Saturday, November 26, 2011

More furniture!

A most exciting day yesterday - the rest of our furniture arrived! No longer do we sleep on the floor:


We also have a matching chest of drawers to hide thing in. Clothes, mostly.


Additionally, we now have a dining table - with chairs. The dining suite has replaced the chairs in the murder nook.


Old news: on the flight back from Iowa to Oregon (after sitting board exams), I made a lucky (or so it turned out) pathology scarf for the new resident at OSU: a really neat two-sided pattern from the Autumn '11 issue of my favourite online knitting magazine.

Posted by Picasa

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Comfort strikes

After spending about a week in the hostels on campus at Camden, we were quite happy to move into a rental studio. Luckily, we found a place fairly close to campus that we could take pretty much immediately.

The kitchen is quite nice (and now the holes are filled with a fridge and microwave):


... But we were otherwise indoor-camping without any furniture to speak of:


Happily, this weekend we finally managed to buy some items of comfort - including an excellent mattress and a small lounge suite. Two recliners are currently nestled in what I like to call the "Murder-Nook":

We also have a sofa for when recliners aren't quite lazy enough:

Additionally, a bedroom suite and dining suite are arriving next week sometime - buying all this furniture has been an interesting experience. And the fact that we now own furniture polish.....

In slightly more social news, we caught up with Marjorie in Sydney, and Manfred is back on the town:

Posted by Picasa

Friday, November 11, 2011

Beginning to catch up...

So... Yeah. There's been a huge gap in 2011, mainly due to preparing for, sitting, and passing (!) ACVP board exams, then fleeing to Australia to start a new job. There's a bit of catching up to do.

Of course, there have been more socks - basic pattern with Zitron Trekking (XXL).



As part of the master plan to take all the brewing paraphernalia with us to Oz, we picked up a new burner - a bit sturdier than the last one, and it can boil a flamingo from 20 metres.



I finally finished the top/tunic thing I've been working on intermittently for the last couple of years - knitted in lace-weight alpaca, the pattern was made up on the fly.


More preparations for moving across the Pacific - since we were shipping the computer, we picked up a cheap laptop for Mort to use in the mean time. Sometimes packaging is nearly as entertaining as the content:

Posted by Picasa

Friday, June 24, 2011

Horace!

This year, like last year, we were graced with the presence of Horace, the "dog vomit" slime mold. But this year I was quick enough to get photos of him/them over the three days of transition from plasmodial to sporangial phases (I think).





Posted by Picasa

Monday, June 20, 2011

Ribbons

Mort worked his arse off yet again this year coordinating the local homebrew competition - so of course we entered. This time, we came away with three ribbons - a first and two thirds for various styles:



First went to Simon for a Dry stout:


A third place to the Weasel for a Weissbier (the same recipe as last year, but a different batch):



And a third place for Andrew with a delicious Eisbock:


Posted by Picasa

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Silent auction scarf

Apart from study, study, study, I'm still managing to get in a little knitting. Often as a reward between groups of journal articles. As part of a silent auction fundraiser for the local international veterinary student group, I knitted a double-sided pawprint scarf (about 1.7 m long) - learning how to do double-knitting in the process.


If we were moving to a cold climate, I totally would have made one for myself - probably not quite so necessary in Sydney, though.

Edit more than a year later: here is the print pattern I ended up using:


The leftovers turned into a very functional tea-cosy.


Below is Mort playing with his new beer gun, which lets him bottle carbonated beer straight from the keg without exposing it to oxygen - making the whole process quick and keeping the beer more delicious.


Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Moa's Ark wins again

Because we won a couple of blue ribbons at the local homebrew competition last year, we were eligible to enter the national MCAB competition (Masters Championship of Amateur Brewing) in those categories.... And man, Moa's Ark really was a good porter - taking a silver medal for that style.


We've also been cat-sitting once again, this time at our place. The bottom cat is Minnie - the one who went into acute renal failure a little over a year ago and visited us during that period. The top cat is Rosie, her sister. They'll be back here again in a week or so.


Finally, Spring has sprung. Paddocks are littered with daffodils, blossom blooms, and the rain rains the good, wet type. We no longer need to fear frost-bitten mushrooms:

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Turducken

Mort and Jen made turducken, mostly just to see if they could. Turducken is an unholy bird, consisting of a chicken in a duck in a turkey, with stuffing between the meats. Their first step was to debone all birds, with the exception of the drums and wings on the turkey (for presentation). This allowed them to stack the layers - from bottom to top there is turkey, stuffing, duck, stuffing, chicken.


The next step was to sew the turkey up, and trying to create the illusion of a bird that still has bones, instead of an abominable meat-sack:


Then cook. For a really long time. This is extremely important, as turducken is the perfect storm for food-poisoning. I think this one took about 10 1/2 hours. The outcome was very successful.



We had 17 people eating dinner that night, and managed to consume nearly half of the frankenfowl. Food-poisoning: nil.
Posted by Picasa

Monday, January 17, 2011

Club bourbon barrel projects

Sometimes, members of the local homebrew club aggregate in the basement of the local homebrew shop to play. In this case, we're fiddling with club brews, where the wort was made as a group in the OSU fermentation sciences department, individual members took wort home to brew, and then brought it to the club for aging in a bourbon barrel.



The empty carboys are being filled with the barley wine that's ready to go. The full carboys have a big porter that's going straight into the empty barrel.



That's a lot of beer.
Posted by Picasa

Friday, January 7, 2011

Crater lake

Way back in October, Mort's parents visited us. During their trip, we headed down to Crater lake with Mort's Dad and another random Kiwi vet who had been staying with us. We hit phenomenally good weather, and the area was gorgeous.



We walked down to the water to eat lunch, while being watched closely by a resident chipmunk and another small mammal, likely a vole.



And no, that's not a long-drop in the above pic... That would be wrong.


Posted by Picasa

Glorious airports

Ahh, airports. It there nothing they won't do for a cheap laugh? We've spent a fair amount of time in various airports over the last few weeks, and there were a few signs that really piqued our curiosity - were these intentional jokes, or bonafide errors?

Auckland airport, multiple locations:



Carrion essentials - where only the best-dressed buzzards, crows and hyenas go to shop. Or perhaps these bags are all extra-lined for tidy transport of carrion?

Fiji, departure lounge:

I'm willing to give anything a try, but Glandfiddich sounds fairly repulsive, even by my standards. I imagine a liver smoothie with a lymph node garnish...

Fiji, departure lounge:

Is chicken wanton a fowl of loose morals?

Fiji, departure lounge:



I have to admit, the chic peas have to be the most stylish legumes around.

Needless to say, when you're exhausted having been on the "road" for way too long - not to mention braving the TSA - these things become way too funny.
Posted by Picasa

A whirlwind trip

We're in Corvallis, catching our breath from a bit of a whirlwind trip around New Zealand. 20 days is not enough time to catch up with all of our friends and family, but we gave it a shot. Thanks so much to everyone for tolerating our hurried visits.

In Northland we caught up with a lot of family, and met some more. The Kiwis had a great time educating the northern hemisphere rellies on the finer points of NZ Christmas etiquette - lunch was outside, as it should be. Snow was a very dirty word.


We managed to get over to Mahia and spend a couple of days performing extensive chair and beer testing activities, catching up with many friends. When we were leaving, the sun came out:

Then we went haring down to Palmerston North (stopping off briefly in Haumoana), slept, then on to Wellington (more friends to see). It was with great pleasure we learned that the NZ craft beer situation has been significantly improving. Even Manfred appreciated Hashigo Zake cult beer bar in Wellington.

The last couple of days were spent in Palmerston North with family and friends. We spent some time with Spyro, and the whole trip finished up with an awesome pot-luck BBQ.


Posted by Picasa