Bummed

By | |
2 Comments

Spain has elections on March 9. Since at the moment I’m living in Belgium, that means I have to register at the Embassy-Consulate as (non) resident, and request my papers for voting via mail.

I fought a bit to find online the address of the Consulate, and then the opening hours and phone numbers. Once that was done, I found out I could ask for an appointment so I didn’t have to wait in queue for as long as it pleased them to do all the paperwork. Seeing as getting to the Consulate takes me 1.5 hours (connections allowing), and about one third of that is walking, I thought an appointment was a good idea.

So, I called this morning, only to find out all the appointments till February 7th were booked. February 7th is the last day you can register in order to request your voting papers timely. The option they gave me was being at the Consulate at 8am and wait in queue for as long as they want. See how long it takes me to get there? It means I have to get on nearly the first bus of the morning to get there on time. Not my cup of tea, really.

Actually, it shouldn’t have surprised me, seeing as their working hours are monday to friday, 8.30 till 13.30. They’re so kind as to pick up the phone up to 16.00, and be open on saturdays from 9 till 12. But you can’t solve any paperwork in the afternoon or saturdays. Because, you know, everybody is able to ask for full days off work to do this kind of paperwork, and of course live within walking distance.

I am not bitter, nope. I am not annoyed, not me, no sir. I am $&#@!&.

Edit: I was hoping I could solve the paperwork during the ten days I’ll be back in Spain for exams. However, that won’t work. I can ask to vote via mail no problem, it’s in the time frame, but the papers won’t be sent to my home address in Spain till after the 18th February, and I have to sign to get them. Guess what? I’m already out of the country by then.

This, apparently, means that even though I want to vote, it’ll be close to impossible. I can’t waste a full day going to the consulate to get registered and then ask for my voting documents, and I can’t ask for mail voting in Spain cause I won’t be there to recieve the papers.

Back to the drawing board. To see how on earth I can vote.

Awarded

By | | ,
2 Comments

Åsa, from Huso y Rueca, has given me with this award. The rules, like always (The original rules are written in Portuguese, so I asked a friend of mine to translate them, because even tho I understood the meaning, I couldn’t translate them completely. Thanks Rafaelzinho!):

  1. This award must be given to blogs you consider as good. Understanding as such, the blogs you visit regularly, and on which you leave comments.
  2. If and only if, you receive a “It’s not a bad blog”, you should write a post:
    • Naming the person who awarded you, with a link to the respective blog;
    • The badge for the nomination;
    • The rules;
    • And the nomination for other 7 blogs for receiving the award.
  3. You must display visibly and proudly the badge for the award received, in your blog, preferably with a link to the post where you talk about it.
  4. Optional. If you wish to grant some publicity to the creature with too much free time to spend in silly things, Skynet, you can do it on the post itself. He’ll appreciate it. (He really does have too much free time (-; )

So after the rules, here it goes.

The Badge:

Not a bad blog

Right now I’m too lazy to put this on the sidebar, so it’ll stay on this post, and that’s it.

Who has given me the award: Åsa, on her post Premiada.

Who do I nominate. This is a hard one, I have dozens of blogs on my RSS reader, and I check it every day, and read them. I’m not that good at leaving comments, tho. Anyway, blogs of friends that deserve an award, in no order, are:

  1. Yorkie, because she is Yorkastic, always.
  2. Zanne, because four kids and a trucker husband deserve one.
  3. Fiona, lovely Fee of ours, she’s fun, don’t need to say anything else.
  4. CJ, in an attempt to make her write more on her blog.
  5. Lía, down there in the south, and she knits, my hero!
  6. CBear, because I want to.
  7. Adam, because he’s living abroad, and he knits, and learnt German. Really!

Pss, the names are links to their blogs, go and visit them!

I could give this award to more people, but it says seven. I had to chose!

I met more family!

By | | ,
2 Comments

And I have survived.

Today we went to the nunnery in Dendermonde, where two aunts of my mother in law live. We had cake (did I mention they do load the whipped cream with sugar in the bakeries here? My tea tasted sour after eating it), we talked, we had sandwiches, and talked some more. I knitted a bit on Jan’s scarf, and I guess that was the thing that broke the ice in the end, cause by the end of the evening, they gave me a cute present:

Doily

Doily Doily

This doily was hand knitted by one of the nuns in the cloister. It looks like it’s made out of cotton thread, on about 2mm needles, and it’s perfectly starched. I will treasure it, since they offered me a gift, even knowing me for so little.

Edit: Do you happen to know of a pattern that is very similar or exactly the same as the doily on the pics? Please let me know!

Pressies! And Much More

By | | , , , ,
Leave a comment

Remember I said I’d show you all of my pressies? (it’s on the previous post, in case you don’t). Ok, so I’ll show you today:

(psss, if you click on the pics, it’ll lead you to each pic on the gallery, and you can click for an even bigger version)

CookBook

The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook, by Dave Myers and Si King. It’s a cookbook, a travel guide (the book is divided by countries), and a history book all in one. You won’t get everything from all three categories, but you’ll get nice recipes with loads of pictures, some tips on traveling (mainly by bike), and some history tidbits about each country.Oh, and lots of humour! It’s the kind of cookbook you can read from the first page to the last, it’s that good.

CDs

Amarantine, by Enya, and Come Away With Me, by Norah Jones. Both are very good! These two CDs will become part of my “quiet music” collection, as opposed to my “not so quiet music” collection. In any case, I can fall asleep listening to either ;)

Tray

A wooden tray with four small pots with four matching small spoons, that will most likely be used to serve sauces, spices, salt, etc at the table. Given to me by SIL. She knows I like to cook.

Sheepie

Sexy Sheepie, as already introduced on the previous post. Back then, it was New Years, and she was being geeky at my laptop. Today, I got sexy sheepie to pose for the camera, and the result is two more pics: this and this other. She totally seduces the camera, doesn’t she?

Bonus pictures:

Hippo

`appy `ippo.

Hippo

Fierce `ippo.

Family Pic

Family Pic: `appy `ippo, sexy sheepie, and fluffy doggy.

We’ve also gone eat out once during these past 10 days. We found a new italian place in Aalst, it’s called La Locanda, and sadly, they don’t have their own website. I snapped a couple pics at our main dishes:

Asparragus Rissotto Pappardelle with sewfruit

That’s one Asparragus Rissotto that melts on your tongue. And one dish of Pappardelle with Seafruit that sent Jan to heaven. The servings are huge, too. We had a nice evening dinning there, but we know for next time (because we sure as hell are going back) to order less. One starter, two mains and two desserts was too much for us two!

Also, some knitting, just for kicks. Seems I haven’t talked knitting in ages, doesn’t it? Anyway, I’m designing and knitting this scarf for Jan. The first I made for him, he loves it, but it’s very warm. So he wanted another, and I said I make him one (hopefully) completely original. The result so far is this:

scarf

And a close-up of the texture.

close up

The scarf is fully reversible, and fun to knit. The pattern is not complicated, and is easy to memorize. But it’s not so boring you’ll want to tear your hair before you’re half done with it. For those interested, I’ll be writing up the pattern in a nifty pdf, and putting it up for download, whenever the scarf is finished and I have modeled shots.

Recipe Box?

By | | , ,
3 Comments

I’ve seen people out there showing out their recipe boxes on their blogs (sorry, can’t remember which, I’ve already seen it in a couple, at least), as Mason Dixon have a show and tell contest, where they asked to see your recipe box, and to share one of your favourite recipes in it. I really don’t have a recipe box, because it’d be hard to fit all the recipes I’ve “clipped” and wrote and modified into a single recipe box. However, I do have a nice method of collecting my recipes:

Recipe Folders

This picture shows the “hard copy” of all the recipes. The five red folders (3 in / 7.5 cm wide) on the right are my cook book / recipe box. Each recipe has exactly the same format, there is a nice index to browse alphabetically, and even better, they are all in a database that makes searching recipes easy. Also, I can access this database wherever I have internet access, which makes having my “cook book” at hand even easier.

Of course, this does not include my growing collection of cookbooks. Because those are not in the recipe binders!

Now, sharing a favourite recipe, that might be hard. I have too many favourite recipes. I will however give you one recipe I tried yesterday and that came out delicious. Sautéed Apple Pie with Short Pastry crust. Serve with Panna Cotta for an extra kick! (I went with the vanilla pod version, so very worth every cent of that pod!) By the way, if you click on that nice “Get this recipe as PDF” link at the bottom of each recipe, you’ll see the format all my recipes have in that bunch of folders.

On a very unrelated note to this post:

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008!

Never Too Early

By | |
1 Comment

It’s never to early in the holiday season to enjoy a nice sweet. The shops have been selling Roscón de Reyes (Kings’ Cake) for about two weeks already. And the traditional date to eat it is the 6th of January.

So today I baked one. It’s always better than the store bought, and you know what goes into it. Fifteen days too early, I present you: Roscón de Reyes.

Roscon de Reyes

I took two recipes, and made my own. You can find it here.