To all the people of the world, I may not have the guts to tell you to your face so I thought I would shout it out here because I know at least I may reach one or two people and maybe they in turn can tell one or two people and if the cycle continues then sooner or later the whole world will know this little social etiquette that I thought everyone followed but in recent times this has been proven to be wrong.

Here it is…

When being the designated drinks provider for a gathering BE SURE to include at least one bottle of Coke.

Simple.

If there is more than one drinks provider then you may get away with trying to bring your fancy bottle of whatever, but be warned that if there is not at least enough coke to allow one glass per capita then I will talk about you behind your back with others who may or may not agree with me.

Lately I have begun to accept the Zero variety of Coke, but really, socially it is safest to go with the original.

We’re a 2 car family and for a while now we have realised that we can become a 1 car family easily, especially considering I drive Demo cars from work all the time now, to and from work and on weekends.

Laziness/lack of time is the only reason we haven’t advertised the second car for sale yet. But the thing is the second car, the 1994 (I think) Mitsubushi Lancer is the better car, not too many klm’s, good on fuel and runs well but is just too small for us now. And we want to upgrade the 1995 Ford Falcon to a more suitable car for our needs.

So now we have to find and buy a new car. This is both fun and annoying, fun cause we get a new toy, and the bigger the price of the toy the more fun they seem at first, but also the bigger the price the more worry associated with the purchase. Annoying cause we don’t currently have a car loan, or any other loan, so we’ll need to take one out to get it!

We’ve finally decided that we have to bite the bullet and are therefore officially looking and no longer just dreaming of doing it one day. But it is kind of a slow process too, I’ll get the best deal through work so basically we are waiting until someone trades in something we want.

There’s one or two cars in the pipeline, but the frustrating thing will be if we decide to buy one and then later on trade a car which is better and cheaper! Usually when I buy anything I make a conscious effort to not look at the price of the same item anywhere else for a good 6 months to a year, or just ever again, that way I don’t feel bad if I could have got it at half the price somewhere else!

So my long weekend so far…

I worked yesterday, working saturdays aren’t all that bad as all your really expected to do is hang out until someone walks on to the yard and then go help them buy a car. So that, although a little boring at times really wasn’t a bad way to start the weekend. I don’t normally work saturdays, but am so I can have a long weekend next weekend to go to Sydney, but when I do I don’t mind it cause I figure there’s really not much that happens on a saturday morning, at the most you plan to have lunch with people and normally I’m finished by 1pm so even that is fine.

Anyway, after work and last night I didn’t do much, which was ok, but there were a few things I wanted to do but couldn’t cause of rain and the like. I still want to mow the lawn, I’ve become a little lawn proud and am trying to grow it where it currently doesn’t.

So this morning I went to a Christening for a work colleague, it was at a Uniting church, for people who don’t normally go to church, wasn’t sure what to expect, thought it would be a little weird and involve parents making promises that they wouldn’t normally make or even talk about. And it was, and they did.

We gave a Colin Buchanan CD, it felt weird giving a present and also I for some reason felt like I should have been giving something with pewter on it or something that looked like it had been sitting in a Christian bookshop since the 80’s and had the word christening on it somewhere.

But in the end Nat dropped it on the present table and walked away which was the easiest way to deal with all this weirdness, maybe we should have done more, but I’m sure the subject will come up at work soon.

Dubbo now has an oporto, I say that it’s about time!!

I tasted it the other day, and it was good!!

A lot of people hate them, but if I have the time I don’t mind a chat with a telemarketer although I wouldn’t ever buy anything from one.

Sometimes I like to lead them on a little, but my favourite game of all is playing the I’m really having difficult understanding what you are saying. I’ll usually pick a certain thing they say, the more unimportant the piece of information the better, and just ask them to repeat it, or ask them lots of questions about it, or pretend you just don’t get it, they’ll try to move on but I don’t let them.

But my newest, and most favourite game to date, is to see how quickly you can get them to hang up on me. I have rules though, I can’t attack them, can’t abuse them, can’t be angry or anything, but just have to be reasonably polite.

So basically I play the I don’t understand you card until they get frustrated and hang up, but I don’t say that I can’t understand them but rather be polite and ask them to repeat themselves or explain it better, or repeat the word/phrase incorrectly back to them and ask if that’s what they said.

I didn’t think it was all that possible to get them to hang up on me, but it seems it is, yesterday I had one indian lady who called and her opening line was ‘Hi I’m calling from VIP Tel’ or something like that, now it took me most the conversation to work out she said VIP Tel, I though she was saying wepatel or something. Anyway I was able to get her to hang up in 2 minutes 20 seconds and the whole conversation was me repeating what I thought she said the company name was and her trying to correct me and say what it really was. At one point she tried to just move on, but I wanted to know the company name, so she didn’t get pass me trying to understand the company name before she gave up and hung up.

So 2mins 20sec is my current record.

So lately I’ve gotten myself a few small website jobs, a little bit of freelance I suppose you could call it.

I thought I had kind of lost my passion for a lot of the designing and building of websites and that kind of stuff, but man it’s different when you’re doing it for yourself, I’ve enjoyed it a lot more. And kind of hope to get a little more in the future.

Anyway that’s all I have to say on that.

I had something to blog about, something really good to say…

But I forget what it was.

Dubbo RTA is a wonderful place with some very nice staff and I actually enjoy going there, most the time, which is good cause I do it as part of my job so am there quite often.

I’ve always found the RTA an interesting place, I like to watch people waiting in line and their reactions and attitudes etc. A lot of people get really annoyed that they have to wait in line for so long and some make sly  comments (which I’m sure are very obvious when you hear them all the time) about this when they finally get to the counter, others are just rude and blatant about it.

I’m sure they don’t take into account that on average they only need to visit the RTA once a year and that there own transaction can take half an hour or so, some more some less, and therefore the people in front of them can each take the same time.

Anyway, I’ll get to the point…

Stephanie RIce, of Olympic swimming fame, works at the Dubbo RTA, I kid you not!!

Ok so it’s not the real Stephanie, but I reckon a dead set look alike and to prove this I have put together the following pictures, on the left you will see the swimmer, and on the right the RTA worker.

I challenge you to pick the difference…

Am I not right??

Ok, so I didn’t think it would be at all appropriate to take a photo of the RTA worker, so I had to find one that was a very good likeness to her… but hopefully you see my point…

These are fairly simple and taste GREAT!!

• 150g Butter
• 150g Sugar (approx 3/4 cup)
• 2 Eggs
• 3/4 Cup Coconut Milk
• 2 Cups Self Raising Flour
• 60g Shredded Coconut (approx 3/4 Cup)
• 1 Pack white choc bits, I use a 250g pkt of Nestle

Beat butter and sugar, add eggs then add rest of ingredients. Mix and cook on about 180-200C.

NB - Don’t over beat & make sure to use papers as chocolate sticks to the pan!

Also these puppies only take about 12-15mins to cook, so keep an eye on them!

This cake is awesome…

• 125g Butter
• 1 Cup Castor Sugar
• 4 Eggs
• 2 Cups Coconut
• 1 Cup Self Raising Flour

Lemon Syrup Ingredients

• 1 Cup Sugar
• 2/3 Cup Water
• 6 Strips Lemon Rind

Grease a 20cm ring pan, line base with paper; grease paper.

Cream butter and sugar in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy, beat in eggs one at a time, beat until combined. Transfer mixture to large bowl, stir in coconut, then sifted flour. Spread mixture into prepared pan. Bake in 160C oven for about 45mins.

After the cake has cooked for about 25mins start making the syrup:

Combine all ingredients in saucepan, stir over heat without boiling until sugar is dissolved, bring to the boil, reduce heat, simmer uncovered without stirringfor 3 minutes; strain syrup.

Remove cake from oven once finished cooking and leave in pan, pour hot syrup over hot cake, all of it, it may seem like too much but just pour slowly letting it soak in, leave cake to cool in the pan.

Done.