17/11/2013 - Culinary Cagga!

I feel back to my normal self today! Whoop!

Some more lying around time was allowed, but then we had to get to the shops as I had important things to do! Also known as do all the cooking today!

I decided that as Paul does literally all the cooking in our house on a day to day basis, as a birthday present I would do it for him. For one day. As he doesn't want to be poisoned.

So I left him in the car while I pottered around Asda (listening to the original Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy on my ipod) and got all the bits and bobs that I needed for a day of feasting!

When we got back, Paul was starting to get hangry, so I started on breakfast right away!

First course:

Fruit salad. Because we needed something healthy today!

The main part of the breakfast was:

American pancakes with maple syrup, scrambled eggs and bacon. Not too shabby, even if I do say so myself!

We chilled for a few hours, planning to watch a movie but discovering that our tv in the bedroom doesn't want to work any more. Seriously - what kind of dozy-ass tv doesn't have an 'on' button, or doesn't give itself a way of coming out of standby without the remote? The remote doesn't work any more either. AND there's a DVD trapped inside. Not amused.

I needed to keep Paul away from the downstairs as I had a big delight planned for lunch. I didn't want to spoiler any of it to him.

I made him walk into the living room with his eyes closed so he got the full visual effect. You can all have it now. Just excuse the mess, yeah?

It's Afternoon Tea time! :D

We have cakes, scones, sandwiches, scotch eggs, pork pies, tea and bucks fizz! Are you impressed? Are you?! :)

Ok, just looking at this is making me hungry now!

Admittedly, the only cooking I did here was...nothing. I made the sandwiches. I would have baked yesterday but my stupid-head got in the way of that. 

I think Paul liked it. He polished off his half of everything! I managed my sandwiches and a scone. I was still full from breakfast!

Funnily enough, we were both too full to eat dinner. What a shame. We'll have to have it tomorrow!

We sat and drank fizz, ate, and watched Justified on Netflix. We finished it what is available, so will have to look into finding the next series that we can. We love it!

After watching Strictly and X Factor, we called it a night. Work tomorrow. Can't go too crazy on a Sunday...

16/11/2013 - I told me so.

I was right. It did hurt.

It didn't hurt too much at first. I thought I might just have a little bit of a headache. Nope. I had a whopping great big cluster heading which triggered a migraine which made Caroline a very unhappy girl. This is exactly why I shouldn't drink in excess but sometimes you just can't help yourself!

We were going to go back into town today but due to my crappy head not being able to have just a normal hangover, I stayed in bed and felt sorry for myself. :(

The migraine made me so nauseous I felt extra sorry for myself (but could ask for no sympathy as it's my own fault) so I went looking for my travel sickness tablets which usually help. Instead I found some of my lovely sister-in-law's nausea tablets she was given when she was really bad with morning sickness a few months ago. 

They're basically the same drug as travel sickness tablets and when I checked to see if I could actually take them (no allergies etc) I saw that they were prescribed to people who suffer sickness with migraine! SCORE!

(Obviously this is very naughty and I shouldn't take drugs from anyone other than a pharmacist...but desperate times call for desperate measures!)

Besides, these nice strong painkillers were not working for me at all!

The nausea tablets really did help! I was able to manage a little bit of dinner, which was a success!

I watched the usual Saturday night television, but was still feeling a little dodgy, so I took myself to bed nice and early.

All in all, a waste of a day. :(

15/11/2013 - Paul and Caroline's Day of FUN!

Yes, it's FINALLY time for Paul and Caroline's day of FUN! We both booked the day off as it's Paul's birthday on Monday but I couldn't have that day, so we agreed to celebrate today!

So we started our day with, guess what?! A lie in! We're so good at lie ins we could win medals!

We also performed an experiment whilst slurping on tea and listening to the radio. We have two identical cat beds, and we wanted to see whether the cats preferred them as they should be, or bottoms up, so to speak. They always seem to lie in them the wrong way round, and we wondered whether it was just because that's the way that they were at the time of trying to find somewhere to get comfy or whether it was preferable.

It seems as though they like them the wrong way up. Huh. I can't remember the last time I saw one of them lying in the bed when it was at it should be! How interesting.

Could ponder it for too long, as we had to get ready to go into town. The first stop on our day of fun was lunch. We decided to go to Fazenda, which is a fairly new Brazilian restaurant in the business district in town.

If you've not been the the likes of this before, basically it's an all you can eat meat restaurant! You have a card on your table, and if it's turned green...

(No idea why this has rotated this way!)

...they will bring freshly cooked steak, pork, lamb, chicken, gammon etc to your table. If you turn your card to red...

...they won't bring it to you. You can keep going as long as you like! EXCELLENT, I hear you cry! I could eat steak until it comes out my ears!

Well, the twist to the tale is that they have a rather wonderful salad bar, which is PACKED full of goodies, and you don't really need the meats to get full and have a lovely meal! The trick is to time your salad gettings and not fill your plate. It's REALLY difficult.

The food here was amazing. It really was so good! The lunch time menu is slightly smaller than the evening one, understandably, so we had a bit of pretty much everything I think. The steak was just perfectly cooked. They had rare for Paul and medium for me. They also brought some pork belly in a honey glaze which is pretty much my happy place on a plate!

 Polished off the lot!

Because we checked in on facebook, we were even given a free cocktail! Which to say it's about 1pm, may be a bit early for some but as we had eaten so much already, we had a good lining on our stomach to say the least!

They were quite strong, but very nice!

I also fell for the wine glasses as well! They aired it so nicely that it accented the flavour. Apparently. I can't taste properly so I'd never know!

After lunch, we heading into town to do a bit of window shopping for ideas for Christmas presents. We got a few ideas. We had a quick drink at a bar and then headed to the cinema where we had a hot date with an Asgardian God or two!

I also got very excited as one of the trailers was for this:

Yes I took a picture of the cinema screen. I do that. I was just too excited! To see it in Imax as well was extra good! Can't wait for December so we can see the movie! :)

Anyway, I had to get over my excitement because we weren't there for The Hobbit. We were there for Thor!

Then I was a good girl and put my phone away and enjoyed the movie! We both really enjoyed it! If you haven't seen it yet but were planning to, we suggest you stay until right at the end of the credits. When we were there, there were only about 30 of us in the cinema and we were the only people who stayed until right to the end. Fools. Have they not learnt yet that this happens in Marvel films?!

*Sigh*

Anyway, from the cinema, we popped into Las Iguanas for a cocktail or two. It's happy hour, so it would be rude not to. To start with, we had a Dark and Stormy each, which is very nice. They no longer do my favourite Cherry Fizz, which makes me so sad. We decided to try a new cocktail, called a Pisco Sour...

Never ever be tempted to have one of these at Las Iguanas. They were DISGUSTING. Even Paul didn't like it and that's saying something! He's normally a lot braver than me when it comes to these things. YUCK.

We didn't want to end the evening on that note, so we headed over to Browns for another cocktail. This was far more up my street - I can't remember exactly what it was called but there was raspberry, chambourd and fizz in it. Definitely one for me!

 There was even a fresh raspberry in it which had got very boozy by the end of the drink. AWESOME!

Paul's 'Not Impressed By Pisco Sours' look. Also - beard.

Selfie.

We were still full, bearing in mind that this was at least 6 hours after we had eaten! We headed home and chilled out in front of the tv for a while. Paul was tired so went to bed. I stayed up and watched some of 'Children In Need' and did my bit and donated. Because it goes to a good place.

I toddled up to bed probably far later than I should have. I was also probably far more drunk than I meant to be. It's going to hurt tomorrow.

Oops.

Still - it was worth it. We had a good day! :)

14/11/2013 - Hotness

I love not having to get up of a morning! Being able to laze in bed for as long as possible where it's nice and warm and occasionally a kitty may come and snuggle up next to you. *Sigh* it's great. I dislike when my husband isn't able to do all that with me and instead has to get up at silly o'clock in the morning to go to work in Manchester leaving me wide awake pre 6am and not able to nod off back to sleep. Yes, that was today.

But here's a picture of my rather dapper husband and his beard, which is still going.

Rocking the 3-piece suit my love!

I lazed about for most of the morning. I was waiting for a text message to come through from my friend Koran whom I had arranged to meet for lunch. As she's a life-saving nurse and working nights, we agreed to make it a late lunch, so it meant I could go and do a bit of shopping before we met up.

I had a few bits and bobs to get to finish off Paul's birthday present, and I needed to get some warmer pajamas. Stupid non-working heating!

It was nasty weather out but luckily the rain held off. It was just a tad blustery!

I met with Koran and we went to the East Village Arts Club restaurant. It's a nice and simple menu but it was really nice! I had macaroni cheese (with bacon, naturally), and Koran had a chilli dog with some cheese-breaded parsnips (which we shared) and it really was delish!

The only downside was that the little pan that the mac and cheese came in was so damn hot, I only had to catch my hand on it a little and it burnt! :(

See the burn? I added the arrows just in case you couldn't. I've had worse (glue gun) but it didn't half tingle!

After I left K to go and get ready for her next night shift, I did a little window shopping and found some rather entertaining Christmas jumpers. I think this is the year for Paul and I to purchase our first hideous Christmas jumpers. We've been talking about it for years so I think that our first Christmas as a married couple should be the year that we actually do it!

It took Paul AGES to come back from Manchester and he was very hangry. So he bought naughty pizza for dinner and we settled in to watch the new Hobbit blu-ray! I kinda knew it wouldn't take us long!

We've both got tomorrow off work for date day/Paul's pre-birthday celebration, so why not start the party early?!

13/11/13 - "Good Morning!"

Just another regular ol' Wednesday. Nothing to see here!

This is actually fact. It was a normal, nothing special day in work. I had 3 days of work to do in today's 8 hours as I am off for the rest of the week! Whoop!

I managed to get everything done and to the right people in the time I had and I didn't have to work late! This makes me a very happy bunny rabbit!

What else makes me a happy girl? Getting presents to myself through the post that I had forgotten I had ordered!

YAY FOR EXTENDED HOBBIT! Why I bought the 3D Blu-Ray is a mystery but at least it has normal 2D and digital copy so we can enjoy it later in the week. Not sure when as yet but it's going to be awesome!

I came home and made all the necessary arrangements for #Whedonsday. Which is always a pleasure.

It was a fun evening. Sarcastic comments over episodes of Buffy - what's gonna be bad about that?! Some of the fashions from back in the 90s when it was filmed were questionable to say the least! That's what makes it fun though! I mean, come on, who didn't love tie dye?!

12/11/2013 - Traditional Tuesday

Another boring day to be honest.

Everything seems to be a bit of filler at the moment! I don't know what it's filling for, but there's nothing really going on!

Today was a busy day in work, as ever, as it's a short week in work for me. At least it makes the day go quicker I suppose.

Means you really need to relax of an evening I think!

So we did what we usually do on a Tuesday night - have dinner, watch TV and have a fairly early night!

So for dinner we had Spanish Chicken Bake with green veg!

This is the dinner that we normally seem to have on a Tuesday. It doesn't seem right watching How I Met Your Mother or Hawaii 5-0 without it!

11/11/2013 - Lest We Forget

It's Remembrance Day here in the UK today. I wear my poppy with pride.

For once the cats didn't chew it or savage it so I consider this a success!

I had a bad day in work. I think I was annoyed by both my boss and my line manager in equal measure. Pretty much before 10am. I am very easily annoyed during office hours these days but today I was particularly annoyed.

I am basically doing my boss's Christmas shopping for him I think. Plus booking train tickets here there and everywhere. Plus needed to be able to read minds. I can't say that is a skill I am blessed with.

I don't know how I survived the day but I did. It wasn't the easiest of things to do. 

Then a fairly usual Monday evening. I sat about and did nothing, watched some tv and went to bed at a reasonable time. Not a very interesting day to tell you about but, hey, no change there!