while last weekend was beautiful in its laziness and was the first time in forever that i've ignored all school and work-related issues and just fucking relaxed, this weekend was almost the polar opposite of that. it is all entirely my fault and given the chance of a do-over, i'd still pick the weekend i had because it was pretty fucking rad and makes me smile to think about it.

the run down: my favouritest teacher and all-round crazy-ass frenchman pastry chef stuck his head in my showpieces class on friday and asked to see me, then asked if i'd like to help him out with a short course on french gateaux and tarts this weekend as an opportunity to maybe see a demo of two of stuff we hadn't learned and get some more time playing in the kitchen. i couldn't get out of work, but i did manage to work out that i could be at school from 9-1.30 and then work from 2.20-9.30 and have everything work out ok. i mean, the simple virtue of the fact that he's my favourite and i'll take any face time i can get, plus the fact that he purposely sought me out (we had even changed classrooms to a different department) to ask was kind of a wonderful boost to the culinary ego.

saturday was me and a helper monkey with an attitude problem who knew nothing other than just how to weigh up ingredients (so why with the attitude already?) and it was crazy busy. the other chick and i were running around trying to get everything weighed up for each table of attendees, plus i was helping them if they had any questions or fucked up their mousse or whatever. and they did, a lot. i watched one demo on making a green tea creameaux but that was about it. i had one fuck of a time dealing with public transport track work and replacement buses getting to work and then issues at work and by 9.30, i was more than ready for home.

today was awesome. no weighing up for me - that was for the new helper guy (*much* nicer than the other girl!) and the other student who was in. actually, i think that was the biggest 'yay, me!' moment - when i realised that all she was doing was weighing up and doing the dishes. i spent 2 quality hours with my favourite machine, the pastry sheeter*, and then time helping out, watching a demo or two and then making up a raspberry creameaux for the boss man. while everyone was eating lunch, he showed me a different tart (souffle tart, i think?), just he and me. and it was dreamy. oh, yeah. but then i had to go to work, which was a much nicer day technology wise, since system malfunctions and dumb shit weren't going to mess with me today. oh, no. and i stole the course handbook, so there's four new pastries that i have to figure out how to veganise. yeah. good luck with that.

speaking of vegan stuff, our dietary requirements class on friday was all about veganism. i just sat and grinned and corrected the teacher when necessary, though he was pretty good with his facts. the class homework is - and you've probably all got a very good idea about how much i am just thrilled with this - to be a vegan for a day and keep a food diary of what you ate and how you replaced animal-based foods with vegan ones. ha. i'm probably the only one that does it. i asked if maybe i should write down what i'd eat normally and then try to find an animal replacement? that would probably be more work for me. and what is the animal equivalent of tempeh, anyway? maybe depends on the marinade?



* and if one more attendee asked me if i was a giant pasta roller, i swear i was going to place their hand under the rollers, turn the dial to 1mm and see what happened when i turned it on.

31 today. fuck...

i had the weekend off work and was mostly walking around like "huh! so THIS is what people do on the weekend!". i went to the farmer's market on saturday morning and bought heaps of great produce ridiculously cheap, was caught checking out quite a few rather cute boys and had old women with their shopping cart trolley things run over my feet. saturday night was drinks at 1806 - quite a few drinks, actually. it was ace. to begin with, i had some peeps there that i'd normally see while out, but then the night morphed into people i work with and like a bunch, but haven't really hung out with. it was great. they're an awesome bunch and we got silly and talked shit and harassed our supervisor via text message and had a whole pile of fun. today was lunch at the rents and getting the fuck out of there before my grandmother arrived, coming home and finishing assembling my birthday cake (not quite 100% what i envisioned, but that's ok. i made most of it last night while still tipsy) and eating a large portion of it.

i have been showered with presents, hugs and wishes. i feel really lucky to know all of these people and have them care about me.

among all the frustrating missed calls from call centres and my hairdresser, i got a rather nice text from my senior educator, informing me that the class that i was meant to have on a tuesday night (and that we turned up to and left 30 minutes later as no teacher ever showed) was now on a friday afternoon, thereby giving me tuesdays totally free from school. given that my previous timetable gave me wednesdays off, to work, i now have a full day to myself. i'm thrilled.

i watched some videos (!) and a few demonstrations on sugar art tonight. i cannot wait to start playing around next week.

i am still somewhat in shock about the following things:

1. i have been taken off BBC since my accuracy level is not as high as what the powers that be would like it to be. i am both horrified and thrilled at this turn of events; i hate doing everything but the nice and slow 'our world' and the tech-happy 'click' but hate everything else because english people on tv speak quickly and have no grasp of how to use punctuation when reading (i.e. pauses for full stops are not observed and so sentences seem to run on until the reader runs out of breath), so it's kinda good. the crappy side is that the voice training woman from sydney is going to come down and help me increase my accuracy and i really, really hate any kind of training-ish situation since i feel like a dick at least 95% of the time in any kind of training situation. also, i am the special kind of perfectionist that if i'm not good at something, i'd prefer to just not do it rather than train and train at it because i like to be good at something first go and just improve from there. being crap at stuff is not something i handle well, which is why i was thrilled that:

2. my only class for the today mutated into a class excursion to a bar. seriously. one minute, we're in class. the next minute, the oft-discussed but-never-seeming-like-they'll-come-to-fruition plans are go. fucking brilliant. our tram broke down in the middle of an intersection and the doors were stuck closed and certain freaky international students starting looking wild-eyed and crazed and in dire need of a paper bag to just, like, breathe into and a drunk man down the other end started lecturing everyone on the best way to repay a loan. we ended up at cookie and after the nerds left, a nice little bunch of kids that i have a soft spot for plus my rad-as-fuck teacher hung out and talked shit. best. class. ever. later, i met up with jen and ate too much teppanyaki. now that's a fucking good night. the unfortunate thing is that i was thinking i'd only be out until 5:30 so was running around tonight with a t-shirt, shorts and short sleeved cardigan and it was somewhat chilly by the time i got home. i'm cold now, sitting on the couch wearing multiple layers and with a blankie and my nice warm laptop. eep. will hope this doesn't turn into a cold.

someone drank a little bit too much tonight and i think it was me. oops!

it was all in the name of fun, though, and i don't actually think i was messy at all. although people at the bar could probably correct me on that one. it wasn't until i was wandering the aisles of coles on my walk home that i realised that i was smiling and humming frank sinatra and that's not normal public behaviour for me and once i got home and started making my favourite snack* that i realised that yes, i was a wee bit tispy. but whatever. recorded music salon have some awesome drinks and the bartenders there (well, one in particular) was very passionate about his work and i love to see that and so i tried everything that he recommended and i found myself drinking stuff that i normally wouldn't pick (like a fig and vanilla contoction and an agave margarita) and *loving* them. so thankyou, crazy bar guy. i'm sure he should be thanking me, though, for all the money i dropped at his feet, but it was so worth it.

tonight was good for letting off a bit of steam and for seeing my pals, realising again (for the millionth time) that they are fucking awesome people and that my life is actually in a pretty good place right now.

xoxoxo

* pott's sourdough with olive oil, roma tomatoes, freshly ground salt and pepper.