Fish for the foodies
We went shopping for fish today.
The whiting and squid looking pretty usual.
Squid
Whiting
There was this AMAZING looking fish we have NO idea what to do with! Nether did the lovely Asian lady who was as intrgued as we were. She was trying to find out something about it from the shop assistants, but no details were forthcoming so she wandered off. We were a little disappointed as we would have liked to hear something too!
Scorpion
@MindyHoyden has provided a link to an Italian recipe for scorpion fish, which looks pretty darn good! http://italianfood.about.com/od/fishdishes/ig/La-Galleria-del-Pesce/Scorfano–or-Scorpionfish.htm
As we wandered off to get vegetables and fruit, we passed a stall selling the most amazing Nepalese Chicken. If you haven’t been to a Nepalese restaurant, I recomend you do. Great food!
Nepalese Chicken
Greetings of the Season!
Greetings of the season to all who celebrate this time of year. Christmas comes but once a year. Just as well really, as it is enough to drive people crazy! 
Apart from the kids and Dad not being able to agree whether or not Muslims celebrate Christmas in Nigeria (Dad says no, kids say yes), we had a fairly laid back day and went to the movies in the afternoon.
We bought the Extreme bucket of popcorn and that seemed to last at least until just after the advertisements and trailers. Parental Guidance was actually quite a funny movie and we’d recommend it for anyone wanting a family movie over the holidays. The adults appreciated the adult aspects and the kids laughed at the kids, so everyone was entertained. Billy Crystal has aged since I last saw him. I suppose we all have. 
As we drove to the movies, Melbourne looked like a ghost town. You could count the cars on the road on the fingers of one hand. I don’t think I have ever seen it quite as quiet as it was yesterday.
This morning Mr O did gardening type stuff, planting all the seedlings we bought to grow capsicums, carrots, tomatoes and silver-beet. We’ll see how these grow!! While I am a farmer’s daughter and we always grew our own vegetables, that was a long, long time ago! Mr O’s apprenticeship is more about growing flowers and trees than vegetables!
Seedlings
Men with prickles
Now for something completely different. Each time we go to the Queen Victoria Market doing the hunter/gathering thing, we walk past this cacti outlet. I love them, but they are quite expensive: so far the need for food has outweighed the need for a cactus or two!
I discovered there is actually a Cactus and Succulent Society of Australia. The CSSA have some really unique looking plants, such as the two photos to be found here: http://www.cssaustralia.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63&Itemid=100 Amazing colours!
Florida: shopping, eating, drinking
Let me tell you it is a BLOODY LONG FLIGHT! Not like I haven’t done it before, I have: four times before in fact. I just never get used to the whole travelling vast distances thing. In our case it was three flights. I can assure you if I had to take the laptop out of the pack ONE MORE TIME for security screening, I was likely to throw it in the nearest river. My colleague escaped full body scanning in the USA, but no, not I: I had to stand figuratively naked in the damn cubicle.
However, all in all, we survived the journey and I caught up with old friends today and spent money. It was great to catch up with G & T (and no, that does not stand for gin and tonic), I am not so sure it was “great” to spend money.
Florida flowers
I think we started drinking about 11am. All up I believe I have had a Long Island Tea, a Margarita, several Bacardi & cokes, several red wines, a couple of ports after dinner and….. hmmmm now the memory is a little cloudy.
A bargain buy of shoes!
Some days the sun shines, at least figuratively: it certainly wasn’t shining in Melbourne today very much. Spring, yet it was snowing within cooee of Melbourne.
If I haven’t mentioned this before, I HATE shopping. With a vengeance. But I need new shoes. I had not yet replaced the ones I broke the heel on after I got back from the wedding!
I stopped at our local supermarket today and there is a cute shoe, bags and accessories shop opposite. I love their stuff, so I had a peep. These suede shoes were on sale for $50, reduced from $125. Now that is a bargain in anyone’s language. Depending on your currency, I suppose. I’ll admit they are unusual.
Taupe Shoes
There was a black pair and a taupe pair, both in my size; the last in stock. The shop owner told me once they are the last, it is better to sell them because otherwise customers keep asking for other sizes so they end up being a waste of time.
Shopping fail, GPS fail, Samsung mobile fail, Bombers fail
Saturday was an interesting day. If something could fail, it did! This was the last weekend I was spending collecting furniture. I borrowed a ute from work to collect the wardrobe in the morning and that all went amazingly well. It was after the bewitching hour of noon that the failures started!
We had bought, on eBay, two girls beds from a place in the country. 115 kilometres away. This SHOULD have been a trip straight down the freeway, I discovered – AFTER the event. Usually when travelling to locations unknown I hit good old www.whereis.com and get a nice map and directions. This time I decided to depend on the GPS on my Samsung Galaxy SII. It has been OK around the city. I had already used it to get to the wardrobe pickup with success but I did notice doing so chewed through the phone battery at an amazing rate. Although I’d charged the phone again before leaving for trip number two for the day, I was a bit concerned about the distance and the battery life being compatible. I don’t have a car charger for the phone so on the way I stopped and bought a USB cable. The Kia has a USB port which we had already used to charge Mr O’s HTC Velocity. Silly me made the assumption this would also work for my Samsung. So I bought just the cable, not the USB cable that came with a charger!
Hop back in the car: no charging happening. Yes, I should have gone back into the shop and changed it over, I suppose, but we were running late now and I thought perhaps it was just a setting on the phone I didn’t know about or something, so I headed off anyway. The same cable charges Mr O’s phone, so definitely it is my phone that has a problem with being charged via USB in the car. Bugger!
I got a little suspicious about the GPS when it did not direct me onto the South Gippsland Highway when I felt it should have. I got much more suspicious when it took me onto that very same highway a little further down the track. Several tracks, in fact. I just had nothing to compare it too, so I had to keep believing it. Next thing we are heading up hills and down dales and nowhere near a highway. The battery on the phone was starting to cry out for replenishment and I needed enough power left to call the seller.
Tax returns, school bills, a bike saga
It has been a busy, busy few weeks since we moved. Shopping on eBay means spending a lot of the weekends running around collecting purchases. Last Saturday went with shopping for groceries and clothes shopping for the kids, Sunday was a bit of a blur but I know I didn’t stop! Dad took the boys to soccer then all of them to finish their clothes shopping. I did what? Oh, I know – I collected a desk, then put the top together, then went to Bunnings to buy little things to stop the lounge room chairs sliding on the tiles, put the new steam mop thing together and tried it out and did some other stuff I’ve now forgotten. I’ve purchased a wardrobe, tallboy and beds that need to be collected this weekend, so no chance of a rest. The beds are 100 kms away.
Tonight I finished Mr O’s tax return and have almost finished mine. I have to pay $1,000 more in tax than he gets back, so the net result of the tax returns is not in our favour at all. Damn! This is one of the downsides of Transition To Retirement superannuation withdrawals – while the tax is concessional, it is still tax. As this is Mr O’s first ever Australian tax return I couldn’t use eTax. Would have been a lot easier if I could have. Plus I was surprised to learn I had to finish my tax return before I could do Mr O’s tax return as we each have to declare the other’s taxable income on our own returns. Why, I have no idea. I am sure it didn’t used to be that way. Tax is individual, so it has no bearing on anything. Another data collection methodology I suppose.
