Entries from August 2009 ↓

Just received some official photos from the NZ Internet Industry awards we went to 10 days ago. Not often you see professional photos of yourself at the beginning of the night before all the random blurry iPhone photos with shiny faces, flat hair and red eyes. And a nice one of us both in the mix. The other 10 were of The Mister with various famous people and trophies.

Such a howling winter night last night we cooked up a roast – simple but nice and filling and we needed something to sustain The Mister through his long night, all night, at work after dinner. Made some poppin’ cranberry sauce myself and made a kind of wild rice & cranberry salad to go with the chicken rather than stuffing it.

I know I’ve taken photos of the cranberries cooking before but the colours always looks so brilliant.

Feel very grown up and important as I have 35 CVs to review for the writing job I have advertised at the moment. I have a system to be very transparent and fair in my review and on this rainy afternoon I’m skimming them all in a huge lot to make my no, maybe and yes piles for further review and interview.

I’ve been involved in hiring before but havne’t been the point person and haven’t had such interest. And I must say it makes me want to review my own CV – I realise it’s quite wordy, which it has to be when demonstrating that you can write, but in my review so far my biggest objective is to try to get a feel for the person and their experience through the written word. Too brief and you can’t see it, too long and you can’t skim it. It’s tricky business. I know that for ultimate judgement I’ll need to meet these people but first up they have one chance to make their impression on paper. And I have to say the introductory statement by recruitment agencies does NOT help. I want to hear from the applicant, not their representative. And that introduction doesn’t constitute the cover letter I specified in the job ad, that’s a perfect way to show me their written self so omit that and it’s almost a no straight away.

Hopefully I’m not being too naiive or harsh, I guess I’ll know when I get to the end when I see how many maybes and yesses I’ve got!

As we were wandering through Mt Vic again this weekend we encountered a very friendly puss who ran up to greet us. He had very unusual markings – haven’t seen such specific ginger colouring before and the little dotted line of tabby grey between his back and tail made it look almost as though he had a tail belonging to someone else!

Got a text from a friend saying that City Gallery was totally orange – we were just wandering down Willis St so diverted to go take a look. Indeed it has an orange shroud. Must be getting a bit of an external spruce up before the gallery reopens in September. Which means that all is on track for Nikau Cafe opening again then too – wahooo!

When the recipe said ‘makes small loaf’, it was right, it is a very small loaf! Just enough for fresh bread toast for  breakfast in a minute. It’s so cute and warm!

Our last 2 planned activities for the Wellington on a Plate festival were today. First up was the Food Heros market in the Moore Wilson’s carpark – The Mister was keen to find the whitebait sandwiches and I was keen to find Supreme coffee.

Man the place was jam packed! There were loads of food stalls and wine tasting from Martinborough. Half the carpark and the space in between the new deli fresh building and the grocery building was wall to wall people scoffing and drinking many of the samples on offer.

The Mister found his whitebait sandwich

And I found the Supreme guys (that’s Benn).

We also did a ’smell’ test on some coffee ‘oudors’ – similar to wine tasting some, there are specific aromas that you get when smelling and tasting single blend coffees – you’re suppose to use the little smelling jars to hone your senses – we were pretty hopeless. We got vanilla but were totally stumped by malt (so our lemon guess was wrong) and even more phased by butter (I guessed rimu, the Mister tried good old lemon again!) Gotta get us one of those kits!

Then it was off to Osteria del Toro for a long Italian Family Lunch.

Scheduled from 1.30 – 4.00 it was 2 and a half hours of eating banquet style – anti pasti, pizza, pasta,paella and dessert. Never thought lunch could take that long but I did manage to pick at bits and pieces the whole time and we felt we should leave when the restaurant was empty and they were loudly scraping the tables around and cleaning the floors after 4pm! It was a great afternoon and the food was really good so we must go back there for dinner some time.

We’re on kitty sitting duty for Pip and Pi this weekend. In Pi’s case kitty sitting means sit down and the kitty sits on you. Straight away! Before being fed even. He’s so smoochy and lovely.

Short Dark Friend has ordered a set of cardigans for new twins. And quick! So I’ll have to divert from the usual striped cardigans/jumpers that do take a bit of time. I have this pattern at home – easy garter stitch with the front and back knitted as 1 piece that I’ve been wanting to try for a while.

Just trying to convince her to choose colours for the cardigans that will allow orange to be the best match for the contrast colour round the bottom!

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Update just in:
Yaaaay! She’s chosen lolly pink with orange contrast for girl and bright (not navy) blue with orange contrast for boy!!

My 5th move in the office happened yesterday as neighbouring teams are getting bigger and little old Help Centre was the easiest to move as a unit somewhere else. Back down the other end of the office to where my second spot was in the marketing area. Such a different scene down here. Although as someone remarked, the room kind of ‘glows’ orange since I arrived … yessSSS!