Fail-vacuum

"I have this breath and I'll hold it tight
And keep it in my chest with all my might!"


I never thought I could feel sympathy for a vacuum cleaner after having to lug one up and down the stairs for countless years of my life, but it seems that all things do, in time, change.
I had been sucking up some bits with Jared's mum's smaller vacuum cleaner- which we have, uh, acquired- and went to put it away. I don't think the neck for that thing had been disconnected for MONTHS because there was a thick wad of dust and thread stuck in the connecting area of the two bits of pipe that make up the neck. So I sucked that up too and it suddenly dawned on me to check the bag as well. And it was FULL. Like, not just full full, but full to BURSTING. It was so fat and heavy that it felt like a medium-sized cat when I picked it up. I looked at the filter too and it was so clogged with dust that I'm surprised the cleaner was working as well as it was. From my mouth, completely involuntarily, sprang the words "poor, poor vacuum cleaner!" in a soothing voice; not that it's odd for me to speak to inanimate objects, especially electrical ones, but I had never felt so sorry for one in my life.
I changed the bag and the filter and found all the little components that go in the top compartment, making the cleaner complete again. And then I named it Max (because I always turn it up to max when I'm using it). And now I'm glad to say Max is feeling much better.

I tend to name any appliance that I use often or am particularly attached to. The first one was Fred, the P.A. system I used to use as part of Finn's band. Then there was Felix, my first slightly owned laptop who couldn't unplug and had 20 GB of memory. After him came Toshie, my new Toshiba laptop. My Scarlet Lily plant that I keep in the bathroom is called Theo. I named the toaster Buzz because he has an odd habit of buzzing when you put bread in the left side. My iPods have all been named after songs of my favourite artists: my first 1GB nano, Little L (Jamiroquai), my second 8GB nano Octavarium (Dream Theater), also known as Octy, and my current 160GB classic Stellar (Incubus). I named Jared's 6-string Washburn bass guitar Washy, and thankfully my brother has bought him off Jared, because I got quite attached to him. The brand name of the back fridge is Kelvinator- I mean, who could resist calling that by its name?! And the list goes on... I can't wait till I get my new keyboard, my Korg Triton TR-76, so I can name that too!

Wtfpwned

Me: "So, does my shit day beat your shit day?"
Danielle: "Hells yeah! Your shit day just wtfpwned mine. Mine didn't even see it coming. POW!"


Schedule for Wednesday, May 05, 2010.


6.00 am: Get up and get ready for Uni

7.00 am: Get Jared out of bed (nicely) and have him drive me to the train station

7.25 am: Get on train

8.10 am: Get off train, walk to Uni

8.45 am: Arrive at Uni

9.00 am: LINGUISTICS LECTURE. Do a beats swap with Danielle

10.00 am: ANCIENT HISTORY LECTURE. Sit by self as Amy is at home hurriedly finishing her essay. Hand own essay in to tutor

11.00 am: Curly fries with Danielle

12.00 pm: ACCOUNTING LECTURE.

1.00 pm: Decide not to go to English lecture. Sit in on Danielle's MUSIC LECTURE instead. Spend 2 hours studying for Accounting test

3.00 pm: Come out of lecture. Go to info commons

3.30 pm:

4.30 pm:

5.30 pm:

6.30 pm: Accounting test

7.30 pm: Go home.


FOOD CONSUMED AT AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY TODAY: 1 cup of tea, 2 rice wafers, 1 large bowl of fries, 3 gingernut biscuits, 1 apple, 1 bottle of water, 1 small tub of butter chicken, 1 vanilla coke.

TIME SPENT AT AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY TODAY: 10 hours 45 minutes. Wtfpwned.

Fail-cake

So, as you may be aware of right now, I am a cupcake fiend. I love making cupcakes. In fact my friend Danielle Walker and I invented the word “cupcaking” for cupcake+making, but apparently that’s already a word meaning canoodling unnecessarily in a public place. So that was a bit of a fail. Also what was a bit of a fail was my latest batch of cupcakes.

My friend Amy-Louise White came over for dinner and we watched this Harry Potter fan musical thing called “A Very Potter Musical” which was absolutely HILARIOUS in the extreme. It was like, all seven book squashed into about 3 hours of stage and it was actually really well written; all the music was really catchy and had great lyrics. After that we decided to skip through Avondale College’s production of High School Musical, which I was in and Amy was a backstage person in. The second night of the show was filmed and made available for us to buy on dvd, so of course with my obsession with posterity, I bought one. Hadn’t watched it yet though. It was a bit cringe-worthy in bits but there were some brilliant one-liners that we’d forgotten about… “Tiramisu. WHY DID I SAY TIRAMISU?!” Ahahaha, good old David K…

I cooked steak for dinner and I DIDN’T BURN IT YAY! It was really tasty, and I was so proud of myself. But then the trouble started. Amy and I decided to do some baking after dinner and I had had a craving for cupcakes for a few weeks… the last batch I made was for easter, they were chocolate with white chocolate crosses and little chocolate bunnies on top, and hence had been consumed quite quickly. I don’t know what it is about baking, but it puts me in this state of mind… I just feel so content and happy, and chilled out. Baking with another person was not so satisfying, but it was fun anyway… except I was only making a half-recipie, and Amy accidently told me to put two cups of milk in. So… after they had spent almost twice the usual cooking time in the oven, those little cupcakes looked like this:



They were all gloopy and half-cooked inside, and all crispy and toffee-ish on the top. Failcake! By this time Amy had gone home, so it took me and my little brain quite a while to figure out what had gone wrong. When I did, I added more flour to the mixture, and the next batch came out looking a bit better:




Slightly less failcake. This morning I ate one and although they taste a little blander than they should, at least they’re the right texture inside now. So today I put some sprinkles on them and they came out looking alright:



So, lessons learned today:
1. Always check everything twice (I’ve been learning this lesson for years),
2. Don’t bake anything complicated with another person,
3. Don’t try a new recipe at night when fixing it may cut into your extremely essential sleeping time.

* * *

Wow, Jared just had to call me into the lounge because a tui flew into the house, hit the wall and then flew out. Unfortunately, he also pooped all over the floor. And doubly unfortunately, Jared had a new guitar student at the time... so it was up to me to sort it out XD I was like "Hi, nice to meet you, welcome to our house... I'm just gonna clean this up now."