Our PC is dead. Well, hopefully it’s not totally dead; it seems more likely that one component has failed. Unfortunately, that component is either the motherboard, the RAM, or the CPU, and I have no idea which one it is! And wierdly enough, this is exactly the same problem that happened to our Media PC earlier this year!

Lucky for us, UMart have been very good about getting it repaired, even though the PC is well outside their warranty period. See, each of the three components listed above are still within the manufacturer’s warranty period – so, as long as the broken part could be isolated, there’s no reason it can’t be fixed. And, given that the support desk at UMart has a near unlimited supply of parts to substitute and test with, it’s much easier for them to isolate the part which is broken!

The net effect of all this is that we are currently without our main PC, and boy do I notice its absence! As much as I love our MacBook Pro, I much prefer working on a full sized PC with dual monitors. As such, things in the electronic world are happening a bit slower than they usually would – so consider this an apology for my slow blog updates, and slow replies to e-mails! Hopefully service will be returned to normal soon!

Loads of people had told us about The Flying Nun Cafe at Samford, and we finally had a chance to check it out a few weeks back with The Threebies. The biggest compliment I can give them is that their meals are exceptionally well presented! For example, Kristy had the cornbread with smoked trout:

Ben went with banana and blueberry pancakes:

And Michelle and I went for the classic breakfast:

Yes, you’d be hard pressed to criticise them on their presentation, but taste is another matter entirely! Sadly, both Kristy and Ben rated their meals as “rather meh”. Not bad – just not great, either. On the up side, the classic breakfast was delicious, especially the toast (which was sourdough, I think)!

And so, two good meals out of four isn’t too bad I guess, but since the good two were actually the same meal, it’s more like a score of one out of three. Poor! And yet, I’d be happy to give it another chance, simply because the overall experience was good, and their coffee was above average. And as an added bonus, there was a nice chap in the park across the road that was happy for Ted and Oscar to play on his ride-on tractor.

Vroom vroom!

Our bags of crap arrived!

I guess the old adage of “you get what you pay for” really rang true for us on this one; we did not do well out of the bag of crap sale! My bag was almost decent – an Oakley shirt, and a pair of socks! Unfortunately, both are large sized, hence both are far too big for me.

If anyone wants a large Oakley shirt or a large pair of blue and white puma “team socks” (no idea which team), go ahead and leave a comment and I’ll endeavour to get them to you.

Sadly, Kristy’s bag was worse! You know those crappy tourist t-shirts that say (something along the lines of), “My [relation] went to [famous city] and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”. Yeah? Well…

So clearly the lesson here is, don’t buy an $11 bag of crap. But you know what? I don’t regret it, and should there be another $11 bag of crap sale, I will once again be participating! You never know! Maybe I’ll get something else that I don’t want, though slightly less than an oversized t-shirt and a pair of socks! You just never know.

Oscar is a big fan of music, so it only seems fitting that we try to introduce him to musical instruments as early in his life as we can. So far, he has mastered his toy dog-cum-xylophone, and pretty much any flat surface now gets treated as a set of drums. Kristy had the bright idea that perhaps we I should try playing guitar for Oscar, so that’s exactly what I did.

He was a big fan of strumming (or at least, playing with each of the strings), but he wasn’t so interested in the actual playing of the guitar. There’s a good chance that’s because it was being played badly, though; I suspect a bit more practice is required on my part.

I assure you, it’s not as unpleasant as it sounds. On the contrary! I’m totally addicted to the 1-day website, where each day at 11 AM, they offer up three new products at heavily discounted rates. Truth be told, I’m even more addicted to 1 day tee, which does the same thing each day with one (or more) t-shirts. It’s embarrassing how excited I get about finding out what the day’s shirt is going to be; most days I end up checking multiple times just to make sure I haven’t missed anything!

So far I’ve bought three shirts from them, and I’m extremely impressed with the quality – they’re all very heavy cotton, and they don’t feel like they’re going to fall apart or become misshapen after only two washes. Contrast that to rags that you get from threadless, which are only good for a handful of washes at best, and end up costing about the same price.

Anyway – back to the bag of crap. On Tuesday, this is what 1-Day’s offerings looked like:

Mysterious! I clicked the “blokes” link to find out what it was all about, and they went on to explain:

Life is like a Bag of Crap, you just never know what you’re going to get! You get to choose the category you want your crap to come from – This category is for all the blokes out there, so if you want something guy related you’ve chosen the right category! But aside from this you have no control over what you get and we have no control over who gets sent what, it’s a lucky dip.

This year we’ve been busy beavers hiding 10 x Golden Tickets in our Bags of Crap, find one and score a bonus $500 1-day gift voucher – keep your eyes peeled!

For all of you 1-day newbie’s out there, the $11 Bag of Crap Sale is random, mystery products with a minimum value of $11 and a maximum of $800.

Intriguing! Of course, it sounds like something only a fool would buy (“Magic beans? Take my cow!”), so naturally I bought two of them – one from the blokes, and one from the chicks for Kristy. Hey, who was the one laughing when he had a bag of gold coins, a hen that laid golden eggs, and a harp that played itself?! Actually, that would probably get pretty annoying after a while.

I recently managed to blow up the front tire on our pram (a Phil & Teds sport) after over inflating it just a wee bit. I know what you’re thinking – surely, inflating the tires on a pram can’t be that difficult? Well, I beg to differ! And here, in one photo, is the reason that it’s not as easy as you think:

See the problem now? On the rim of the tire, it clearly states that the maximum pressure is 22 PSI, and yet the tire itself is bold enough to claim that anything up to 35 PSI is just dandy! My my, what a discrepancy we have here! So I figured that if the tires on my road bike run at 100 PSI, and the tires on my mountain bike run between 35 PSI and 65 PSI, then surely 35 PSI seemed like a good choice for pram tires?

WRONG! Let me state this for you now, internets:

The tire pressure for a Phil and Teds sport pram should not exceed 22 PSI.

If you reason this out the same way I did, and you also come to the conclusion that 35 PSI should be reasonable enough, then be prepared for this to happen:

Yes, I tried to cover the hole with some tube patches, but it was so big that I had to use two; suffice to say, it was a dismal failure.

Perhaps I should be thankful that this lesson has taught me one thing – that you can buy replacement inner tubes directly from the Phil and Teds website. Seems like a pretty crappy silver lining though, if you ask me.

We wanted to make sure we got to the coast as much as possible in 2012, and so far we’re doing OK. I’d like our number of visits to be higher, but all the rain about puts quite a dampener on things! Not that I mind being at the beach in the rain – on the contrary, it’s awesome being in the surf during a light shower – but I can’t imagine Oscar or Kristy would feel the same way about playing on the beach at the same time.

Anyway – we added one more visit to the tally this weekend. I took Friday off work (time in lieu after working on Australia Day), and we headed up to Caloundra after lunch. Since the car ride was going to be Oscar’s only chance of a nap for the day, we took the “long way” via Steve Irwin way, out to Peachester, then down through Maleny. Or at least that’s what we had intended – the road from Peachester to Maleny was closed due to land slip, so we had to double back and go via Landsborough instead. Never mind – it was a nice drive, and Oscar slept for most of it!

As soon as we arrived in Caloundra, we took a walk along the boardwalk to stretch our legs.

Sadly, that was the only decent weather that we experienced for the whole weekend! By the time Mom and Dad joined us in the evening, the rain had set in – though sporadic, it was enough to put a total dampener on going to the beach!

Worse still, Oscar had a terrible night’s sleep on Friday night. He just wouldn’t settle! Eventually, we brought him into our own bed, which we never, ever do. But we had no choice – it was either try him in our bed, or let him scream it out in his own, so we went with the former. All I can say is that now, the diagrams make sense. Especially this one.

The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur after that, though it did make us appreciate just how lucky we are that (generally) Oscar is (now) a good sleeper. We still managed to take a day-trip to Gympie on Saturday to visit one of Mom’s oldest friends (they met on the plane when she migrated to Australia!); but otherwise, the weekend basically turned into a festival of food! Here’s the list of places we hit up:

• Jow Noodles – An awesome noodle bar on the main drag at Caloundra. It’s the traditional evening meal whenever Mom and Day stay up the coast. The seafood Nasi Goreng is fantastic!
• Cafe 21 on Bulcock – One of the only places that was open for breakfast on Saturday morning in Caloundra. Their big breakfast was big.

• Cafe Envy – Just off the main strip at Mooloolaba, they served one of the biggest and best value breakfast burgers that I’ve ever had!

I suppose that a weekend of eating is nothing to be sneezed at, but it’s still a pity that the weather wasn’t more encouraging of outdoor activities. I guess that’s a good excuse to go up again before it becomes too cold to swim!

Glen and Anita were very pleased to welcome their baby girl Natalie into the world a few weeks back. We paid them all a visit when she was just shy of one week old!

When Oscar was born, the phrase we heard most often (and hence got most sick of) was that “You forget how small they are”; yet oddly enough, that’s the only thing I could think of when we met Natalie. She’s so little! Actually I don’t think it’s the size of a newborn that surprises me – it’s their weight. It’s almost as if when lifting a child, my muscles brace for Oscar’s weight, and so they get quite a surprise when a baby weighs a lot less – like when you went to the science museum as a kid, and they had a brick which for all intents and purposes looks exactly like a brick, but it’s actually made out of cardboard so you almost fall over when you lift it up.

Yes, newborn babies are very light indeed.

Anyway – congratulations Glen and Anita, and big brother Caleb…

… on the new, non-cardboard addition to your family!

Kristy and I had such a good time at the Grass Tree Kitchen cooking school that we came up with the bright idea of getting a gift voucher for Mom for her birthday last year. Genius! Mom was equally impressed since she’s a big fan of Dominique Rizzo, who is listed as one of their resident chefs – so taking a class with her sounded like it was right up Mom’s ally!

Unfortunately, every time we tried to find a class with Dominique, we came up disappointed – none were ever listed, no matter how far in advance we looked! As it turns out, she’s now too expensive for the school, so she no longer teaches there; despite this fact, she remains listed as the number one resident chef on their webpage, which I personally think is a little shady. We probably wouldn’t have bought a gift voucher for Mom had we have known we wouldn’t be able to take a class with Dominique.

Anyway – what’s done is done – we had a gift voucher to be used, and so we booked in for the Chinese peasant class with one of the other chefs – Tony Ching:

This class shares my Chinese heritage with dishes perfect for the busy, time short family. My mums fantastic food – simple, cheap, fast, healthy and very tasty.

Tasty, indeed! We cooked three dishes – rice with chinese sausage, beef and black bean, and sesame pork. None of the dishes were ground-breaking; but I was more interested in the techniques and tid-bits of information that Tony shared. Here’s a few of the said tid-bits – note, this is what we were taught on the course, not (necessarily) my own opinions:

• Pork is the safest of all meats, and pork fat helps to break down the “bad” fats in your body. Tony even went so far as to eat (a small quantity of) raw pork mince in front of us in order to test if it was adequately seasoned.
• Recommended brands to buy are: Lee Kum Kee for stock, Shao Hsing for cooking wine, and Kikkoman for soy sauce. Avoid Chinese brands of soy sauce (e.g. Pearl River) as they’re often padded out with crushed human hair, which makes them cheaper to produce, while still meeting the minimum requirement for protein quantity.
• Buy garlic from Australia; avoid garlic from China (often grown in human feces) and Mexico (where they still use DDT)

Overall, both Mom and I enjoyed the course; we both learned a few things, Tony was a great chef, and the food was delicious.

This weekend, we’ve been lucky enough to share both of our breakfasts with friends! On Saturday, Joe, Shamine and Harry came to our place, and we devoured some breakfast burritos. Note for next time: refried beans taste fantastic with scrambled eggs! We tired the kids out with some bubble-fun and activity table time in the backyard afterwards.

Today, it was back to Willow & Spoon, this time with Laura and Tim, Bill, Inge, and Monique! Once again, deciding what to order was a task in itself, but I eventually settled on The Harlequin – Smoked Cod, brioche, avocado, tomato & green onion salsa, artichoke, veloute. Of course, I had no idea what that translated to, but I was pleasantly surprised when it came out looking like this:

Delicious! And, it was great to see so many Foleys again; we hadn’t seen Monique since shortly after she was born!

• Photos from breakfast with Joe, Shamine and Harry on Google+ and Facebook
• Photos from Willow & Spoon with the Foleys on Google+ and Facebook