Not the same after that

The very lovely and very music-geeky Nick Hornby maintains that, if you really truly love a song, it won't remind you of anything in particular when you hear it.

But if tonight is anything to go by, he's talking through his arse. Because every time I hear Not The Same from now on, I'll be picturing the Paradiso house lights illuminating the faces of a thousand people singing along in three part harmony.

Two hours of nostalgia and mind-boggling riffs and bowel-loosening (not really) synth chords and disturbing stories about Las Vegas hotel rooms and almost every song I wanted to hear in the two and a bit hours we were treated to. The standard's been set high for the rest of the gigs I'll go to this year.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go gargle with some Disprin before I lose my voice completely...

Rock this bitch

So the past week has pretty much gone thus: work, work, stress, work, work, exhaustion, work, work, utter bewilderment, work, work, weekend!, shopping, gin, Belgian beer, steak frites, sleepsleepsleep. This week: far more promising. Work's not kicking my arse nearly as much as it has been and I'm finally feeling like I'm on top of things and being a decent boss. Plus I'm breaking in the killer knee high boots and leather bag I snaffled for a grand total of 40 euro on the weekend, and the Christmas poundage appears to be shifting (finally! maybe eating less does work...) But the cherry on the icing on the top of the triple chocolate cupcake that is my week has got to be Ben Folds tonight. I appear to have regressed to my 17 year old self, at least if my excitement level is anything to go by. I just had a full-on rockout on my bike ride home, much to the alarm of anyone cycling towards me, I'm sure. Just an hour to go until I'm lining up outside Paradiso in the freezing cold with the rest of the freaks and geeks... Photos galore later!

I'm my own brass section

[First off: Oran made it, we had a lovely weekend, and he's now back at the airport. Sigh. Lebanese food was delish, cinema was a no-go, and we rounded the visit off with full on Sunday roast for 9 chez moi. Lots of fun, and not really hard work at all as I appear to be programmed to cook for large numbers of people.]

Anyway. I think I mentioned a couple of months back that I'd done an interview with the lovely Tapes 'n Tapes for an interweb publication. It's finally online as part of their January/February issue - check it out here. I think I'll have a couple of reviews in their next issue too, maybe including Ben Folds (next Tuesday! woo!), although Suse may have stolen a march on me there. Only eight days to go...

Brewing up a storm

Oran's due in this evening for a blissfully long three day visit. I have all kinds of plans made - Lebanese food in my new neighbourhood, a VIP cinema trip complete with champagne and food and oversized armchair seats, Sunday roast dinner at home with friends, maybe even Club Rascal on Saturday night. Sounds like a close-to-perfect weekend, no? I thought so too.

Except there's just one teeny tiny miniscule little problem - Amsterdam is currently smack bang in the middle of a crane-toppling, roof-tile-lifting, small-child-flattening force 10 windstorm. There are gales howling round our building so loudly I can barely concentrate on my work, even with headphones in and the volume cranked up. Plus I have the added distractions of hitting refresh on the airline website every five minutes to check if his flight's still okay (so far so good, but a bunch of others have been cancelled) and getting local transport updates to make sure I have a way home, although if I were to attempt cycling I might be able to do it E.T. style and get there in record time. Or I might end up face down in a canal. I'm not taking that risk.

Fingers crossed he makes it...

Wondering

1: How on earth was Gwyneth Paltrow persuaded to do Shallow Hal?

2: Why am I incapable of reaching over for the remote and switching it off?

Yet another post about food

One track mind? I think so.

I keep leaving all my change at the pub. This is Good because tipping is nice, even if one is mates with the barman, but Bad because right now I am desperately craving chocolate (a green Balisto to be precise), and last time I asked the guy I sit next to to change a fiver for me he tortured me for about ten minutes before finally giving in, and then proceeded to refuse a share of the Milka bar I bought and laughed at me as I ate the entire thing and then moaned about having done so for the rest of the afternoon. Inconsistent? Moody? Me?

Anyway, it's finally the weekend (hurrah!) and I have decided to have nachos for dinner tonight, not only because they are delicious and moreish and perfect for munching while vegging out in front of season 1 of Father Ted, but also because I can make them with Doritos and use the coupon in the bag to enter this. I haven't a pup's chance of winning, but you never know. Baby needs a new MacBook...

Over the hump

[Editor's note: This post is coming to you from only nine of my ten fingers. I just burned my right little finger on a match lighting the gas to griddle some salmon. The tip of the lit match touched my fingertip and it is BLOODY SORE. This isn't intended as an excuse for the quality of this post, I just wanted to point out how clumsy I am.]

I think I've finally managed to rout myself out of the post-Christmas, start-of-January slump. Ours was a very quiet apartment all of a sudden on new year's day after my sisters and Oran left, and I retreated into my shell almost straight away. I must have been a pleasure to deal with at work as I was nowhere near my usual stroppy self. Not that that helped my productivity - once I'd caught up on the email I spent the rest of the week surfing the web and staring into space. Friday couldn't have come quick enough - I'd booked myself in for a massage to try and improve my mood, but although it was lovely and I followed it with a scalding hot bath (we have a bath!), the apathy still refused to lift. It probably didn't help either that the last thing I saw before going to bed was a 30-minute "documentary" about Jordan and Peter Andre, surely enough to unsettle anyone.

Saturday & Sunday were spent cooking and baking and eating the results of both - Thai green curry and a huge stack of profiteroles. As if choux pastry and cream wasn't enough stodge, we used the profiteroles as dipping fodder for Jenny's brand new chocolate fountain (just as decadent as it sounds...) Between the food and the two seasons of Coupling and the twenty hours of sleep I got in between Saturday and Sunday nights, I was in much better shape heading to work on Monday.

I'm still a tad homesick, and still in comfort cooking/eating mode, but it's not taking me half an hour to work up the energy to get out of bed and I even managed to crack jokes with my boss today. At this rate I may even manage a gym session by the end of the week...

Start as you mean to go on

A new year, new plans, and in my case, a new kitchen. Farewell to the student sparseness of our last place and hello to Spanish tiling, a fan oven, a HUGE fridge and freezer, and, best of all, a dishwasher. So maybe it's a natural consequence that many of my thoughts over the past couple of days have involved food.

My first thoughts on waking yesterday weren't "ouch" or "I'm never drinking again" or even "where am I?" but "I need to bake bread!" And so I bounced downstairs (perhaps I was still a little drunk?) and threw a tomato and herb quickbread mixture together to go with our mammoth new year's day fry. After that it was a swift retreat to the sofa where we spent the day alternately snoozing and snacking and generally feeling bloated. I woke this morning still feeling full and determined to use my new found cooking enthusiasm for good rather than grease-infused evil. So, this week I will be attempting some or all of the following feats:

- not eating junky ready meals
- batch cooking for the freezer (hello, Jamie Oliver vegetable curry)
- perusing my new Jamie O cookbook for quick and healthy dinner ideas
- actually cooking quick and healthy dinners
- appreciating quick and healthy dinners at our new dining table and not in front of the TV
- emptying my fridge of leftover rashers and sausages by giving said meat products to grateful hungry male friends
- making soup to bring to work so I don't have to endure a daily dose of double cream and mini meatballs in the canteen's

I figure doing even half of the above will save me some money and help me lose a few kilos, which would tie in nicely with two of my new year's resolutions: Become Cash-Savvy and Buy And Wear A Bikini. We'll see how it goes.