License to Ill

I feel wonderful and gross all at the same time.

Kate's away a conference for a few days and you know who got to stay behind to punch ye old time clock. After an afternoon conversation with co-workers about burgers and chips (fries) I NEEDED a burger. Well the fish and chips shop at the end of the road does some tasty-looking burgers. I done a pretty good job at avoiding this place so far for obvious health reasons (Kate fell victim to the deep fried snickers bar a while ago).

Upon entry to the likely vermin infested take away i noticed not just a few burger options but a plethora. and cheap too. I was just going to get a cheeseburger, but for an extra $1.20 i could get bacon+egg+beet+mayo. Do you think I could pass that up? Hell no. No way in the world.

Look at this beaut:

and for the price of $4.50 the thing was a behemoth, this is the overhead angle is only the last 1/3.

If that wasn't enough I panicked while ordering. Suddenly in the midst of telling the guy i wanted a "bacon, egg and beet cheeseburger" i thought "dude, you need some chips with this thing" so chips I ordered. To which the very normal response from the cook was "how much chips?"

A quick aside to those who have not grown up around fish and chip shops. The way this works when ordering chips isn't a simple small or large, you call out a dollar amount and they give you whatever they feel is worth that much. In some ways its a cool system in other ways I always feel that they are ripping me off.

How much chips?

Now in NZ and Australia I usually don't order chips someone else does, I'm aware of my accent and aware that the dollar amounts are arbitrary, in my paranoid mind if Kate orders in a semi-local accent we'll sound more local and therefore get more chips.

How much chips?

[voice in my head] Ok so usually for a grow of people we split a big pack of chips and thats usually like $5 or 6, I think…. So, ummm, for one person….

"two dollars" is what i end up telling the man. I'm fairly confident with, cause yeah, $5 or $6 is usually, to my recollection, a good amount for 3 or 4 people. 10 minutes later my food is up, i get handed an enormous burger (see above) and an EVEN BIGGER pack of chips. like TWICE the size. !?!?!?!? then I remember, I don't think we've got chips at a take away since being here, at least not when I was in earshot of the counter. NZ must be prime potato growing land if two dollars gets me a freaking pound+ of deep fried delights. I mean seriously it is insane, I took a photo AFTER I had as many as I could possibly fit into my body (maybe I ate half of them before the photo?)

going… into… food… coma……… now.

DIY: Level Up!

We have our first pet, a nice sourdough culture, affectionately named Bobby. When you leave Bobby alone at home in too small of a space he makes a mess all over everything. Bad Bobby!

But then those are those good days where you really get bond with your pet.

Nothing says love like eating 50% of his body mass once a week. Thanks guy!


In other DIY news we are starting to get serious about fermentation.

One of our closets has turned into fermentation cabinet. Wasn't much in it start with and we never did use those cleaning supplies that much….. anyway, back in June I brewed up my first batch of beer. I'm pretty excited about it, always something I wanted to do. Turns out someone I work with has all the gear so he let me borrow it before I committed to buying anything of my own.

Here is the beer before I put it in the bottle. You'll also noticed we made up two more batches of what I now refer to as "Hobo Mead." Lots of reasons to call it that I suppose, mostly the fact that it is pretty ghetto to brew in old plastic juice bottles and use balloons as airlocks. Also the fact that it tastes a bit like paint thinner. But it does the trick.

I bottled the beer 3 weeks ago, it will be ready to drink soon, just to keep the juices flowing last week I started another batch of beer which will be ready to start drinking around the 1 of November.

Keeping a supply of your own beer on hand takes a fair amount of foresight.

Chickens!

Ok so a while ago Kate found a listing in the neighborhood newsletter for the Dunedin chicken show happening up near us in the Northeast Valley (our neighborhood). We've talked about getting chickens and some day, if we ever live somewhere for more than 2 years, we'll get some.

So at a $2 per person suggested donation this event did not disappoint.

A mid-winter visit

With relatively little notice Eli and Beth showed up in Dunedin as part of an around the world trip after the World Cup in South Africa. To be fair I did have ample warning that they were coming, but I never quite believed they were actually going to show up. Not because I distrust them, more that I didn't want to get too excited before I knew they actually had purchased tickets (which turns out was about 4 or 5 days before they arrived).

We had a blast while they were here, so much fun that Kate and I both ending up getting sick while they were here, recovered, and kept rocking it.

While I was busy slaving away at work Kate managed to take Eli and Beth out for a Harbour cruise, luckily the provided spray coats kept everyone dry as well as fashionable.

The weather was very cooperative, albeit a bit nippy, but the sunshine allowed us to take a drive into the mountains and meet this cheeky fellow who was very playful until he started pecking at the rubber around our car windows. He then turned slightly hostile and I feared a Hitchcock 'The Birds' scenario was starting so we high tailed it out of there as the Kea hopped along after the car.

Eli also managed to fit this ridiculous lion hat into his suitcase. Those of you privy to justin and jayne'ss wedding last year will remember a similar affair regarding the lion hat.

A group shot of us in a wine cave.

Don't let the blue skies fool you this water was very cold.

We've been trying to lay low and recover in the week or so since they left, it was awesome to have some visitors to break up the winter hibernation.