Can I please have a fittgratäng?

A Swedish supermarket chain, ICA, published this ad for what they thought was a fish gratin in a newspaper the other day. Although they forgot to proofread it before publishing and mistakenly put in a spoof picture of a "fittgratäng" instead of a picture of the real product (The Swedish word for fish gratin is fiskgratäng). For those of you who don't speak Swedish and hence don't know the meaning of "fittgratäng", I suggest you have a close look at the picture below.

Hahahha! The poor person responsible for putting the ad together got the picture from the web without realising it was a spoof. Too funny.

I had the girls and Jompa over for some afternoon tea today. A perfect way to spend a rainy Saturday!

I made turkey, brie & cranberry, salmon & cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches, salmon rolls, cupcakes and my mum's nut meringue cake. It was so nice to catch up with my friends and just gossip all afternoon!    

ML stayed for a while longer than the others and we rented a movie - The imaginanarium of Dr Parnassus. The one in which Heath Ledger died halfway through filming. It was a seriously weird movie. And although we spent the whole day eating we bought some cheeses and cold cut meats for dinner and basically had another tea party!

Roast beef, turkey, salami, brie and fetta.

  

When I woke up this morning I was sleeping on this much bed space. 30 cm.



Shirin was sleeping beside me.









Strategically controlling 80% of the bed.

Maybe I should add that when I fell asleep I was in the middle of the bed. Somehow during the night she has managed to push me to the side - probably trying to push me off the bed. She did that to the Uts graduate bear as well. Pushed him off the chest of drawers because she thinks it's her territory. Poor bear.






We have been thinking of buying a king size bed after we finish renovating, but I don't really see the point when the cat only lets me sleep on 20% of the bed anyway. Mongrel.

Sushi

I defied my cold today and had a late dinner with LMC at Makato Sushi train. So unbelievably delicious. And the best of all was that all plates were 'on sale' for $3 dollars after 10pm. LMC and I pinched the last two sashimi plates and got the evil eye from the guy sitting next to us. Mohahahaha!  Now I'm going to do some wedding googling and then fall asleep with the laptop on my lap.

Homesickness and Camels

It's been a slow start to my blogging week. Maybe because I've been sick and haven't really left the house. And so I don't really have anything to write about. Since it's been three days since my last post and It's 1.36am and I can't sleep I've decided to write about two things that I've been thinking about today.

1. Homesickness
I got really homesick today. Sweden-sick. I think it's because I'm home alone, sick and it's winter and depressing and cold outside. And the fact that most all of my Swedish friends are going home this summer. And the fact that it is summer in Sweden. Which is just amazing. (It's amazing that it's actually summer in Sweden and Swedish summers are amazing). I also listen to the Swedish national anthem in a youtube video that showed beautiful photos of Sweden, which made it even worse.

I got so depressed about it that I had to call LMC. My personal psychologist. She made me feel better straight away. I think I really just need to get well and get out of the house and see some people. It's so depressing being all alone and sick. I have too much time to think!

2. Black and White Camels
Speaking of LMC, almost every week she asks me who will get the black and white camel of the week. The concept of the black and white camels comes from a Swedish reality show called Villa Medusa where contestants lived together in a house and tried to find work to get money to pay the rent. Every week they got to mark each other's performance by handing out black and white camels. So I'd though I would copy LMC's and Villa Medusa's concept and hand out black and white camels here in the blog. It could be to anyone. People I know or people who say or do something funny or stupid in media.

So every Sunday the week's black and white camels will be handed out by your one and only Swedette!

I'm going to kick off this new concept by handing out camels for last week.

Black camel
Winner: The owner of the 4WD who slammed his door into our car.
Motivation: For being a complete asshole and annoying as hell

White camel 
Winner: Brett
Motivation: For making me oxtail stew before going away for work so I didn't have to cook when I was sick.

If you're lucky (or maybe not so lucky) you might get a camel this week!

Wedding dress fitting and car drama

Today started out great. I met up with PB and Lulu in Paddington to have lunch and to have my dress fitting. The dress looks beautiful and I have some great photos that I really want to post here - but I won't since the dress is a bit secret. Afterwards PB and I went out to Bondi Junkyard to have a look at a few shops. We went into a pet store to get some hay for PB's bunnies and I was really close to buying another ragdoll. There was a couple in the store who was buying one and they were patting it and looked so happy. It made me really jealous. I wonder what Shirin would say if we got her a little playmate. "Yum! Dinner", probably.

As we were driving back to the city on Oxford st (very slowly due to the traffic) some guy got out of his massive 4wd and banged his door into my car! So we pulled up beside the car and the driver walked up to us and said, in a German accent, "I didn't hear anything. Nothing happened". Then he went on saying that he had to get out of his car and I should have looked where I was going - and since I didn't it was my fault.

PB had then started writing down his rego and asked for his phone number. And what does this guy do? He walks off! Umm innocent people don't run away..

And seriously, I was just driving down the road - staying in my lane. Am I supposed to look inside every single car I drive past to see if someone is sitting inside and might be opening their door. He was the one who slammed his massive car door into my car, when I was driving past in my lane. Therefore it's his fault. He should have looked before slamming his car door wide open on a heavily trafficked road. But what made me really annoyed is the fact that he first totally denied that it happened and two minutes later changed his mind and blamed me for it. Really pathetic. I'm so sick of retards. The mark on the car is just noticeable if you look close so it's not really that big a deal. It more the principle. And his annoying attitude. PB is really angry too and wants me to take some action. But what do I do? I have to think about this.

Comments

I little while ago someone mentioned that they couldn't post comments on my blog. That should be fixed now so if anyone feels like commenting - go ahead. It would be nice to know who reads this blog!

I have...

...the most wonderful fiancé ever! This morning before he went to work he made a stew for me to have for dinner tonight because I'm sick. So cute. The stew was absolutely delicious and if anyone is interested (I know at least one person who is) I remembered to put it in the fridge after it cooled down.

Today has been a quite uneventful day - I'm still wearing the same tracksuit as I did when I woke up this morning. I've pretty much spent the whole day coughing and watching daytime TV. Today was actually the first time I turned the TV on for three months. It took me five minutes to work out the combination of buttons to press to get it going.

I also spent half an hour on the phone to LMC who is sick as well. She concluded that when you're sick all you want is to get better. You think about how happy and thankful you will be when you finally get well, and believe that all you want in life is to be healthy. But that's not how it works. Because as soon as you are healthy you completely forget what it was like to be sick and immediately start wanting all the things you wanted before you got sick - like a new car and new clothes.

It may seem like a simple observation but it is so true! She's wise, LMC. And a good listener. Which are excellent attributes for a future psychologist!

    

Cold and miserable

I'm sick. And miserable. But I'm still happy because Brett has decided to start blogging again! That means I'll know what he's up on his trip to London, Singapore and Vietnam that he's leaving for today. I'm jealous. Just hoping he won't catch my cold and get stuck somewhere inconvenient. Or that the volcano gets angry again while he's in London.

I can't do fancy linking from this crappy iPhone blog tool but check out brett's blog here:
www.wouldratherbeskiing.blogspot.com

Since I'm sick I'm going to spend the day in the wedding invitation factory. In front if the fireplace with a cup of peppermint tea, of course.

Rain and Pea & Ham Soup

It's been raining all day. I kind of like it. I've been siting in front of the fireplace all night smelling pea & ham soup cooking in the kitchen. That's another great thing about winter; Brett is cooking all the time! Soups and stews are his favourite meals to cook and I love eating them.

We met with another celebrant today and I really liked her. Yay! Now we just need to organise another meeting with her and fill out all the paperwork and then we have one less thing to worry about. And on Saturday I have my second dress fitting. I'm so excited to see my own dress for the first time!

I can hear the wizz stick in the kitchen now. That means the soup is almost ready...yum.

Caving

Wow! How cool are the jenolan caves?! I don't understand why I haven't been there before. Are there other awesome places near Sydney I haven't been to as well??

Now we have just started making our way back home. Will probably take hours with all the people going back to the city after a weekend in the mountains, but hopefully it wont take too long so that I'll have time to update my blog and tell you all about our trip. After all, I don't have anything else to do now that we have finished watching all the mad men episodes. I want mooooore!

Blue mountains getaway

We decided to head up to the blue mountains for the weekend. Cottage - check, fireplace - check, red wine - check, love of my life - check.

Tomorrow we're going to the jenolan caves, which are meant to be amazing. I've been wanting to go there for ages so I'm really happy that we finally decided to do it.

Time to do some relaxing now. Will report from the caves tomorrow.

Friday I'm in love

At longgrain with miss lemona. Had yummy Vietnamese for dinner and now we're sharing a bottle of wine. I love Fridays. And Saturdays and Sundays.

Kung fu kitty

In training. Your days are numbered.

Evening photo shoot

B and I just came back from a long evening walk around Manly. We brought the DSLR and B took some really cool photos with long exposure time and no flash. I'm a bit blurry in some of the photos since I couldn't stand perfectly still for 40 seconds. But they still came out really well.

As you can see in the photos, I'm wearing a winter jacket and a beret. It gets quite cold here at night now. But it's still 25 degrees and sunny during the day, which makes it almost impossible to dress!

We also got some wedding planning done today - met with a celebrant and looked at wedding bands. Didn't end up making any decisions in either case but it still feels like we're moving forward. Which is always a good feeling. Now I'm going to fall asleep in front of the heater in the lounge room.  The apartment is freezing cold! Can't wait to get reverse air-conditioning.

Dinner tonight

Roasted caraway chicken with parsnip and blue cheese mash served with four episodes of mad men. Life's good.

Luna park

B and I spent a lovely day together today! We went to Luna park- I have never been there before but I definately haven't missed out. They should consult Liseberg.









They did have a really nice restaurant tho, with views over Sydney harbour and the opera house. We had a yummy tasting platter for lunch and and then went for a rollercoaster ride.




Afterwards we went for a stroll around kiribilli and dreamed about buying one of the massive houses around there. Maybe one day.




This is what I look like tonight. We're heading out for dinner at Bodega. Fingers crossed we get a table!

Finally friday

This week has been full on. Now I'm finally at home in front of the fireplace with a glass of red and a bunch of paper, ribbon and paper brads that will become our wedding invitations in the near future. Brett and I are supposed to be having a quiet dinner and movie night right now but he's stuck in traffic on parra road. What an exciting way to spend a Friday night!

So until he's stopped fighting bogans in traffic, it's just me, a glass of wine, Neal Young and the invitations. I can't really complain after all.

If anyone would ask Shirin what the perfect Thursday morning is like, she would say it's exactly like this.

If anyone would ask me what the perfect Thursday morning is like, I would say it's exactly like this.

Wedding planning

Brett and I finally pulled ourselves together and did some wedding planning today. At four pines with our iPhones over a glass of beer. How times change. But I feel like we're in control now. Now, meatballs, mash, gravy and lingonberry jam.

Cleaner wanted

I decided to do some serious cleaning of the apartment yesterday. I organised papers, threw out 20 kg of stuff and vacuumed up about 5 kg of cat hair. Shirin always gets very interested when I'm cleaning and is trying to help as much as she can by chasing the mop and growling at the vacuum cleaner.






When I was organising the wardrobe in the study she thought it was a great idea to sit in one if the drawers that I was about to fill with papers- and refuse to move. Very helpful.





I also folded more washing than I've ever folded before. How exciting. But at least the apartment is cleaner than it's ever been before. Now I'm going to wake up B, make some cappuccinos and drink them in the sunshine on the balcony.

Michelin class dinner

We had dinner at some friends place last night. It was absolutely amazing. Spatchcock for entree, eye fillet for main, chocolate fondant for dessert and cheese platter for second dessert. And matching wines for each course. They have really set the standard high now. But we can't have them over for a proper dinner until we have finished the renovations. It would be impossible to cook a four course dinner in our current kitchen.

I just woke up still feeling full. Had made plans to go diving today but the weather isn't that great and the surf is pretty big so it would probably be really crappy visibility. I'll have to check with diving master M who is supposed to take me out and see what she says. If diving gets cancelled I'm thinking Yum Cha at Manly Phoenix. Yum!

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. We're getting Foxtel. Finally!