Open Up the Tired Eyes

View from our table at our favorite restaurant

Well, I did it!  I got the job!  I start in about 2 weeks.  They pulled some strings and were able to get me all the leave I need off for the wedding and everything.  Although it's a substantial pay cut, I think this job will bring me more satisfaction and happiness and I'll finally put that degree I got to some use.  Plus, I hope that this job will start me on a great career path and it's the type of job that I could do anywhere in the world through any university, which is part of the reason I chose teaching in the first place.

I've taken a sick day today because I woke up with a headache and my ears have really been bothering me lately.  I'm going to the doctor's later today to have them check my ears and discuss an ongoing issue I've been having:  for the past 3-4 years a few days a month I get really nauseous or have other unpleasant stomach issues and up until now the few doctors I have seen have said it was probably a gluten allergy.  When I cut gluten out, my life wasn't magically transformed.  And believe me, I know it would've been since my Mom cut gluten at the same time I did and her stomach issues have all disappeared.  After telling some friends about my symptoms, two suggested it might be this other problem that is fairly common in women.  I'm hoping when I speak to the doctor today and suggest that this might be the cause of my problems, they will refer me on to the right person and I can finally get to the bottom of this. I wish I was the type of person who could just "chuck a sickie" but I have so many days off where I'm actually sick that there are never very many days left over to use because I just want to lay in bed and watch Revenge all day.  (P.S. Are you guys watching Revenge?  I know it's cheesy and girly, but I'm totally sucked in!)

I'm hoping that I'll be able to schedule in an appointment next week for a skin cancer check, too, since they also offer that service at the medical center I'm going to this afternoon.  I've never had one done and with my Mom's history of having skin cancers removed, my love of bronzing, and the intense Aussie sun, they'll probably find more than a few things to cut off of me.  I just hope they don't find anything serious.  MOTH has a few sketchy looking freckles and moles that I've been on him for forever to have looked at so hopefully my appointment will motivate him to get it done soon.

Speaking of my MOTH...the big man turns the big 2-9 on Saturday.  Tomorrow we are going out to dinner with his parents and his brother to our favorite restaurant on the water (see the picture at the top of the page).  Have I mentioned this place before?  To be honest, I'm too lazy to read back through my last few blog posts to see if I have so if I have, sorry for the repeat!  It's called Fisherman's Warf in Woy Woy.  The decor is really cute and beachy and laid back and the huge windows overlooking the water open out so I always spend at least 75% of our meals with my head hung over the rail looking in to the water below.  We've seen tons of fish, starfish, and a few stingrays while we've sat there eating.  Last time a momma duck came by with her 12 ducklings and we saw two sea eagles fly by.  They also serve fish, chicken, veggie, and shrimp tacos.  I am obsessed with the shrimp ones.  The only thing they get wrong on them are they chop parsley to serve on top, not cilantro, other than that the whole place leaves me feeling like I'm in California having dinner.

Saturday night for his actual birthday, we are going out for teppenyaki with some friends and then probably hitting the bar for St. Patty's day festivities...I don't like beer, but I've never had green beer, and while I know it's just food coloring added to normal beer, I want to try one anyway!

Sunday, we are headed down to this fake Crate and Barrel place: Wheel and Barrow to do a mini wedding registry.  We weren't going to register anywhere since a) lots of our guests are doing serious travelling to come to our wedding so we weren't expecting gifts anyway and b)we didn't know where to register at for the people who may want to get us something since the wedding is in California, but we'd have to bring it back here to Aus with us.  This place looks good since it is just like Crate and Barrel and they let you register in store and then people can look at your registry online and buy stuff and they accept American credit cards.    We are then hopefully meeting up with one of MOTH's cousins and her husband for dinner in the City that night.  She loves all things wedding and has actually become a wedding officiant and we'd like to ask her if she'd do a reading at our wedding;  I hope she'll say yes!

Speaking of wedding related stuff, we ordered our invites over the weekend and approved the proof yesterday.  Wedding Paper Divas was having a 30% off sale so we jumped on it.  We had had a certain design in mind for the last 6 months but when I went on to personalize it the other day, I came across this other design that caught my eye and when I showed it to MOTH he loved it and had such a gut reaction to it that we knew it was the one.  We're using the flowers on the invite as our main wedding flower.  They are called craspedia or billy buttons/balls and they are an Aussie native.

We also put a deposit down on a house we are renting a few hours outside of Puerto Vallarta for a week for our honeymoon.  I can't wait to get there!

That's about all from here.  I thought for sure I'd posted the recipe for Chocolate Chip Oreo Cookies before, but going through all my recipe posts, I haven't.  I know throwing Oreos in to chocolate chip cookies sounds like overkill, but believe me, it's not, no one has ever complained and I get requests to make them all the time.  Make sure you use dark chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips, though, so they aren't sickeningly sweet.  I'll be making them tonight for my workmates since one of the girls has put in a request for them.  I will also try and take some photos of the coconut cupcakes with cream cheese frosting I've just started making over the last few weeks since they are amazing (and I'm not even usually a coconut dessert loving girl) and my workmates have requested them 2 times since I originally made them a month ago along with the recipe I threw together for them some time next week (I'm trying to bake everyone's favorites before I leave).

If I have time this afternoon, I'm hoping I might finally get around to a blog post with links to all the recipes I've been loving lately, too.

Someone's in the Kitchen with Dana

So I got a little manic today and decided to make chicken and steak satay, cold asian noodle salad, won ton salad, a lemon cake from scratch with homemade lemon buttercream frosting, and Malva pudding which is a traditional South Africa dessert in honor of Nae's last dinner at home. Luckily we had 12 people here to eat it all!

I also made these really yummy Pacific Rim turkey burgers with ginger mayo last night. I have been on a cooking bender this weekend.

I didn't get pictures of any of it because my camera is still broken and should be sent off tomorrow to get fixed and my Dad's camera had a flat battery, but I will be posting the recipes and pictures from the sites where I got the recipes from over the next few days.

In other news, this really did turn out to be the weekend of wildlife. Last night, we had 4 great horned owls flying around and calling to each other from the trees out front. We also, sadly, have found 2 huge (like the size of labradors) sea otters washed dead on our beach this week and have had to call the Monterey Bay Aquarium to come take a look at them. Then just this morning I walked down the back steps and saw what I thought was another gopher head that Sparticus had left as a treat for us, but what turned out to be a little Mexican free-tailed bat. The good news was that he was still alive so I found a big sturdy stick and got him to use it as a perch and then put him in one of our big planters. Mom couldn't get a hold of animal control so I did a quick Google search and found a bat conservation group who had a representative in our area and called her. She asked if I could put the bat in a box and bring it to her. So there Mom and I were at 10:30 this morning, in the Audi driving to Corralitos,to drop off a bat perched in a Vans shoe box! We'll know with in a few days if he's sick with rabies or if he might have just accidentally hit the wall trying to get up in to our eaves last night. If he's ok, we'll get him back and will put him in our bat box to sleep in through the day and as the free-tailed bat is a colony dweller, hopefully he will bring his other bat friends to live in the bat box with him!

Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair

The family all piled in the car and headed up to San Francisco for the night. It was so clear out that you could see the Farallon Islands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands), which I got really interested in after reading the book The Devil’s Teeth (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4706198) and Nae had been interested in because of her love of Great White Sharks. We didn’t really have a plan for that afternoon, I mean I had a general itinerary of what I wanted to get done, of course, but we were just driving. We ended up spending the afternoon at the new science museum (http://www.calacademy.org). It was a super cool place, I got overwhelmed by all the people there, but they had so much cool stuff. They have a living garden on the roof, an indoor rainforest, penguins, an Africa/Madagascar/Evolution Exhibit, an aquarium and lots of other things that we had to skip this trip. We then took Dad out for another birthday dinner, this time out to Thai/Malay food. We got to our hotel, Embassy Suites, and we were on the very top floor. It was one of those places with the middle all opened so you could look down and see reception, and the restaurant, and a koi pond. It made me queasy but S loved looking down and freaking me out by getting too close to the railing. Nae wasn’t feeling good so S and I went down by ourselves for a drink and dessert. We went back up to the room afterwards where we watched lots of Law and Order and Nae made me scratch her back for an hour straight and then still bitched that it wasn't long enough! S then wanted to go for a swim so I went down to watch him. We went to bed when we got back to the room and I was nearly asleep when I heard him calling me. He had just gotten a text from D saying D had crashed their pick up truck. Luckily he was ok!