One kinda cool thing about lockdown life has been all the new takeaway options. Fancy places doing cheaper takeaway, where you might have to do a little assembly at home. After weeks of not going anywhere we decided to treat ourselves with Attica at Home, somewhere we probably wouldn’t get to go to normally.
A Simple Dish of Potato Cooked in the Earth it Was Grown – a very tender potato with a tart curd and saltbush.
The Dish That Saved Attica aka Spice Crusted Lamb Shoulder – a verrry tender piece of lamb with some greens and a super rich puree.
Plight of the Bees: Trifle Version – a fairly basic trifle with very smooth cream, cake, raspberries etc.
Baby Holy Goat ‘La Luna’ cheese served with Baker Bleu ficelle and fresh honeycomb – really delicious creamy cheese with suuuuuper chewy rolls, with a delicious hunk of gooey honeycomb.
Cocktail Selection: one sweet, one dry.
Everything was quite nice. We loved the lamb and puree the most, and the cheese was sooooo good. Everything was pretty small so I’m glad I added the extra cheese course. The trifle was the least special part of the meal but it was still fine.
How we spent our first lockdown. (Besides cooking, I’m saving that for a different post.)
Doing weird household tasks like going under the house to take a look at stuff and thread cables through the floor.
Re-learning how to use a sewing machine so my ears don’t freeze when I’m biking to work.
Finishing crochet projects that I started a year before.
Getting back into cross stitch and re-invigorating my Etsy shop.
Drawing cartoons for my weightlifting club’s newsletter: Isolation Edition.
Playing every single board game we have. I saved all of them to my Instagram stories if you’re interested. A forgotten favourite was Lords of Waterdeep. A forgotten loser was Tsuro of the Seas.
Doing yoga.
Crying that we didn’t get to go to Canada and having to get Rosemarie to mail us all our Arcteryx goodies.
Picking lemons. This doesn’t really fit the post but I’m just so happy with our lemon tree.
For a brief two weeks: Going out for breakfast! Going back to the gym! Having family dinner!
But then cases started going out of control again and we got put back in the strictest lockdown. :(
I guess I have finally gotten bored enough to get back to this poor neglected blog. So let’s catch up! We’re going way way back to… BEFORE COVID. Whoa.
My friend Pity from weightlifting invited a few of us over to do a still life drawing session. I haven’t sketched like that in ages. It was fun and I liked what I drew and I liked seeing everyone else’s take on the same object. Would be nice to do this again, some day.
I did a picture framing class at a framing shop near our house. Yes I have done this before but this one uses way better tools and once you finish the course you can go back and frame whatever you want and just pay for supplies. Except I haven’t been able to go back. Sigh.
I was supposed to do a weightlifting competition in March. Training was going really well and I was feeling good but then the competition was one of the very first things that got cancelled here in Melbourne. Everyone thought it was so stupid that it was cancelled because at that point I think we were still allowed to have 500 people at events and you’d be lucky if there were 20 spectators at the average local weightlifting competition.
Anyway my coach and I decided to just do a mock comp at Phoenix instead. I snatched 43x/43/45 and clean and jerked 50/53/55 (PB!). I was excited because it was the first time I got to use the blue plates. The 55 was so easy I got to do a Bonus Attempt at 57 but I just smashed it into my sternum instead of getting underneath it.
That same weekend we had Kyla staying with us for a mini break from her family trip around Australia. We took her out for a very Melbourne laneway pub crawl around the city. One of my very favourite things about this city is taking people down weird alleyways like the one in the picture and finding a super cool bar.
There were not that many people out so we didn’t have to wait to get in anywhere. We had parmas in a pub, then went to hidden bars, rooftop bars, bubble tea cocktail bars, speakeasy bars, and even tried to go to a floating bar (but got turned away for being too ugly[??]). It was a fun night.
And then that was it! We went into the first stages of lockdown that week.
I thought I’d just write a little update about how we’re doing at the moment, in case any one was wondering (probably not)/is really bored (probably yes).
We’re semi-locked down here in Melbourne. They’ve closed schools and non-essential businesses, and are encouraging everyone to just stay home if they can.
Scott’s work is suffering because restaurants can only do takeaway. He still has a job but after the next payday all their salaries are getting cut 50%. Theoretically he should only have to work 50% but I doubt that will happen as he is pretty much always on call.
My work is quiet, but we’ve had to divide into two separate teams to try and avoid having to shut down if one of us gets infected. So some days I will have to work very hard, and some days I won’t do very much at all.
Obviously this could all change any minute.
I’m glad we were conservative with our mortgage.
Not being allowed to go to the gym was a huge change. I got bored of home workouts after the first day (6kg laundry detergent is not enough weight!!) and decided to ask my weightlifting club if they were willing to lend out equipment. At first they said no, but then they came around. I did well in the equipment lottery and ended up with squat racks and all the weight plates I need, plus a bar borrowed from a friend.
Last weekend Scott and I built a mini weightlifting platform in the garage and now I’m pretty much set. The platform is big enough to do all the things I need to do, but because it’s against the wall (so we can still park the car in there) I will have to be quite conservative with anything I might miss behind (ie. snatches). I should be able to do about 90% normal training though, which is great for my body and my sanity.
Other than setting up the garage gym we’ve been entertaining ourselves by cooking elaborate foods (cinnamon buns, homemade bread, perogies etc.) and playing A LOT of board games. We’ve even been playing games with Rose and Lauren over the internet.
The house is already pretty clean and organized but Scott’s been working on pulling down the ivy on the back fences and yesterday I cleaned the gutters. I’m trying to be semi productive and not watch too much mindless TV but we’ll see how it goes. Scott got the entire ER series for me which I’m saving for if I have to do full quarantine. Oh yeah we also did pub trivia on FB live the other night with my friend, and this morning I watched Ben Folds do a live show from his hotel room in Sydney, which both may end up being weekly activities. Kinda neat.
Anyway hope y’all are doing OK. I’d love to know how you are keeping busy too.
The week after we moved into our house was exhausting. Working and unpacking and trying to fix things up the way we like, while realizing that we don’t have any of the right tools… the place was a mess.
I wanted to change all the locks in the house, as you do when you move into a new place. So we unscrewed all the knobs and locks that we wanted to replace and did an inventory and headed off to Bunnings. Only to realize that locks are very complicated and they didn’t have the right combinations of what we wanted. And that one of the holes in the door was the wrong size (not the one in the picture).
So we investigate buying locks online (much easier!) and borrow a hole saw and try to cut the right size hole. And fail. And borrow more tools. And fail. And every day the front door is just flapping in the wind while we’re at work (we could lock the screen door at least). After a week or so we give up and hire a locksmith.
A bathroom tap broke off on like Day 3, lol. Lucky real estate agents. I had intentions on changing it to a lever style tap until I realized that there are about 80 million different types of tap spindles. After three trips to Bunnings I ended up just replacing the knob with the exact same type of ugly knob. At least it was just a couple of dollars.
It took us a whole night and some minor fighting to put up a whiteboard (on a hollow door, had to use weird anchors) and anchor two bookshelves to the wall (multiple trips to Bunnings for a drill, drill bits, stud finder (that didn’t work) and drywall anchors). Scott built those two garage shelves by himself one morning though, which has really tidied up the garage.
I went to Ikea three times to get two more shelves, two bedside tables and a stool, then return a stool, then return the returned stool and get a different stool. I was not aware that bar stools came in different heights. Scott built most of it. Good job Scott!
The dishwasher that came with the house was hilariously named Silencio. One night we turned Silencio on before bed and when I woke up in the morning IT WAS STILL ON. Also it was leaking. So we ordered a new dishwasher.
They were supposed to install it for me. Just as the dudes were leaving he was like “So I have to show you something” and proceeded to show me that he had only actually screwed in the dishwasher on one side because the other side was too far away from the cabinet, and that I wouldn’t be able to use it as is. UGH. So I spent the whole rest of the morning trying to get a piece of scrap wood that I could use as a spacer, sawing it in half with a 10cm hacksaw to double it up because it was too thin, unscrewing and pulling out the dishwasher, rigging up the spacer and then reattaching everything. Thankfully it all worked and it’s secure and running very nicely and very quietly now.
This lil’ buddy also involved borrowing tools, and two trips to Bunnings (drill bit was too dull). Scott’s whole body is sore from doing the drilling but the hose reel is nice and sturdy and very handy for watering the garden. Our plan is to get like four big veggie boxes.
A miserable morning of cleaning the exterior of our old house on a unexpectedly cold and rainy day. :P
So yeah, we made a lot of mistakes. The learning curve was steep. I do have a new appreciation of all the building stuff dad taught me as a kid though, thank goodness I have somewhat of a base knowledge of tools and construction and houses from all those days at the cottage. We wouldn’t be able to do anything on our own without that (and Youtube).
Short term plans:
a small shelf in the laundry room to put detergent and stuff on
some kind of medicine cabinet in the bathroom for more storage
new power point on wall with tv OR thread power and tv cords through crawlspace/roof
clean eavestroughs
make some kind of bracket for weather station
go all the way under the house and take a closer look at everything
Long term plans:
fix the water damaged floor in laundry room/kitchen/bathroom
