Leave to cool. Trim the beans then cook in boiling salted water for 2 minutes. Drain and refresh in iced water. Drain well once more and pat dry.

2. Mix the potatoes and beans with the lettuce, radishes, olives, cucumber and onions. Whisk the ingredients for the vinaigrette and season with salt and pepper. Toss the vegetables in some of the vinaigrette.

3. Heat a large non-stick frying pan until you can feel a good heat rising. Add 1 tbsp of the oil then lay in the tuna steaks. Season with sea salt and pepper. Cook for 2 minutes on each side until they feel slightly springy when pressed. The tuna should still be pink in the middle. Cut each steak in half and place on top of the salad.

4. Place the eggs in to a pan of boiling water and cook for 6 minutes (for a well set white and runny yolk). Plunge the eggs into iced cold water to prevent them from cooking further. Once cooled, roll the egg on the work surface, gently applying pressure so the shell begins to crack, then peel off the shell.

5. Place the eggs on top of the tuna and cut in half, to reveal the soft runny yolk.

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Our new bed will be gorgeous, when it gets here

Posted on May 28, 2009 By admin

We ordered a beautiful, stained timber four-poster bed from Kubek, a furniture store in Leicester. We’d been lusting after that bed for years and we’ve always said that when we buy a house, we’ll get The Bed. We bought a house. We bought The Bed. It was supposed to be delivered yesterday. The thing is fricken’ huge and weighs a ton. It was assembled without hitch (the guy even commented on how smoothly it was going). It is beautiful.

It is the wrong size.

We ordered a king sized bed. They delivered a double. It is not a simple problem of having another bed delivered. They’re made to order from Malta. Apparently the guy in Malta (a gentleman called Tony who will shortly receive a bollocking) shipped the wrong bed. When Kubek received their shipment, they checked that all the pieces were there and that it all fit, but they didn’t realize that it was the wrong size. It’s only when the assembly man tried to fit the mattress slats and they wouldn’t fit that something clicked. The bad news is that the next shipment isn’t due until July. They’ll see if they can get cross-members of the right size shipped sooner, but no promises there. They were falling over themselves to apologize and, in essence, we’re still fine to sleep in our old bed in what will be the guest bedroom.

So close, and yet so far.

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Ow!

Posted on May 26, 2009 By admin

Things were productive at casa Richard this weekend. We secured all of the shelves and bookcases to the walls and managed to clear out all the boxes of books and DVDs. I put up a curtain pole in the office and we bought waaaay too many clocks on a random trip to Scottsdales (where we were only supposed to buy a house number and some cat food). The shed is piling up nicely with stuff we won’t need to keep in the house, as sheds are wont to do.

I other news, I managed to brain myself quite efficiently on Saturday. All my tools are in a cupboard under the stairs and, when I went to get some rawl plugs to fix the aforementioned bookcase, I got up a bit too quickly while I was still under the stairs. I’m sure I dented my skull. I was ok for Saturday but I’ve been having a minor headache since Sunday. I think it’s just a big bruise, but the migraine I got this morning really isn’t helping matters. It’ll either go away by itself in a day or two or I’ll be dead from an undiagnosed cerebral hematoma (note to self, do NOT go read stuff on Wikipedia).

Anyway, it was a grand weekend and we got lots done and we ate lots and there was ice cream. If it wasn’t for the ding on my head, it would have been close to a perfect bank holiday weekend.

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