Once you go Mac….

…You don’t go back.

Today is my birthday and I have a brand new shiny MacBook courtesy of Robbie. It’s lovely. I love the Mac, I love Robbie and I love, love, love my birthday!

I think it comes from having a birthday in the summer holidays. When I was a kid I was always off school, the sun was always shining and I always had a big party. Now, I have a sense of entitlement about my birthday. I feel like I should definitely have the day off (which I do), still have great parties (which I did) and have lots of presents (ditto). Birthdays are just a great time because it means I can get everyone together and see lots of people I haven’t been out with in a while, drink cocktails, see my family and have a fab time.

What’s not to love?

The rain has even held off, first time in 3 years

Tags: birthday, mac

All Run Out

Just a quick post to say that I did the first 10K run at the weekend. It was difficult!! But I’m glad that I did it, and Robbie too. Especially him because he had been sick all week and hadn’t been able to do any training. We dodged waterlogged patches of grass, over-enthusastic dogs, giant geese, buggies and even managed to do it before the storm hit.

And to reward ourselves we got home and went to sleep!

My legs were pretty stiff at the end but I still managed to head into town for a birthday party

Other than that it was a nice relaxing Easter, although the shadow of Dexter Season 4 was over me the whole time as we finished watching it on Good Friday. Who saw THAT ending coming?????

Still very traumatised.

Tags: dexter, Running

Foodie weekend

Robbie and I had a bit of a foodie weekend last week, starting with a sushi making lesson. The guys from BT bought Robbie a Red Letter Day experience when he left before Christmas and he used it to buy the sushi lesson which took place at Yo Sushi St Paul’s.

Now, being a non-fish eating vegetarian I’ve only really got into sushi over the last year and that’s thanks to the proximity of Itsu to where I work and its yummy vegetarian sushi salads. I was still slightly suspicious of chowing down on raw fish. But we headed off early in the morning on Saturday as the lesson started at 10am (!) and it was actually really, really good.

There were about 22 people there for the course. The chef in charge was hilarious and started off by giving us a run down of the history of sushi – did you know it was invented in China, not Japan? – and told us step by step how to prepare the perfect rice. The fish eaters (i.e. everyone except me) was given some fresh salmon to eat – nigiri I think this is called – and Robbie tried to entice me to have some but I didn’t think it would be a great idea in case I was very ill!

Then we had a go at making our own! We got to make maki sushi, uramaki – the inside-out California rolls – and hand rolls. They were really difficult to make but very tasty. Basically we got to eat a LOT of sushi and I was well catered for so I didn’t go hungry! We got loads of free green tea as well and then, just as we were thinking it was all about to end the chef came round to take our lunch orders! So we got a bento box for lunch as well! I practically had to be rolled out by the end of it…

Saturday night we went out for dinner with our friends Heather and Lee as it was Heather’s birthday as we went to a new Italian place locally. Very nice and again, I left absolutely stuffed!

Sunday was a bit of a lazy day. We went for a run in the morning to prepare for the dreaded 10K which is in less than two weeks… panicpanicpanic. Then I decided to make pie. I’ve never had much success with pie before for some reason but really craved it on Sunday so I did a creamy mushroom and quorn puff pastry pie and then, because I had some pastry left over, I made jam tarts for dessert. And they all turned out really well! First pie success!

Tags: cooking, food, Robbie, sushi

Diseased

Well today I’m ill with a cold and I HATE getting colds. I especially hate not being able to go to work because of a cold because it just sounds so lame. ‘Cold’ sounds so insignificant. ‘Flu’ is better although as my esteemed scientist friend tells me, you hardly ever get the flu, just really bad colds.

The thing is, it’s not like you can’t actually do anything with a cold because you can. After you’ve been properly dosed up you can probably work from home for a few hours which on the whole is actually more productive than being around other people in an office environment for several reasons:

1. High risk of infecting others with sneezing and coughing in an open plan office/ air conditioned office.
2. You need to have a continuous supply of tissues within reaching distance at all times.
3. If you dial in to a meeting you can feign wellness to some degree rather than being pale and sickly in the corner during someone’s presentation.
4. The Tube is guaranteed to make you feel worse.
5. There is only so much the healing powers of make-up can do. Beyond that there is a good chance you will scare off all your clients.

Calling in sick because you ‘have a cold’ is still frowned-upon though. You can just feel the waves of resentment and suspicion down the line even though you know that if you were locked in a meeting room with them they’d all hate you because you were spreading germs everywhere. This is why I think there should be more flexible working – if you can genuinely do your work from home then you should absolutely stay there until you are germ-free. There is nothing worse than your colleague’s nasty tissues edging closer to your part of the desk and hearing them wheeze and cough their way through the day while you’re on the phone.

Grrrr. Sickness makes me intolerant.

Please send soup.

Tags: cold, flexible working, flu, rant, sick

Weekend in Birmingham

This weekend Robbie and I went to Birmingham to meet the photographer we want for our wedding. It was the ‘chemistry’ meeting to make sure we got on well and we liked his style. While we were there we decided to stay over and make a weekend of it as neither of us had been to Birmingham before. I’m on a mailing list for Hand Picked Hotels and we booked their Valentine’s special at New Hall Hotel & Spa in Sutton Coldfield, out in the countryside.

We met Steve, the photographer, at his studio in The Custard Factory, which is an arts and media quarter in the city near the Bull Ring. Steve was great and his work looks amazing. We both like him because his style is quite arty and interesting – he also shoots bands – and is different from the usual wedding style. We really liked him and it’s looking positive! Expect to meet Steve taking your picture next June!

After the meeting we walked round the Custard Factory. It was quiet for a Saturday but that was good as it meant we could have a proper look around without the shops being too jam-packed. It was pretty cool, lots of independent little shops and we got side tracked for quite some time at Urban Village, a GREAT vintage shop. I got a dress and Robbie picked up an amazing vintage tailor-made suit for less than the price of a pair of jeans! I could happily have stayed there all day…

But we got hungry and so walked to the Bull Ring where we had bento and green tea at Mount Fuji, a Japanese restaurant. Yum:

We had a quick look round the Bullring as well although it was fairly shopping mall generic. Selfridges is very striking though!

We also went into China town and had a look round the Chinese supermarket. Robbie wanted to buy everything he saw! They were gearing up for Chinese New Year and had an event on today which we were going to stop by for but didn’t make it in the end. One of the good things about the centre is that there are huge markets everywhere which is what a lot of places are missing with so many giant Sainsbury’s and Tescos.

Then we headed off to our hotel, about a 20 minute drive from the city centre. It is really beautiful and is over 800 years old.

Our room and meal was very nice and they pulled out all the stops because it was Valentine’s – even having a string quartet by the restaurant. In the morning we went for a walk around the grounds:

Robbie braving the cold!

Frozen moat – not hugely useful in keeping away the enemies!

It was a lovely weekend and great to spend some quality time together as sometimes we barely see each other at all during the week. Just a shame we have to go back to work tomorrow!

Tags: birmingham, bullring, custard factory, new hall hotel, Wedding

Drink the Scandinavian way

Last night I went to the Nordic Bar off Oxford Street. I haven’t been there in AGES and it was wicked. Cheap cocktails and cheap dinner. LOVELY dinner. Who knew a Swedish vegetarian hotdog could taste so good? Go there and enjoy.

Tags: bars, London, nordic

God Hates…

The Westboro Baptist Church protest at Twitter in San Francisco completely passed me by a couple of weeks ago and I’ve only just seen the story on the Laughing Squid but it was such a novel way of dealing with bigotry and intolerance that I had to post it.

The Westboro guys and their methods of ‘preaching’, which I first heard about a couple of years ago from a Louis Theroux documentary, are pretty horrendous. They are essentially a hate group operating from Kansas, US, who spread anti-homosexual propaganda through various protest activities around the country such as picketing funerals and public events. They display offensive and inflammatory signs such as ‘God Hates Fags’ and ‘God Hates America’ – appalling shock tactics which understandably generate a lot of anger.

They were due to protest outside Twitter’s San Francisco office at the end of January. Shortly after they posted their protest schedule online it was picked up by a blogger who reposted it on the Laughing Squid and invited others to join him to counter-protest. Invariably, the invitation spread and on the day the Westboro lot were hugely outnumbered by an anti-Westboro brigade, most having brought their own signs with ridiculous slogans such as: ‘God Hates Retweets’, ‘God Hates Kittens’, ‘I was promised donuts’ and ‘Me’.

The images have gone viral and Laughing Squid has also created a ‘sign generator’ for other people to use when the Westboro guys come to their town. Hopefully this went some way to make the protesters feel ridiculous, in the minority and maybe even encouraged them to do some of that, you know, repenting stuff.

Tags: laughingsquid, Religion, twitter