Christmas Holidays

The holidays have turned out to be great fun, even though I'm spending a lot of my time working.  I took half a day off on Christmas eve, and the whole day of Christmas.  Since then I've mostly been working as normal.  I bought myself some awesome new shirts from Nicholas Jermyn, can't wait for an occasion to wear them. I also bought myself a small moleskine planner to use next year.  I really like the look of it.

I'll be moving to Onehunga next weekend.  Can't believe how quickly that is coming up, but I'm also really excited about the move.

Back to work for me though, I need to get all my notes put together so that I can start writing my next chapter.

No internet today

Gah, no internet (besides email) in the office today.  Someone's borked the proxy system or something.  I guess I'll get more work done today.

Year in review

Well, its certainly been a long time since my last post. I'm really not that good at this blogging thing. At least not doing it regularly at all. But I figure I should give a bit of an update on my life. Since my last post in May, I've continued to work on my thesis, cooked lots of tasty food, and traveled to Egypt and the US. I've got some pictures of the Egypt trip available on my photobucket account. I'll try to post here more often, but with my thesis coming down to the wire, I'm going to be a bit pressed for time.

Food Talk

Wow, its certianly been a long time since I've written anything for this. Suffice to say, I've been very busy with my thesis work. I'm going to take just a few minutes here to let everyone who reads this know that I'm doing pretty good. Also, I've been having a lot more fun with cooking lately. My wife and I have put a lot of work into trying some new recipes lately, and in a few cases I have documented these with pictures which I have uploaded to my Photobucket account. Eventually I'll get around to actually posting some of them including Thai Green Curry, Spicy Lentil Soup, and a few others. I'm rather proud of my cooking ability now. I know I'm not a chef by any means, but I can make some good tasting food.

For example, I tried something rather new last night: roasted squash. I've always been a bit shy about trying new vegetables through most of my life. Afterall, veggies are not ussually as tasty as sweets. I cut a butternut squash in half, added some butter and a tiny bit of brown sugar, and roasted it in a pan for about 45 minutes. It was nutty and delicious. I have another squash waiting for me at home, and even though I'm going to have curry with some veggies in it, I'm thinking about roasting the second one to eat with dinner as well.

Also, just checked scores the Basketball scores, and Denver pulled off a win. Woo!

Writing - Day 1

I spent all of today writing the introduction of my thesis. It's taking a long time because I keep having to go back and check my facts, and citations. I'm trying to make sure that everything comes together right the first time through the writing process. This meant that in reality, most of the day was spent looking through all of the papers that I've read previously, and finding the important points in them, and condensing them down into the summary that I need. I think I have all of the papers together again. Tomorrow will hopefully look more productive in terms of things like word count.

Tonight was another taco night. I've got a recipe that I really like down pretty well now. Take about 1 lb of ground beef, brown, and drain grease. Add 1 chopped onion and 1-2 cloves of garlic, diced. Cook for a few minutes until the onion is soft. Add a half can of diced tomatoes, plus enough water to just cover. Season with cumin, chilli powder, and cayenne pepper. Simmer until nearly all the liquid has evaporated. Serve with lettuce, cheese, sour cream, and salsa or hot sauce. Ours tonight was accompanied by sweetcorn and refried beans. Yummy!