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Yeah Christmas was over two months ago…. but better late than never?

Scott did a truly excellent job of making a DIY cider advent calendar for me this year. He went all over the city tracking down dry ciders that I mostly haven’t even heard of before. I was so excited to open the paper bag each morning!

Anyway for my own records I’m going to rate all of them. Note, I prefer quite dry ciders in general.

  • Caple Rd Cider – 9/10 – bit funky, quite dry, the can described it as “oaky, smoky with subtle notes of leather”
  • Zeffer Crisp Apple Cider – 7/10 – forgot to make any notes
  • Young Henrys Cloudy Cider – 8/10 – quite pleasant
  • Golden Axe Apple Cider – 8/10 – surprisingly nice? I thought it was going to be too sweet but it wasn’t
  • Colonial Bertie Brewing Co Cold Pressed Apple Cider – 8/10 – good
  • Coldstream Apple Cider – 7/10 – fine. They’re from the Yarra Valley
  • Blue Elephant Co Cider No 2 – 9/10 – really dry, really nice, one of my favourites now
  • Arquiteka Apple Cider – 8/10 – so hipster, quite dry, nice, not super strong flavour
  • Empire Apple Cider – 8/10 – nice, quite dry
  • Lost Pippin Raw Tasmanian Scrumpy 2016 – 2/10 – flat, bad taste
  • Barossa Cider Co Apple Cider Squashed – 8/10 – legit tastes like apple juice
  • Sidra Del Verano Spanish Apple Cider – 5/10 – too sweet, kinda yuck
  • Sassy Cidre – 7/10 – surprising! Like a traditional French cider not a hipster cider at all like the design would sugest. Funky
  • Fournier Poire Cidre – 7/10 – sweetish, tastes exactly like juice
  • Pure Blonde Crisp Apple Cider – 5/10 – reduced sugar, reduced flavour
  • Daylesford Cider Farmhouse Dry – 6/10 – meh. Don’t really care for still ciders
  • Treehouse Cider – 9/10 – one of my very favourites that’s not too hard to find
  • 2 Brothers Little Apple Cider – 6/10 – just didn’t like the taste
  • The Hills Cider Apple – 8/10 – a good standard cider
  • Pagan Cider – 8/10 – nice
  • Harcourt Apple Cider – 9/10 – very tasty
  • Huon Farmhouse Cider – 6/10 – tasted fine, a little funky, but not really a fan of still ciders
  • Cidre de Fouesnant Pur Jus Manoir de Kinkiz – ?/10 – this one had a cork! It was the one on Christmas Day and I forgot to write anything down
  • Aspall Suffolk Draught Cider – 8/10 – nice
  • Fog City Cloudy Cider – 8/10 – good!

Overall very good!! A lot of 8’s and 9’s there. Lots of new ones that I will look for when I’m shopping for cider. No still ciders though please, they just taste so flat and bad. Bubbles for lyfe.

Will I ever give a cider 10/10?? I’m not sure what that would take.

PS I made Scott a comic book advent calendar which I think he also enjoyed quite a bit.

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It took me a month, but I think I’ve gotten everything working again here. This is a test, of sorts.

It was a slow process. I’m going to write it all out in case I ever have to do it again, or if anyone else is trying to decipher this process without having any idea of what they are doing, like me.

How to transfer your domain, change webhosts, and add Cloudflare.

First I had to transfer my domain. I had to unlock it and get a code emailed to me, request it to be transferred on the new registrar, wait several days for a confirmation email, and then confirm the transfer.

Then I transferred my webhosting. I paid for my new cheaper hosting, requested a full cpanel backup from my old host (they charged $5 US for this), then requested the new host to upload it and set everything back up. Once everything was uploaded I changed the nameservers on my new webhost to the new nameservers, which also took a few days to update. I just kept pinging my website to see if the IP address had changed or not yet.

Everything was working fine at this point, and looked exactly the same as before, but I wanted to add SSL. I didn’t want to pay for it though, so I signed up for Cloudflare which offers free very basic SSL for personal sites. I just had to sign up and then change my nameservers again to the Cloudflare ones and turn on https.

Then my website briefly stopped working. But with help from Scott and an internet friend I figured out it was because Cloudflare was using the IP address from my old webhost. Once I updated that everything works again!

I hope I don’t have to do this again for a long time.

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I’ve been debating what to do with this blog. My webhost has gotten too expensive. Their service has been fine, but I don’t need unlimited bandwidth and storage when I get like… 5 views a day and I’ve only just cracked 1 GB in files. LOL.

I was kinda leaning towards just abandoning everything because I barely ever blog any more. But then I realized that someone else could take over the domain and turn it into something horrible. Also I do look things up on my blog on a regular basis… it’s nice having a fairly good record of my life even if just for personal use.

Anyway so I’ve decided to try to move to a different registrar and webhost. A cheaper one. Something much more basic. This might affect loading times and whatnot but… oh well, hopefully it’s not too noticeable.

Fingers crossed there’s not too much downtime in the process as well.

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Merry Christmas Erryone.

We had a pretty great year.

We had a lot of visitors (Cassia + Cedric, Natasha, MEP + Paul, Jess, DTD, Jill + Joe) which was super fun. I hope that continues in 2019.

We travelled a lot (South Korea, Vancouver, various places around Victoria, Sydney, Brisbane + Noosa). Yeah, I feel very lucky. That will definitely continue in 2019. We already have a few road trips planned.

I went from working permanent part time to temporary full time to permanent full time. FINALLY. I have a really great job now that I hope to stay at for a long time. I am also very happy that I don’t have to do as much on call any more.

I still love weightlifting. I’m really not that good at it, and it hurts some times, but it’s also so fun. I had some major breakthroughs this year and continue to slowly improve. I love competing!

Scott turned 40 this year. We had a big party at our new house. I think we had about 40 guests, including 14 children, holy moly. Scott finally got the Nintendo Switch he has been so patiently waiting for.

Imma copy some of the questions that Rosemarie put in her Christmas Newsletter.

What moment in the last year would you like to rewind back to and play again to reappreciate the experience? 

The Melbourne Demons whole finals run was SO. MUCH. FUN. Also seeing Ben Folds perform at the Sydney Opera House. And watching my friends compete in the Olympics.

What moment in the last year would you like to rewind back to and edit or erase?

Smashing the side of the car into a pole in a parking garage. Also not getting more pins while we were at the Olympics (that could have funded our whole trip!!).

Did you break any personal bests/records?  In what? 

Weightlifting seems the obvious answer. Snatch: 35 kg –> 41 kg, Clean & Jerk: 46 kg –> 49 kg. That might not seem like a lot to most people, but it is to me.

What’s the best recipe you cooked all year?

Dolsot bibimbap in our stone bowl we brought back from Korea, and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

Favourite new thing I tried:

Rice cakes

Describe the hardest cook of your life 2018:

I’m not sure! Maybe making creme anglaise for ice cream the first time? But now it’s old hat. I didn’t cook as much this year in general though, and especially not complicated things. No time!!

Most embarrassing moment of 2018:

Failing at the ab wheel in front of a whole bunch of people. I legit screamed too because it felt like my abs were ripping into shreds.

As you carve out your life, what are the themes that are consistent from year to year? 

Struggling with finding the balance between going out and doing lots of things and also making time to do nothing, loving going to new places, eating cheese. Did I answer that correctly?

All in all, #blessed. I hope your year was also full of family, friends, travel and good food. What else do you need in life, tbh.

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… for ice cream.

Yes I made everyone drive to Seattle and back for ice cream.

Salt & Straw changed my life 4 years ago. I’ve been dreaming of that Almond Brittle and Salted Chocolate Ganache since then.

11:00AM. Cone #1. Almond Brittle and Salted Chocolate Ganache in a waffle cone.

We immediately followed that with lunch at Glo’s. Scott and I shared the huevos rancheros. Delicious as always.

Scott drove us around to three different cider bars. Seattle has a lot of cider places!! Rose had found way more but a lot of them weren’t open on a weekday. Anyway we still went to two bars that exclusively serve ciders, and a cidery/brewery that had shuffleboard, darts, pool and more to entertain us. We spent a while there.

Evidence of us doing one non-food related thing in Seattle: going to see the Fremont troll.

We had dinner at Paseo. I think it’s changed. It used to be in my Top 3 Sandwiches Of All Time, but this time it was just ok.

And finally. 7:00PM. Cone #2.

I had the same flavour AGAIN. My first cone in the morning didn’t have a lot of ganache so I was left unsatisfied. I am happy to report the second one had plenty of ganache AND brittle. Happy Katrina.