How you diddlin?

Strange thing about NZ gastro pubs, they don't do desserts! After eating a nice T-Bone steak i was informed that there would be no mississipi mud cake on offer as they were a pub, not a cafe. So, we headed round for a late night Hot Fudge Cake at Denny's the 24 diner.

Now Denny's is an odd place. The food looks really appalling but there's a kind of kitsch charm to the whole proceedings. Also, some of the food looks suspiciously conjured by a pissed old man given weekly ingredients and enough beer. For example the 'patty melt' consists of two bits of toasted bread with a burger and some melted processed cheese. Now, i seem to remember eating that in my flat in Leeds in 1992 through a haze of Tetley's bitter.

But, i never thought, wow, it's not just me, other people would love this, not just pissed up food experimenters, let's take a photograph! Let's give it a name! It's the 'patty melt'. I might have one next time....

Each week this old man must surely ring up and babble out some new concoction he's cooked up, only to be heralded as a genius and another badly taken photograph squeezed into the montage of BAD food that is the Denny's menu.

I did enjoy the fudge cake though.

 

cleanliness comes first

just a quick note to say that it's raining and i've got a wee cold, trying to shrug it off. beat udi 9-0 at squash, but he was still pissed from night before so i'm not sure it counts, we'll see. house is finalised this week, going unconditional on Friday! Fingers crossed...

What a rollercoaster election it was last week (Sep 17th). National storming to an 11% lead and then Labour coming right back and winning (sort if, it's MMP here!) by less than 1%, really exciting stuff.

I've made another collage below but realised after i made it that i've already uploaded some of them before, but i can't be arsed re-doing it. The bottom half shows off my bowling skills and annabel and her parents voting.

House is still main thing going on, goes unconditional on October 7th, moving in on Saturday October 22nd, with a public holiday on the Monday which will give us a chance to get everything moved....

Hoorah, my first big project at work has been shortlisted for the Tuanz e-vision awards, NZ's very own webbies! I designed and built the system so am very proud indeed...

http://www.tuanz.org.nz/tuanz/index.cfm?DE770585-E018-8BD1-32F6-D46DDBA21E3D

The project "online ordering" allows Lion Nathan customers to place their booze orders from across NZ and Australia. It's really cool and integrates with their internal accounts and inventory systems whilst retaining a simplicity and ease of use...blah blah blah.

www.lion.co.nz is the adress, but unfortunately it's a customer only site so you can only dream of the sublime functionality locked inside.

Fingers crossed, again! Results announced October 20th 2005.

After signing the sale and purchase agreement, we are approaching the end of the first week in which we must do all the stuff before the offer goes unconditional. This has included a builders inspection which revealed little more than a wee bit of mould one of the gutters and full market valuation, the results of which we are still to get..

Finance is pretty much all sorted and the bank are happy to make shed loads of money off of us in the next 30 years, so that's cool.

Below is Annabel after the first viewing. The fence is a bit wonky, but we're going to fix that. And i want one of those electronic door lifters for the garage.

There's not much in the house itself so we need to buy beds, washing machine, dishwasher, curtains, pots and pans, cutlery and other home office stuff. The idea is that we do it all up and make a bit of cash in 4/5 years or so. Given that the Auckland house market is not booming as it was a few years back we can't rely totally on the house increasing in value all by itself so we'll need to put the work in.

Nothing is certain yet and we still may well get gazzumped but it's all looking good so far, fingers crossed!

a new house..nearly

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/internationals/4215736.stm

feels like 1982 all over again, yeees!!

time to settle down