The Goddess Shop

I've never really cared all that much about Australian politics - when it came down to it, I could never quite bring myself to vote for anybody who had any real chance of getting in.  But now?  That's just changed.

I don't know what's been happening behind closed doors in the Labor Party, and I'm not sure I really care all that much.  All I really know is that the way they've treated Julia Gillard is really bad.  And the public comments from the Labor Party politicians disgust me.  You can see a selection of quotes here.  I've never been so emotional about politics in my life, and the fact that it has manifested itself as intense disgust at the behaviour of one party makes me feel really angry.

I don't like Tony Abbott at all.  But if the election was held tomorrow, I'd vote for him.

I stumbled across a recipe for Yorkshire Parkin whilst leafing idly through the cake section of my Cordon Bleu cookbooks recently, and decided that I really ought to give it a go.  I had to "grind" my own oatmeal flour (for which you can read "put it in my trusty electric coffee grinder" - so far, the only thing I have never asked it to grind up is coffee beans), and buy treacle, which, believe it or not, I've never actually baked wit before, but otherwise, it was all go.

The best thing about this recipe is that it is perfect winter fodder.  It is rich and spicy and sweet and you melt the butter with the sweet ingredients instead of putting it in unmelted (the way you do with shortbread), which means that I can make it in winter without having to heat the kitchen for a week beforehand (yes, I am exaggerating) to soften the butter.

The only irritating thing about making this recipe was the fact that my battery-powered kitchen scales didn't want to tell me how much golden syrup I was putting in.  Still, the batter tastes pretty good, so I reckon the results are going to be pretty nice.  I am definitely looking forward to eating the results.

So.  I've watched the first two episodes of Primeval, and one thing is very clear:  Stephen is, quite obviously, the series chew toy.  Poor sod.  It's a wonder he survived as long as he did, if things continue on like this.

I seem to have two major hobbies in life:  playing with my computers (yes - time to own up.  There's more than one.) and baking.

I'd like to say "I've been talking alot about my computer recently," but it's been more than just recently.  And it's probably time to mention another of my favourite activities:  baking.

I've been getting that magazine series "Baked and Delicious" (and would dearly like to know how much more of it there is going to be, and how much silicone/plastic bakeware they think that my kitchen can contain), and one of my recent issues contained a recipe for what they called Pepper Nut Biscuits which is really just shortbread sweetened with honey instead of sugar, and has added spices.  Including pepper, which was really interesting.  I call them "pfeffernusse," because my family background is German and that is what they seem like to me.  I thought they were delicious.

Having eaten the last of them yesterday, I went looking for a cake recipe that would be interesting, since I haven't made one for ages.  Leafing through my Cordon Bleu cookbooks, I found a carrot cake recipe.  Not having that many carrots, but having plenty of apples floating around that are right on the edge of being too old to eat, I substituted the apples for the carrots and added a few twists of clove.  The results are super-soft and moist.  This is probably only to be expected, since it is a dairy free cake.  (Seriously.  It was intended for carrots, and uses vege oil - I used canola oil - instead of butter.  Plus, the apples/carrots are definately moist enough to not require any extra liquid, so there's no milk, either.)

Does it taste like a traditional cake?  No.  Does that matter?  No.  It's yummy, full stop.

I might be developing a bit of an obsession with George, my new worm farm.  I flipped through the manual that came with him, and found something about his preferred operating temperature.  George was a bit sluggish when I pulled the lid off this morning and had a bit of a poke, and it seems that Canberra nights are already a little bit cool for the poor chap.  So I've moved him inside.  It was inevitable, really, given what kinds of temperatures Canberra generates when things cool down.  (Okay, so it's not as bad as it gets in the northern hemisphere, but Canberra's climate is still Cool, not Temperate.)

He is sitting on the lino next to the kitchen, where he periodically dribbles out some more wormy goodness for my pot plants and makes me smile again.

Being an almost-home-owner (it's complicated), I am responsible for looking after the place.  And that, unfortunately, includes the garden.  These days, I consider it to be something of a drag.  To be honest, though, that wasn't always the case.  To borrow a food metaphor, when we got the place, my eyes were bigger than my stomach.  I wanted a garden.  I wanted it badly.  Now, of course, I am struggling to chew it.  What are the bits I have troubles chewing?  Well, here's the list:

Roses
Trees that are dying and need to be professionally removed
Environmental Weeds that need to be professionally removed
More roses
Garden beds that I haven't got time to weed
Environmental weeds that I can take out
Yet more bloody roses

All of the above need to be removed.  Yes, the roses have to go.  Mostly because I hate roses.  They are ridiculously showy, and the previous owner planted them en masse.  I could be using all that space for other things.  Like a herb garden, which is what I intend to plant in what is currently an overgrown and weedy rose garden.

Actually, I am in the process of sorting out all of the above.  The dying trees and the large environmental weeds will take some time yet, because they will need professional attention, which is expensive.    The rest will only require me to have enough time, energy, and enthusiasm to haul them out.  Roses cannot be removed without poison if you don't cut out the entire root ball (which at the moment is encased in a heavy clay soil that is like concrete thanks to the lack of recent rain) - if you just cut off all the branches and hope for the best, they will sigh with relief and utter a thanks for the haircut by regrowing more thickly and beautifully than ever.  As I learned the hard way some years back.

The best thing I have done for myself when it comes to the garden is that I have finally bought myself a new line trimmer.  That not-so-little gadget is probably the most useful thing going in a garden.  It means that I can clean up around the edges of the garden, and demolish another garden bed, and even clean up the paved courtyard out front.

The biggest problem of all, though, is probably the temperature.  It is uncomfortably warm.  (Well - it is summer.)  It is draining me of all energy and making it very difficult for me to be willing to go out and actually do any of the above.  Still, I'll get there in the end.

I got dragged into my senior manager's office (I have a supervisor who is all but my manager, and he reports to a senior manager.  It's complicated in the way that only a small business who can't afford to employ as many managers and support staff as it actually needs can do) today, for a very belated, somewhat hurried, and very off the cuff performance review.  That said, I was not complaining.  He said that I was one of only four of the people who reported to him who was performing above average.  (He also mentioned in passing the existence of a number of underperforming staff members, without naming names, but I know which one exists in /my/ department.)

The bit that made me happiest was the bit where he acknowledged that I was second in command in the Packaging department, and that I'd been doing very well in that role.  Not that I am going to be silly enough to relax after hearing that.  A bit of confidence is a good thing, but one does need to /think/ about the decisions one makes.

Do I expect to get any bonuses out of this?  To be honest, no.  I don't.  My senior manager has promised me that he will do his best to get me and the other above average employees some bonuses out of this, but I know better than to actually expect anything.  After all, we are accountable to a parent company, and we aren't actually making a profit at the moment.

I decided that, after reading a review in Linux Format pronouncing that the brand-new Ubuntu 12.10 needs some work done to it, that what I will tolerate in Windows (because 1 - the poor loves don't know any better and 2 - the rotten sods have made themselves largely indispensable as Bill Gates has somehow not become the Antichrist in my mind whilst Steve Jobs has.  Goodness only knows why.) I will no longer tolerate in Linux, I have changed my computer's operating system from Ubuntu to Mint. 

It's probably too early for me to give a proper verdict on how I feel about Mint.  I should specify here that I chose it because a) it knows about Telstra and I don't know enough about the command line etc to be able to connect my prepaid wireless broadband without some nice, helpful wizards to show the way and b) it keeps getting good reviews from Linux Format.

It was a breeze to install, and took waaaay less time than Ubuntu did.  I was actually a little surprised at how little time it took.  (For the record, I don't care too much what the desktop looks like, as long as I can find, do, or install everything I want.  I have never had any problems using any desktop, regardless of whether it was produced by Windows, Apple, Gnome, KDE, XFCE, or Ubuntu.  And I happen to like Unity, thanks.  But I can live without it.)

That said, I opened Banshee (which comes prepackaged with Mint) once, fiddled with it a bit, and then ditched it in favour of Rhythmbox.  I like Rhythmbox.   Okay, so it let me down when I had it in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but I may have been farting around a bit too much with other media players, so I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt.

And when I tried to do a bulk-copy of my files from my memory stick to the computer, it quickly decided that it couldn't be arsed with all that work and tried to fob me off by making empty files with all the file-names intact, but I've seen computers do that before and definately know better than to delete my backups just because I think they're all good.

Also, I'm not going to install Google Chrome again.  Sure, it was nice not having to remember all those passwords and suchlike, but the sheer volume of updates was ridiculous!  It seemed like I was having to download 40MB worth of internet browser every other week!  That's just stupid.

That's about it, really.  Next time I have some opinions on the subject, I shall be sure to report in.