Author: Snoskred

Sunday Selections Week 42

17 Comments Posted on October 18, 2015October 13, 2015 by Snoskred

Would you like to go to the garden centre with me? Don’t worry, we will look with our eyeballs, not our purses.

These were new to me – lollipop daisies. I am not normally a daisy fan but I love these!

They had quite a range of different coloured daisies.

This bee was a fan.

Out of all the non flowering plants, I deeply love Pittosporum. My parents have this planted down one side of their house and have made it into a hedge of awesomeness.

This little plant is called a Loropetalum. Every year at this particular garden centre they grow something to a very large size and make a feature of it out the front of the place, then they have smaller versions inside for people to buy. This years plant has proved so popular, the local Bunnings are stocking it too.

There is some truth in advertising.. :)

What a gorgeous display of purple and pink! I bought the Aubrieta.

Would you like to join in with Sunday Selections?? The rules are very simple:-
1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title
2. link back to River at Drifting Through Life, somewhere in your post
3. leave River a comment so that she knows you’ve joined in and can come over and see what you’ve posted.

Sunday Selections, weekly wrap up

Broken Arrow

5 Comments Posted on October 16, 2015October 11, 2015 by Snoskred

The first time I ever saw a clip from Broken Arrow was at a product night for surround sound, back in the mid-90’s when there was no such thing as downloading a movie and people were into having movie sound at home.

Already being a big fan of both Christian Slater and John Travolta I would have been going to see this movie at the cinema purely based on their being in it.

When I heard that Samantha Mathis was going to be the lead female actress I was even more excited to see it. I was such a fan of Christian and Samantha together in Pump Up The Volume.

So the storyline goes like this – Captain Hale (Slater) and Major Deakins (Travolta) are taking a stealth bomber out on an “exercise” over Utah with two nuclear weapons. Deakins wants to steal the weapons and he has everything all planned out, including ejecting Hale from the plane as a surprise to himself. Hale, understandably not a fan of any of these plans, teams up with a park ranger (Mathis) to try and foil the theft.

John Travolta is suitably bad-a** in this film

Alas poor helicopters! I did not anticipate the massive amount of violence towards helicopters which appears in this film. They crash and blow up *four* of them. Plus they crash a stealth bomber.

It is my opinion that this movie contains a lot of brilliant lines but by far the best one is “Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?” said through the clenched teeth of John Travolta.

The scenery should get credit as a co-star because it is utterly gorgeous.

It had been so long since I had seen this movie, the copy I own is on VHS video. I was sure I had it on dvd and searched the movie shelf to no avail. I asked The Other Half if he knew where it was and he told me we did not own it on DVD.

Oops, small movie fail – this aircraft is being towed, you do not need the person with the lighted wands as well. :) There are quite a lot of movie fails in this movie however that does not stop it from being awesome and worth watching.

Overall the film is great if you want an action movie where you can go along for a ride and not have to think too much. Beware though, if you do start thinking, you’ll see a raft of errors, continuity fails and goofs. If you have a helicopter phobia, this film might be best avoided.

And a final Christian Slater note – the hair is too short to do that awfully cute flopsy thing he has going in some of his other movies, plus the eyebrows are not quite dark enough to have them make their usual impact. I am a big fan of his. I have already mentioned he is a man I love to watch, so of course I would enjoy any movie with him in it.

Thanks to Darylisms Tumblr for the gif – I searched high and low for one photo that would do proper justice to the well groomed eyebrows of Christian Slater and none of them did, but this gif image does. :)

Movie Reviews

Add Three

10 Comments Posted on October 14, 2015September 27, 2015 by Snoskred

Coco Chanel once said – Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.

Snoskred says – Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and add three more accessories.

I’m loving that huge purple flower. It is a little bit Carrie Bradshaw. The flower has a pin and a clip on the back so you can use it for hairstyles or as a brooch.

brooches, Happy Snoskred, jewellery, sparkly

Snoskred Mania

7 Comments Posted on October 12, 2015September 27, 2015 by Snoskred

When all the trouble happened at work in June 2014, I was having a lot of trouble sleeping. My doctor prescribed me a new antidepressant that would help me sleep at night. Did it ever. I’d be out for a solid 12 hours and still have trouble waking up.

I’d got to a better place mentally thanks to the drug and my psychologist, but this drug was starting to hinder instead of help, so my new lady doctor and I sat down and talked it through.

We planned out exactly how we would do the drug change-over – I would take half doses for 4 nights, then stop that drug. We’d wait a solid two weeks in between, then start on the new drug which I have already taken before. She did not write me a script for the new drug as I was not quite ready to go through the process yet.

When I was ready, my doctor was taking a few days off, so I had to see another doctor. No problem, I thought. All I need is a script for the new thing, this should not take long. Hahahhahahaha yeah that jinx thing happened again. This doctor was not familiar with the drug I was on, and spent 20 minutes reading about it and telling me wrong and irrelevant information, even though I told her I just wanted the script because I had already talked it through with the other doctor and I knew how to stop taking it.

Then she charged me almost $100 for an extra long session. Is it my fault she knew nothing? I think not. I will not be going back to see her any time soon. Not once did that idiot doctor mention any withdrawal symptoms to be aware of.

So, I discontinued the old drug. Everything seemed perfectly fine the first two days, but then things got very weird indeed.

If you imagine my mind as a large railway station, for over a year there had only been one train on the tracks at a time. Now it was like 300 trains, some slow trains, some express trains, some crashing into each other, some derailing off the tracks.. some there one minute and totally vanishing the next minute. Thoughts were coming at me faster than I could process them or write them down.

It felt like there was “An Explosion Of Snoskred”.

I wrote 20 LONG blog posts in the space of a few hours, and had ideas for 100 more spilling out as a surprise to myself. My OCD which had been mostly dormant sprang to life. I suddenly felt like I had to clean all the things RIGHT NOW but every time my hands got slightly dirty I had to stop and wash them which severely impeded my progress. I began checking the doors at least three times a day to make sure they were all locked.

I could not sleep more than 7.5 hours. When I woke up, it was like being slapped in the face with a bucket of cold water instead of swimming up very slowly through water. Bang, awake. While on the drug my dreams had been detailed, very real, and I could remember them the next day.

Now when I woke up, they vanished like thin wisps of fairy floss in a strong breeze, I could not catch them but I stretched very hard trying to grasp them and the more I stretched the more I knew I never would manage to remember what had happened. I knew they had happened and they felt super important, like I needed to remember them.

I got a lot of shiznit done, fast.. it was fantastic, I’m not going to lie. This went on for four days.. Then I began to wonder.. was this possibly a side effect of stopping that drug? I googled.. and it turns out one of the possible withdrawal symptoms is Mania. I’m not a doctor *but* I am pretty sure that is what I had. Had is the right word because it just a distant memory now.

The good part is, much of the great stuff remains. 7.5 hours is the max sleep I can have. Waking up is like flicking a switch. I’m exercising 6 days a week for 33 minutes – 3km exactly. I’m inspired to write and do more.

Don’t let us for one minute kid ourselves. I might not be sitting here typing this today if not for those drugs. I needed them to get through a bad situation. As I said in this post – Needing to take antidepressants is not a sign of weakness! It is a fact of chemistry.

depression

Sunday Selections Week 41

15 Comments Posted on October 11, 2015October 11, 2015 by Snoskred

While meditating on whether or not I should purchase the Gold Pineapple for my Pineapple Collection, I was wandering through Pillowtalk with a friend and I discovered a couple of items which were considerably marked down. They returned home with me to be added to the candle shelf.

First up, I wanted to see if we could hang up my clock to add some room to the shelf. I was concerned about hanging it up because it is very heavy indeed, and we’d already had an incident where the whiteboard fell off the wall here. The whiteboard is firmly screwed into the wall studs now, and so is the nail holding up the clock.

This tealight holder was $4. I liked it because it was that gorgeous blue glass which I love to collect. However, light a candle inside it, and you get almost a purple effect. The light that shines out of it is a cool white.

The effect of this is quite interesting and makes me want to add more tealight holders in various colours to the shelf.

This gorgeous glass tealight holder with silver accents was $9. I thought it would be interesting to have a candle at a slightly different height, plus the silver fits in with the shelf very well now.

I was right that it is interesting – it allows for some new reflections from the pineapples. I’m still considering the gold pineapple – if and when it gets marked down and I happen to drop in and spot it, I will likely pick it up. Until then, this shelf is looking pretty awesome with the new additions, and I have a few tealight holders which I am planning to rotate onto the shelf regularly.

Of course, there was a copper vase added recently and I also got two new bright red tealight holders. I’ll show you those next time.

Weekly Wrap Up –

Oops, totally forgot to schedule this post yesterday! I was out to dinner with family while The Other Half went to bed super early. He has gone to Bathurst today leaving at 1am. I am here with a cat who spent most of the night unsuccessfully trying to remove her collar. She is very determined but she has finally given up and climbed into one of her favourite spots to get some sleep.

I get to visit Canberra on Wednesday – just a short day trip. I’m not sure what the plans are but I know DFO is in there somewhere. Next weekend we are dropping my Loopy Uncle off at the airport with all his stuff, and he is going back to Adelaide to live. He has so successfully chewed through my parents goodwill that they are saying they will not take him. Whether that turns out to be the case or whether my Dad will change his mind at the last minute I am not sure.

Fun for all the family! But hey, we’ll make it fun for us with a drop into IKEA, and go to dinner with friends, and probably bring home some Krispy Kremes.

Sunday Selections, weekly wrap up

That Escalated Quickly.

22 Comments Posted on October 10, 2015October 9, 2015 by Snoskred

There is Grumpy, freshly home from her eye surgery which came to us all as a surprise on Friday. Her eye ulcer had improved since the last visit – however – it was not healing properly and the vet felt it was deeper than it looked, and so she wanted to operate.

I can’t describe what was done surgically because eyes and me = major cringe factor. I can’t even put eyedrops in a human and while I can watch all kinds of surgery on TV, I cannot watch anything to do with eyes. I can tell you she will be wearing that lovely collar for a week. She will not be a fan of this once the tranquiliser wears off and she regains her usual senses.

At present, it is like having a drunk cat in the house. You’re not quite sure what she is going to do next, so anywhere she goes one of us follows. She was at the vets for the smallest amount of time possible because that environment is very stressful to her.

The minute we decided to do the surgery, she was given pre-meds to try and keep her from stressing too much and allowed back into her cat carrier until it was time to put her out.

While Grumpy was chilling in the cat carrier, Happy got her vaccinations and a health check. She is seriously moulting at the moment. The vet asked me if I brush her – I usually do that once a week or so. I had brushed her just the day before and still fur was everywhere. The vet showed me something I had never seen before – brushing the fur with wet fingers.

This is a revelation, my friends. Happy and I sat down for over an hour later that day and played a new game which she was a huge fan of. I wasn’t sure she would enjoy this at first because she will run at the slightest droplet of water. I filled a bucket with water, wet my hands, and use my hands as the brush, then put them back in the water to wash off the fur.. Every time I would stop, she would look at me with this face that said, MORE, PLS. She even let me do her tail, belly, neck, face and paws..

So it is eye cream twice daily for Grumpy, plus 7 days of that lovely Elizabethan collar and a return visit next Friday. Sprinkle gets daily wet brushing plus brush-brushing. Both of them will be getting less kibble as they are getting a little chunky. After the 7 days, we might add in some daily laser dot time for both of them.

kitties

Snoskred Snacks #3

14 Comments Posted on October 9, 2015October 1, 2015 by Snoskred

What do we have hidden under the ham today?

Cream cheese spread and Tomatoes! I have also added mustard to this in the past.

I should take a moment to talk about the cream cheese spread. Aldi make two versions – a regular and a lite. I’ve used them both in my No Bake Cheesecake recipe – to me they taste almost identical but the lite one is less dense.

For those who like to read the nutrition panel, this is for the light one. :) Me personally I probably get 15-20 servings per container. I do not like to spread it very thickly. I just want to get the flavour of it, not drown in it with every bite I take. :) If you do not like cream cheese spread but you still want to spread something on the rice cracker, I suggest Hommus or maybe smashed avocado.

You could stop with the tomatoes if you wanted to. I always like to salt and pepper my rice cake snacks well because I find that brings out the natural flavour of whatever has been placed on top.

So a word about ham and nutritional info. Alternatively, a slightly embarassing Snoskred story. We’ve been enjoying this Don ham. One day I read the nutritional info on the packet – which looks like this.

Having used several of these packets previously, I know in each packet there are 12 slices of ham. How can I divide 12 slices into 16 serves, I thought! How ridiculous, I thought. They are really trying hard to hide how much sodium is in this stuff.

A couple of weeks later I sent an email to Sephy titled “Mathematical” with the following content –

“The Don ham I have been buying says there are 16 serves in a packet, but there are only 12 slices of ham. *boggle* How would I have to divide these round slices of ham up in order to get 16 equal serves out of them?”

His reply – “You take the 12 pieces and cut them in fours. That will give you 48 pieces. Give each person three slices and you’ll have 16 servings.”

Then I arrived back at my computer with photos, and realised they mean there are 16 servings in the 4 packets. I’m no genius, but I would suggest if you are making 4 packets of 100g, you should probably give the nutritional info for each *packet* of 100g. Not many people are going to eat all 4 packets at once.

So, all this to say, 3 slices of ham = 1 serving. And that will give you 10% of your daily required sodium intake. That is fine for me because I have low blood pressure and am actually supposed to ingest more salt according to my doctor. For the other half, with high blood pressure, this ham is not so great. I’ll have to do some packet comparisons on future shopping trips. But we love the taste of this one.

Next time, I will put something else on top of tomatoes. :)

Snoskred Snacks

WW – Kibble Delivery

5 Comments Posted on October 7, 2015August 26, 2015 by Snoskred

Our second order with My Pet Warehouse arrived!

kitties, photos, Wordless Wednesday

Orient Point Bakehouse

11 Comments Posted on October 5, 2015September 27, 2016 by Snoskred

I belong to a local restaurant feedback group on Facebook. People post photos and text of their experiences at local restaurants. I pay attention and store away nuggets of gold for future reference. Such nuggets involve names of places that get good feedback regularly and photos of food that look like something I want to try.

I’d read about Cronuts on lots of different food blogs with interest, so when someone posted about locally available cronuts at the Orient Point Bakehouse, I added that place to the very top of my list. Before we could organise a visit, they closed for a months holiday.. and I counted the days until they reopened. We headed down there *early time* on the very first Saturday they were open.

I ordered the Iced Salted Caramel ($5.50) – it was quite spectacular and perfectly balanced. That caramel on top was fluffy and very special. The Other Half chose the Iced Mocha (seen below, $5.50) – I tried it and it was packed full of chocolatey coffee flavour goodness.

While we were waiting for our food, I began to worry that the cronuts I saw on the counter – initially 6, now down to 2 – were the last ones available! I spoke to a staff member and it was as I feared, so I asked if they could be put aside for us.

I felt like the cronut might be too much sugar for my still yet to awaken stomach, so to eat I chose the bacon and egg roll with tomato relish. People. I’m not kidding. This is by far the best egg and bacon roll I have ever experienced in my lifetime and I have had quite a few. The bacon fat – which is normally something I remove as much as possible – was perfectly rendered – not chewy, not noticeable, just very tasty.

The tomato relish was the element that lifted this from normal to extraordinary. It was vinegary, tomato packed, flavourful, and zingy. This was quite large – that bun is about the size of a hot dog roll – and all for the teeny sum of $5.

Deeply satisfied and with cronuts in hand, we left. I was so full from breakfast that the cronuts waited until 3pm coffee time. And I thought the bacon and egg roll was good. There are no words for how amazing this was. Topped with whipped cream and a gorgeous blueberry jam, and dusted with CRISPY sugar, I am very glad this place is only open weekends. If it were open weekdays, I might be tempted to cruise down and pick one up on a regular basis.

There are two important things to know before you head off to this place –

1. They take cash only. I’m not sure how I knew this because it does not say anything on the website about that. It might have been reading reviews on the web. This is somewhat normal for our local area but I do find it to be a negative in this day and age, I will not lie about that.

I rarely carry cash myself and I was not sure there would be an ATM down there. We had to make a special trip into town to get enough cash before we headed down that way. While we got out of there for just over $30, some of the menu items are more expensive, so my advice is to bring more cash than you think you would need.

2. The place is quite small with limited seating so if it is packed you may have to wait a little for a table or get take away. They have some tables out the front as well if the weather is sunny.

They do have a sample menu available via their Facebook page with some pricing.

This was our first ever visit to Orient Point, which is a sleepy coastal village on the NSW South Coast. We will be back regularly. I’m thinking once a month will allow me to try many menu items before spring and summer are over and also not be too calorific for my present lifestyle. How will I choose something other than the bacon and egg roll? I’m not sure.. :)

I have heard these guys are moving to Culburra Beach sometime this year, so make sure to check the address on the website before you head over. :)

food, Orient Point, reviews

Sunday Selections Week 40

19 Comments Posted on October 4, 2015October 4, 2015 by Snoskred

I think for the foreseeable future, we will make the first Sunday of the month Garden Check In day. The Dianthus in our older planter pot from 2014 are flowering again.

About four weeks ago we did some new planting and two weeks ago I posted this update post.

The flyscreen wrapped garden box is doing very well. We’ve had a praying mantis which has been hanging out on top of it.

The sunflower seeds have turned into tiny plants.

The Nasturtiums are having a wonderful time in their new home. The chooks quite often stand on the hardware wire but they do not eat the plants. In a couple of weeks I will feel secure enough to take this ex-kitty door off.

As you can see, the jasmine has climbed high up the arch. It is smelling awesome!

Next time I will show you the progress of some new plants we have purchased, including my first ever succulent – Portulaca. Here they are as I was buying them in the garden centre.

And a close up of the Portulaca. There were 6 seedlings in here.

The chooks have been getting plenty of free ranging time, and Kitty Supervisor is on the job. I’ve kept that pot on the table for a couple of weeks to make sure the sunflowers get a decent start without a chook eating them incident, but that meant the cats could not eat the cat grass. It was good for the cat grass because they had been chowing down on it, and it needed a break from kitty teeth! ;)

Kitty Supervisor can watch them down here from a side window which is good, because they like to venture down here to some very old lawn clippings and leaves which were left here for a couple of years to turn into bug filled mulch – AKA happy meal time for chooks! There is a gate which shuts this area off if and when new clippings are left here – however that has not happened in some time, the bag catcher is broken.

Weekly Wrap Up –

Daylight Savings starts today here in Australia. Normally this is my favourite time of year because in previous years I have suffered from SAD – that is Seasonal Affective Disorder – however this past winter I did a lot better than usual. I’m crediting the evening candle show, an LED light changing shower head, and LED lights throughout the house for that improvement.

So today I am a little bit sad to be saying goodbye to 5-6 hours of candle time a day. I’ll still be burning candles of an evening and I think that is a long term change for the better for me, it will just be candles for a shorter amount of time each day, and more time outside in the evening for plant watering and chooky chores.

In scheduling news, I already have two posts scheduled for 2016. All my Wednesday posts are written for the rest of the year, and I am scheduled out to November for the other blog days. I like to write ahead, and sometimes posts come up that are time sensitive and the other not so time sensitive posts get pushed out further.

There Was An Incident –

Grumpy is extra grumpy this week. She did something to her eye – we are not sure what happened to start it off, but she was squinting a lot and somehow her bottom eyelid was turning in as a result. After making a vet appointment for Monday we were trying to get some photos to show the vet because we could fix the eyelid – turn it out the right way – and sometimes it would stay fixed for a decent length of time, so we could not guarantee it would happen when we were at the vets with Grumpy. Happy did a little photobomb.

I did manage to get a decent in focus shot which showed the vet everything she needed to see, plus after I showed her the photo the eyelid started to turn in while we were there. That was the last time it turned in and I hope it never happens again!

Ever since Grumpy had that terrible Kidney Shutdown of 2014, she has not been a fan of vets at all. The only person that can hold her when we are there now is The Other Half, and he is the only person who can hold her when she needs to be medicated – which she has needed twice a day this past week for a tablet and ointment in her eye.

We went back to the vet on Friday for another eye dye and blacklight look. It seems like progress has been made, not just on the eye front but also a trip where the only thing that happens is dye in her eye might help her a lot with her vet fears.

We’ll keep up the ointment for another 7 days then take her back again next Friday. This time Happy will go along for a check up as well. I fully anticipate that once the vet finds her melty spot, she will lie down on the table, purr a lot, and ask for belly rubs. :)

The Martian –

The Martian Official Website

We went to see The Martian this weekend. I’d started reading the book a few months ago. The book was something I knew The Other Half would deeply love, so I made him start reading it – and he finished it before I did! That is the fastest he has ever read a book in his lifetime.

I read the book again this week in preparation for seeing the movie and loved it just as much the second time. I was curious about a few things – would the movie begin with the same line as the book, which contains a pretty serious swear word? That would be fine in Australia but I really cannot see the US audience enjoying that. And how would they handle the night soil stuff?

The truth is, I suspect this might be the best space movie ever created, or at least a tie for first place with Apollo 13. Yes, there was some swearing. Yes, there was vacuum sealed poop. Yes, I did cringe at the whole poop thing being a germophobe, but I actually cringed more at Mark performing surgery on himself. There was nothing in the movie that I did not deeply enjoy. Matt Damon was brilliant as expected, so was everyone in it.

So if you have not read the book and you like science, space, Matt Damon, NASA and/or movies set in space, go and see the movie. If you like the movie, read the book. The movie runs for 2h20m, and it felt to me like it went for 30 minutes maximum. Sephyroth wrote about The Martian too. Beware though his post contains some spoilers if you have not seen it.

garden, Home, kitties, movies, Sunday Selections, weekly wrap up