And because it's her birthday, she was having her hair did this morning, so she went off to do that and I had the morning to myself to do the shopping and whatnot.
When I went to grab my bag full of reusable shopping bags this morning it was far heavier than I was expecting, so I opened it up only to discover that the giant Easter egg I got back at the beginning of April was sitting there, still all wrapped up in silver paper. I moved it out of my fridge at some point when I ran out of room, and clearly forgot about it. At least it was a nice surprise.
I'm planning on upping my soup game this week with some roasted beetroot soup... which could be something of a disaster, we'll have to wait and see... but I did buy two big bunches of beetroot and the supermarket and everything else I needed.
I also found a cheap bread knife to take to work... we have one that's supposed to be a bread knife, but it's like trying to cut the bread with a wooden spoon, so hopefully this will be much improved.
Then it was back here to unpack and read the paper before Ma arrived.
- Princess Mononoke teeshirt
- Ghibli elements teeshirt
- Ghibli ballons teeshirt
- Doctor Who Season 8 box set
- Haighs dark chocolate pastilles in anniversary tin
- Haighs 100th anniversary store magnets
- Joshua Smith's The Art of Letting Go #3
Beyond heading off to the Cabaret Festive this evening, we really didn't have any plans for the majority of the day. But given that Ma now has a second Joshua artwork, it seemed to make more sense to just take it straight to the framing place rather than Ma taking it all the way home, living with it for a week or two and then bringing it back up to my place to then take to the framers.
So instead Ma decided to go with black... but otherwise, she should match the flamenco dancer.
Ma also suggested that since we'd be nearby, we should stop into IKEA... and in very much Ma style, I think her exact words were "we don't need to spend any money but they have a sale on". Turned out to be mostly true for her, less so for me.
In fact, the overwhelming theme for the day seems to have been that every time Ma has bought something it's turned out to be cheaper than she thought it was going to be. Unfortunately, I've been the one who has bought the majority of the things today.
Granted my IKEA bill was increased by the fact that I finally bought the illuminated display box... I'd decided I was definitely going to get one the last time we were in IKEA, but then they were totally out of stock. This time I just grabbed one as soon as I saw it on the shelf. I had no idea at the time what the hell I was actually going to put in it, but I've been obsessing over them since they first came out, so I knew I'd find a use for it.
I'm thinking I might rework my bedside table and use it as a bedside light instead of the one I have now (which is fine, just very bright)... and put Aka Usagi and Aozora Inago inside. And it looks pretty good, I must say. I don't have it set up in the bedroom yet, but it looks nice and fancy on the kitchen bench.
After stopping off at Bunnings for a sausage sizzle, we headed over to Arndale so that I could look at stick blenders. I'd had a brief look in Target after doing the shopping and had worked out that they were either really expensive or kind of cheap looking, with not a lot of middle ground. Plus they all seemed to come with jugs and attachments and whisks and whatnot, which I really didn't want.
We had a poke around, found a nice looking stick blender in Big W, but Harris Scarfe were supposed to be having a sale on kitchen things, so we wandered over there to do a price comparison. And let me just say that when your sale price is higher than your competitors full price, well I think I can safely say that you're doing it wrong.
It was actually doubly lucky that I went back to Big W though, since the price was marked as $50, but when I did a price check it came up as $30... so a definite bargain there!
Plus it's red and shiny... like my kettle and my Soda Stream... I am tending to collect kitchen paraphernalia that's red and shiny.
We had some time to kill before dinner but we really didn't want to do all that much, so after we got back here, I messed around on the laptop while Ma watched some awful movie on the teevee. I told her she could pick something from my library to watch, but she seemed content.
There weren't any grand plans for dinner... in fact we hadn't booked anywhere and didn't even make a proper decision about where we were going until this afternoon.
I do think that perhaps it's something where you might have to work your way through the menu to discover what you really like. I was lucky when I tried Indian food for the first time, what I had was the thing that instantly became my favourite (Lamb Rogan Josh), and it's the thing that I judge all other Indian restaurants against.
Langtang was pretty good overall... the service was good (although there was only us and a party of about eight or nine in the whole place) and the food was pretty damn nice.
We started with the chicken momos... now I don't know what the hell the tomatoey sauce that was served with them was, but it was so good... I had to resist the urge to lick the plate.
That was followed up with mixed vegetable curry with basil puree (the greeny coloured thing in the bottom right of the photo) and saag chicken... of the two I prefered the mixed vegetables... the chicken was tasty and tender, but the sauce was a little on the thin side.
Then it was off to the Festival Theatre.
We did have a little bit of a panic attack regarding parking and the foozeball game going on at the oval at the same time, I'd kind of assumed that the road would be blocked off going one way, so we went the other way only to discover that we couldn't actually get from there to where we wanted to be. And even more annoyingly, by the time we worked our way back around, the carpark had it's FULL sign up (and doubly annoyingly, by the time we'd done all the shit we needed to do to get a park, the Festival Centre carpark was taking cars again).
We found a park elsewhere and made it to the theatre just after the doors opened. And the seating gods were clearly with me... I'd expected us to be about four rows back given the seat numbers, but the way it was all set up, we were technically in the third row, but the two seats in front of us (well, more so in front of Ma really) didn't have seats in front of them, so we had a direct view through to Adam Hills live on stage, and when we came down off stage to talk to the people in the audience, he was essentially right in front of us.
But more on that later...
After the show we stopped off for a yummy buckwheat pancake with butterscotch and banana and some Italian hot chocolate.
All in all a pretty good day for Ma's birthday adventures to be honest.
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