Mistress of Spices. Not

I made the rash promise to cook an Indian dinner tonight for the Mermaid and her better half, Coco and another friend. See, when I got the Bollywood cookbook for Christmas I said I'd let the generous donator (= the Mermaid) and the person whose Amazon account she used to order it (= Coco) plus their entourage be guinea pigs.

Little did I know upon a first perusal of said book which had me focus on the old-fashioned film posters and photos of stars than the endless list of ingredients.

What can I say, even though I picked what looked like the easiest options those dishes contain ingredients I'd never heard of before and the preparation turned out to be somewhat time-consuming to say the least. Ever dry-roasted things like cinnamon bark and bay leaves and then "finely ground" them in a pestle and mortar? Ever, like me, filled the kitchen with a whiff of baby puke in the (futile!twice!) attempt to produce more than a matchbox-sized piece of paneer cheese out of gallons of milk and cream?

Everything's been prepared now and apart from the sad bonsai version of the paneer I daresay nothing can go wrong any more and I can let the three course meal and mango lassi loose on my hapless invitees.

Whether they survived the experience or not I'll tell you on Monday. Stay tuned.

***
FCN just asked me how many guests were coming tonight. Four, I replied, then wrinkling my brow. Ooops- can anybody tell me why I laid the table for 6 people then and prepared 6 bowls of dessert? It's been a while since I last entertained and back then "me" still was "we", i.e. two hosts. Ah, well.

not the kind of expenditures I like...

I had this morning off work. By the time I'd arrived at the office I'd managed to spend a bit more than EUR 500. Nope, no designer handbag. First, I had my boiler serviced, which thanks to the fact that some parts needed to be replaced amounted to a hefty EUR 310. Then I applied for a new passport and photo ID which cost me a further EUR 125.

To get over the shock I had to spend another EUR 75 at a shop selling precious stones (for new DIY jewellery procects) and MANGO.

Money. Seriously overrated.

Patron Saint of Bulging Suitcases

Yawn. I arrived in my flat at midnight, arms aching from kilos worth of last-minute airport purchases (magazines and chocolate bars) on top of my trusty grey textile Samsonite suitcase (thankfully of the trolley kind) which had never been as full as on yesterday's journey. Now I know what "bursting at the seams looks like". Hey, I could go on Wetten, dass...? , trying to squeeze yet another 100 articles into a case that already looks fit to explode.

London was lovely as usual, as was hanging out with l'Italiana and my other lovely friend who lives in London (too tired and unispired to give her a nickname now) and whom I've known since we were both 17.

On Saturday, I dragged l'Italiana from one shop into the next until I realised that her eyelids had dropped to her knees and she was only giving me robotic replies of the "uh-hn" kind. Being the selfless friend I am, I allowed for a quick pit stop at Pret before we continued our my mission.

Thanks to l'I and the fact that she'd recently bought a pair of Guess jeans in N.Y. she didn't like on herself by the time she tried them on again at home I returned to Vienna with 2 pairs of cool jeans (the other is a pair of ultra-skinny jeans from Uniqlo I'll have to shoehorn myself into). Note, these were entirely justifyable purchases as unlike in my present job, I'll be able to wear them in the new one. Hah!

In between raiding the stores, I managed to squeeze a bit of (pop) culture in, seeing two exhibitions and a film.

***

Tomorrow we won't have internet at the office all day because of a server change. Everyone's already talking about how they'll (not) cope. Whatever did we do all day before we had internet access I wonder.

treat

This afternoon, I'm flying to London for the annual girlie weekend (exhibitions!shopping!Pret sandwiches!) with L'Italianana.
Back in Blogland on Tuesday.

aftermath

In stark contrast to my bosses, several colleagues made nice comments on my resignation yesterday, but my favourite was from the Blonde Beast who, after having established that the rumours she heard were really true, looked at me like someone had just died in a tragic accident and said "And I was about to introduce you to my son."

Her previous match-making protegé, my skate-date, sent me a text today saying "From tomorrow on, I'll be unemployed." Mere days after our icy date he collapsed at work and was taken to hospital. After several tests and some "repeat performances" it turned out he was suffering from panic attacks and now his employers consider it too dangerous for him to continue working at posts where he's required to carry a gun. Poor guy.

I hasten to add that there's no causal connection between our date and the panic attacks. Well, not as far as I know.

adrenaline

I was close to a heart-attack as I knocked on the door with my letter of resignation in my hands.

I. HAVE. JUST. HANDED.IN.MY.NOTICE.

The great things I alluded to last week is the new job I've found. I'm not going to divulge any details here but if you're interested you're very welcome to send me an e-mail and ask. Whether it will be a change for the better, time will show, but for now I am very happy and also a little proud of myself to have taken the plunge.

Soli

No, I'm not going to rave about flowers, just wanted to paste this collage of pics taken in my great aunt's garden yesterday for decorative purposes.

I'd rather share a gem of the linguistic kind with you.

Waiting at a red light on Mariahilfer St. on Saturday, I overheard a girl, part of a group of teenagers of Balkan descent ask "Gemma Soli?" which roughly translates to "Wanna go soli". "Soli", I wondered, w.t.f. does that mean? I didn't think of the obvious until another youth replied entusiastically, "Ja, gemma Solarium" (yeah, let's go [to the] solarium).

Analogous to that other wildly popular spot for hanging out, "MACie" or rather "Meckie" as youngsters like to call MCDonald's in this country, spending afternoons at "soli" must be the rave among (certain strata of) Austria's teens.

Unless a group sunbed session is a thinly veiled excuse for an orgy or a clever ploy to see your classmates starkers, I don't quite see the attraction. Ah well, obviously just another sign of getting old.

sketchy

The other day I got a sketch pad. I hadn't used a proper one since school and the smell of paper and feeling of "deflowering" the pristine white paper was indeed reminiscent of beginning the new term with a stack of new notebooks. Back when "notebook" was not automatically associated with some snazzy little gadget, remember?

The sensation of imprinting lines of varying depth and luminosity on the coarse paper was almost sensual and tickled awake a passion I had almost forgotten existed.

the obligatory spring photo

...here it comes:
Freshly planted pansies in Volksgarten. In keeping with my mood, Vienna is gloriously sunny these days.

***
More soon. Promise.

about time!

After months of moping around and feeling I had a subscription on all things negative GREAT!THINGS! are finally happening here @ onemorehandbag HQ. I'm walking on air with a permanent"the cat that got the cream"-smile. More soon.

speaking of standards

Accuracy's not really my favourite newspaper's forte: in today's issue, a short article on parliamentary elections in Northern Ireland reveals that either their African correspondent covers the British isles as well or someone at the Standard is under the assumption that Mogadishu is the capital of Northern Ireland...

Success story (but I don't want to jinx it)

So we've gone from no RONDO to RONDO outside the Standard to RONDO properly tucked into the Standard as it should be in the space of 3 weeks. Perhaps Alcessa was right all along and the culprit does indeed read this blog...

catering for witches' needs

On my way to my first yoga class last night (imagine. yoga. me!) I walked past a hardware store with a broom in the window and a star-shaped green sign reading "Hexentaxi" (witches' taxi). [click to enlarge]

Unfortunately, they didn't have any bitches' taxis on offer or I'd have been one very lucky girl.

pedestrian conversion

On Saturday, I spotted a copy of New Testament Psalms on one of those little boxes for the blind that give off acoustic signals at traffic lights. "Hmm," I thought, "Someone's trying to convert pagans at red lights. That's what I call an innovative approach ." I was very impressed by the mint condition of the book and had a vision of some benevolent religious zealot bulk-buying those blue books and distributing them at stategic points all over Vienna. [click to enlarge]

A little later, I realised that it was just one of the freebies visitors of the BeST fair got. I saw a middle-aged man handing out books of Psalms to bemused looking students, giggling upon receipt. They at least had the courtesy to hold on to them until they were round the corner from the exhibition hall where I took the photo above.

bathroom beautification

On Sunday morning, I took off the old and somewhat dusty and bubbly gel stickers from the light cover part of my bathroom cabinet and replaced them with funky transfers I'd bought the previous day at the MAK design shop. I've also won an Ebay auction for tile stickers which will replace the no longer adhesive ones I'd previously used to cover the 4 tiles with ugly 3D- pattern that ruin the other nondescript ones. Why the people who redecorated my apartment before selling it had to stick those 4 ugly tiles on my bathroom wall, I have no idea. It seems like a random act of subversion to me.

Little imperfections and thorns in my aesthetic side are all the more visible since I put up new halogen spot lights from Hofer last week, but I'm waiting for the right mood to strike me before I tackle the one big task that's beckoning: applying a lick of paint to the wall above the tiles. I've yet to gear myself up for painting the kitchen and cleaning my almost-opaque windows. As you might have gathered, I find spring cleaning only palatable in small doses, preferring decorating projects that hardly qualify as urgent instead.

weekend purchases

Well, I hardly own any necklaces. Nor scarves. Ahem.

no need for further action (yet)

Follow-up on the RONDO case: this morning I found the Standard on my doormat with the RONDO magazine folded outside the paper proper. Could it be that the mysterious supplement thief decided to return it after reading? Whoever it is, he or she's obviously an early bird.

Spring. The Time When Chairs Turn Green

Well, it's not officially spring yet, but nature's behaving like it was and so are my chairs. I recently bought a new swivel chair for the spare bedroom/study, followed by a tin of green paint for a chair which "lives" in the same room and which used to be blue. I also re-upholstered the seat-cushion with the same fabric my dining room chairs are covered with.

Before I moved into my present flat, I lived in a tiny one the official tenant of which was my great-aunt H. (the one who recently celebrated her 90th birthday). She had got most of the furniture custom-made by a carpenter and when I moved out told me I could take away what I wanted. I took a mirror and 2 beech (or possibly cherrywood) chairs, one of which I painted red and put into the hallway, the other one is the exhibit above.