]I have all the ingredients to make raspberry and white chocolate cupcakes sitting in the fridge.

They're going to be quite delicious, but I came across a snag in the pickle when I went to make them on the weekend and remembered that last time I moved house I got rid of my electric beaters. Down went that idea.

So I decided to make choc-chip cookies instead.
I had to ah..improvise..on the ingredients front but they came out super tasty; chewy in the middle, crissssspy on the edges:

3/4 cup caster sugar
3/4 cup SR flour
90g melted butter
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
100g choc chips

Mix the sugar and flour together.
Add the butter, egg and vanilla and stir. It'll be way sticky, I had to add a bit more flour.
Stir in the choc chips. I used daim because I was worried they'd be plain, and I wanted the toffee to caramelise in the dough.

Make dough balls about 1.5 tablespoons and place them about 6cm apart because they spread like a mo-fo.

Flatten them a little with your fingers.


Bake at 180c for about 15 mins until they're turning goldy-brown on the edges.

Try and get them off the tray before they're cold but after they've been out of the oven for a few minutes. They'll be brown but still feel soft. If you leave them on the tray for too long they sort of..weld to it.. and it's almost impossible to get them off without breaks.

Eat, drink, and be merry.

It is well known around these parts that I have an unholy love of all things good and cake.

Especially Swedish cake.

Sweet jesus, what I would give to be sitting in Storken right now snacking on daimtårta and äppletosca and pilfering refills of earl grey tea whilst 'studying'.

Instead I am actually studying, but my brain has stopped working because I am in a haze of caffeine-induced fuggery, every single muscle in my back has spasmed, and I am concerned that if I take anymore painkillers I'll either get a stomach ulcer or have a heart attack.

I even thought I was having a heart attack today but it turned out to be guilt because I was in bed at 5.30pm pseudo-napping when I should have been working on my lit review.

I look like crazy too, all google-eyed and dazed. A bit like the other week when I cried during the last episode of Battlestar and *may* have blown a blood-vessel in my eye. Ahem. But anyway, mmmmn Storken. Good times.
Those tea cups really were ridiculously large. Ohhh ridiiiiiiiiculous, that one's for Johan D *sobs*

Must. Get. Back. On. Track. My brain really hurts.

There is no Storken here. There is no Swedish cake either. Unless, of course, you go to the Swedish cafe! Randomly, and absolutely swedishly, it's only open on Wednesday nights between 6.00pm and 9.30pm, because there's nothing like absolutely arbitrary opening hours to make a Swede feel at home!

I was in food heaven... kanelbullar, a piece of daimtårta AND a köttbullarsmacka. Or something sort of approximating what that word is attempting to describe. With beetroot. YUM

It was full of Swedes who were thin and blond and stylish. Completely uncomfortable-making, just like Sweden!! (In the best possible way...) I'm SO glad I went with a real Swede!

And look, there are little Dala hest on the curtains! Horses! On the curtains! AND they're blue and yellow!!!

I like shapes in nature. I like that often you don't notice what's around you until you take some time out to look. And I love that irregular geometry exists in nature, symmetry is way over-rated in my book. I also love my camera, even though I would like to get a new one at some point.


Leaf skeletons on a fern.
I would LOVE to look at this under UV to see what other insect-attraction patterns are here, but I guess if I were a bee I'd quite like the look of this pollen anyway. Mmmmn, pollen yummness :D
Native nuts. Brings to mind an awkward conversation at lab lunch on Friday about kangaroo scrotum. Awkward. Conversation.
A grub about to pupate. Pupate is a word that grosses me out. Pupate...shudder...
Mmmmn, fungus. Ruffly pretty fungus. My uncle reckoned we could eat it...I decided not to eat it.
A spider's puff-ball. I wanted to step on it, but I resisted. Only just :D
A fruiting Monstera deliciosa, couldn't tell you if it is indeed delicious because the fruit weren't ripe, but how's that for an awesome pattern!
A spiky ball thing.
Buds and blossoms. They're yummy if you lick them, but I ah... didn't lick them...

Next in the series of procrastinatory postage: The Swedish Cafe! Oh my god, YUM. Keep reading.

So it turns out that I'm not a huge fan of flying. Especially when the plane lands and bursts a tire. All those episodes of Aircrash Investigation came in handy as I imagined disaster-like scenarios. I was sitting in row 2 though, and the people in the emergency exit row were fat old ladies; if the worst-case had played out, my plan was to use one of them as a landing cushion.

Mmmmn yes, I had it all planned out.

*Actually it was totally not that dramatic at all, but still, didn't do wonders for my general sense of impending doom whilst flying...

...but suburban gangs and lawful motorcycle clubs are ok.

I've finally pin-pointed one of the major problems in my life: due to decisions I have made, mostly of my own volition, life is, at the moment, like one gigantic assignment that will not end. This is a major problem. I should have just gone and got a job. Like, a real job...

Instead, I decided to take pictures of the place where I spend many hours of my life. Perhaps I will die here and be eaten by alsatians. Perhaps I should work on my literature review, which is looming up, looking like something so beyond my motivational capabilities that I cannot bring myself to actually write it. Perhaps perhaps perhaps.


My awesome flow diagram, stuck on the wall above my desk. Who would have thought that procrastination could be so colourful!?
My corner of desk, complete with redundant computer, gym gear and lab shoes underneath. Also note fan off to side-- my only friend on hot days with 3 people in a room the size of a small family car.
Liz's desk. Because she spends even more time here than I do. Loser.
James often does magical things of science. Here, he is stirring something in a large glass flask with technical paint-brush object and magnetic stirrer. Oh, mysterious science. Wonderous glass flask, everything inside it is magically upside down! Amazing and crazy at the same time, I'd explain how he does it, but it's very technical and you probably wouldn't comprende.
My desk at home. Because like.. sometimes I do work even when I've left the office. Not very often, I'll admit, but the notice board makes me look totally dedicated. Note the cardboard animals. A whole zoo of them.

I was at the hairdresser. I said.."I think I want a fringe.." he said..."we'll do the back first and then see how you feel"... I said.. "I just think I'm sick of spending 60 bucks and looking the same.." he nodded sagely. I said .. "just do it."

I'm starting to think that my mother is unlucky with electronics. She has burned through more mobile phones and digital cameras than any person I've ever met. And seriously, what are the chances of ants building a nest inside a rice cooker without anyone noticing...?

Recently, her camera departed this mortal coil after she dropped it or something, I don't even listen to what happened anymore because I'm so used to her frying things. She decided that she wanted a new camera, something fancy and shiny with good macro (so she can take pictures like mine...I tried to explain that it's not all about the machinery but she wasn't interested...), and she needed to buy it last Thursday so that she'd be able to take masses of fancy shiny pictures over the long weekend. After hours, literally hours, in the camera shop, I talked her into buying a Lumix TZ-5, and I'm totally jealous because now I want a new camera. Especially after, during our hours in the camera shop, I played with a Fuji S100SF; want one now.

Um, so we got home, and she went to charge the battery, though the charger was an odd looking fit for the battery, and the next day off we went to Grafton. Come lunch on Saturday..how to put this delicately... the battery was almost completely flat because the camera had shipped with the wrong charger.

Moral of the story: I've had the same camera for 4 years, and every picture that follows was taken using it.

Oh and the reason we were in Grafton was because my grandparents have been married for 60 years. They got a letter from the Queen and all. And an article in the newspaper. Does that make me famous by association?

Jen and Asu...one of her rotating stable of Japanese exchange students.
Seafood for lunch, om nom nom nom nom....mmmmn
Family... to be honest, I'm not totally sure how I'm related to anyone in the pic other than my grandparents.
My grandparents.
Three generations, me bending down on flat ground and with flat shoes. Clearly I am my father's daughter.

An ant that I saw while I was poking around in the garden waiting for lunch.
Jen & Ellie. Hot stuff.

The next installment is some macro I took while we were poking around in Granny & Grandpa's garden yesterday as Mum and her sister raided the bromeliads. And a story about a bird. It will be more interesting than it sounds. Oh, and an aircraft related drama; it's alllll happening in my neck of the woods.

I made cupcakes for our lab last week. I mean..I think I ate most of them, but the thought was there.

I adapted the recipe for Caramel Easter-Egg Muffins from Taste. Instead of easter-eggs inside I put Rolos...mainly because they were hell cheaper than caramel easter-eggs, and also because I am hell cheap.

The batter itself seemed quite plain and I started to get paranoid that Rolos weren't caramelly enough, so for a bit more oomph I loaded them up up with a huge amount of Daim bits from my stash of Swedish godis. Gotta love the godis stockpile, especially at påsk HAH.




I cut down on the amount of milk (but not deliberately, I just ran out..) and I added an extra egg-yolk too...also not deliberately: remember when I bought that box of eggs and every single one was a double yolkie? And then I started to think I was cursed and made someone from the corridor stand as an observer every time I cracked an egg open..ahem.. anyway, one egg was a double yolkie, because obviously there has been some kind of time delay on the curse and now it's back. I figured the extra yolk couldn't hurt though, so I didn't bother fishing it out.

Om nom nom nom, they were pretty tasty, even if calling them "Surprise Cupcakes" meant 2 people asking if there was poo inside.

PS. aren't the cupcake wrappers awesomes! They're from my stash of Cute Things From Japan With Little Practical Use. Love them. I stocked up on them at a 100 Yen shop near Kaori's place in Saitama last year; that place was hyaku-en heaven!

I'm in the mood for a rant. It's not even a rant-worthy subject, but I'm just generally annoyed this morning because I got locked out and had to spend a hundred bucks on a locksmith. Whilst in my pyjamas. And I was on such a high yesterday after becoming embroiled in, and subsequently winning, a late-afternoon eBay bidding war. It felt good, really it did.

Anyway. Here we go:*

Public Transport Rules for Non-Crazy People**

1) When the bus is more than 2/3 empty, it's just not cool to sit next to someone.

2) If you have a choice between 38 empty seats and one with a person carrying two big-ass bags full of macbook, electronic equipment, a 6-pack of yogurt and some felafel, it's just not cool to ask that person to move their bags so you can sit there.

3) If you are sitting next to someone carrying two big-ass bags full of macbook, electronic equipment, a 6-pack of yogurt and some felafel, the polite thing to do is get up when their stop is coming up. You know, preferably into one of the 38 other empty seats on the bus. You don't just swing your feet out of the way and then look pissy when the person carrying 2 big-ass bags accidentally whacks you in the head. If you left your head in the way then you only have yourself to blame.

*And just for the record here, this whole situation was made even weirder by the fact that it wasn't a skeezy old man smelling of vodka, because god knows we've all been there; it was a totally normal looking young woman.

**Obviously there's a whole other set of public-transport rules for crazy people. Namely, if you tried to kill me by sitting on me and squashing me flat, even though I was clearly trying to get out of your way, it's just not cool to offer me a mandarin a year later. Not cool, just creepy.

I've decided to add another category of post to my blog: Over-Shares.

It's ok, we've been through this territory before and you stuck with me. Remember the Puffiness of The Eye, the time I had chlamydia (not that kind!), and well documented histories of pretty much every throat or sinus infection I've had in the last two years? Actually, better make that last 3-4 years...

So here goes, I'm gonna tell you some things. And you're gonna wish you stopped reading. And yet, I know you will keep reading because you can't help yourself.

Randomly, in May 2007, my toenails started falling off. For no particular reason.

We can safely rule out fungus because they look normal: I've done my internet research and that shit's just nasty. The weirdest thing is that it always happens to the same toenail on each foot at the same time (which I believe is further evidence against the fungus theory).

Most of the time it coincides with a period of major health crapness (I think that's the technical term for it); the first time was about 2 months after the whole "chlamydia incident", and last year was about 2 months after I had a really bad run of tonsillitis. This time around though, I don't know, I think it might be hiking related. All that walking down hills, and like...using my feet.

Imagine that, in the pursuit of a healthy and meaningful experience! I knew there was a good reason why I'm an inside person.

Anyway, they seem to be growing back at the moment. First I lost the littlies, they have now fully returned, then I lost the biggies...a teeny tiny bit more noticable..but they too are now on their way back. At least I have nice hair.



That was fun, wasn't it? Check soon for the next installment of Over-Shares, let me tell you, it's an absolute killer.*


*D'ya like that one? I just gave you a total hint without being overly graphic. I'm all about looking out for other people!