jemjabella

A little bit more meat

(Because the alternative is telling you all about the fact that Isabel specifically requested my presence in the bathroom yesterday to show off her “BIIIIIIIIG poo!” … oh.)

As per previous post, I had my Well Hung Meat meatbox on Friday, complete with a shoulder of lamb thingy. Lamb being my favourite meat of all time, t’was an event to celebrate. I slow roasted this with big roasties and a load of veg yesterday, most of which ended up burnt… but the lamb was FANTASTIC.

I am telling you this in the hope that, despite not remembering to take any pictures of the resulting lamb (or the failed burnt veg) you will consider me an aspiring domestic goddess. Or at least someone who knows how to whap the oven on to 170 degrees for 3 hours, whatever.

Going Back to Well Hung Meat

Some of you may remember that at the end of November I wrote an entry expressing disappointment with the organic meat box delivery company Well Hung Meat.

Within a couple of days of writing the post, Adam from The Well Hung Meat Company got in touch via the comments and passed on his apologies for the experience that I’d had and as a goodwill gesture, credited my account with points equivalent to the ‘missing’ roasting joint and the steaks that I’d not been happy with. He came across as both polite and genuine in his responses; a credit to the company. :)

Happy to give them a second chance, I placed a regular order with WHM and I received my second meat box in December. I must admit that my memory fails me in the exact contents (what can I say, December is a busy month) but the roasting joint, roughly 0.8kg of beef topside, was fab. It was the first time I’d done a roast beef (normally stick to chicken) and I spent a lot of time on all the trimmings (roast potatoes, proper gravy, yorkshire puds – from scratch! etc) but it was definitely worth it.

I wish I could say the same about the steaks, but again they were cut so uneven I found it hard to get them cooked ‘just right’. I can’t help but think I’m being COMPLETELY anal about this but as a steak (cooking) newbie I need a helping hand with these things.

My next Well Hung Meat box is due tomorrow, so you can probably extract from that I’m happy to continue with a regular order for now … I am planning on trying the Riverford boxes at some point (if nothing else but out of customer loyalty; I do love my Riverford veg) but I’m glad this little meaty experiment has proved positive after all :)

Follow up: March’s Amusement

March was a big month; tutorialtastic closed, I nearly had a mental breakdown because of work pressure & whilst driving, I gave way to a sofa for the very first time. However, it was going back over Easily Amused that struck a chord with me most today, purely because Isabel hasn’t changed at all.

Today, for example, we were driving back from seeing my niece & nephew (and their very pregnant mum) and Isabel started laughing…

Me: “What are you laughing at darling?”
Isabel: “The trees!”
Me: “Are they funny?”
Isabel: “Yes [giggling]”
Me: “Are you crazy, Izzy?”
Isabel: “YES! [more giggling]”

And then this evening, completely randomly and unrelated to nothing that was happening at the time she pokes Karl and says “Daddy’s got his willy on!”

I just … yeah. There isn’t a day goes by where I don’t laugh at something she’s said, or something she’s done. She’s insane. No idea who she gets it from, Karl and I are completely normal. Ish.

Follow up: February’s Move to WordPress (Again)

In February, I made the decision to move back to WordPress after over two years of using my own blog system / Habari. It was a combination of lack of time to keep things secure (compared to WordPress which has single-click upgrade) and the need to have somewhere I could quickly “just write” without juggling maintenance + toddler.

So anyway, follow-up. How do I feel about it now? Great decision, looking back. Don’t get me wrong, I miss Habari. It was quirky, fast and simple; a well-coded system. The path which WordPress is taking though is fascinating. It would be no exaggeration to say that WordPress stuff has formed the bulk of my work for clients this year, and I have had the opportunity to learn/try out so many awesome things.

One project I’m currently bringing to completion is the migration of an existing e-commerce store to a WordPress backend, using custom post types to power the product section and custom taxonomies to tag/categorise products. This tagging, and the power of WordPress’ built-in queries/functions, has allowed me to create a massive bespoke faceted navigation (think Amazon where you drill down the options on the side … Shoes > Size 7 > Brown > etc) in just a few hundred lines of code.

How is this related to my blog? Well, I’m excited by it, and I don’t get excited by code that often any more. :P I can’t wait until the project is live and I have the time to share some of the neat stuff I’ve written / what WP can do & improve THIS site too. Watch this space…

Weird Dream of School ‘Chums’

And by chums I totally mean the assholes that tormented me for 5 years.

I wasn’t a “popular kid” at school (I know you’re not surprised by this). I was different before it was cool to be different. Short boyish haircut, knackered old Doc Martins, purple tights and mismatched socks. I didn’t listen to the “in” music, or watch the “in” TV shows. Nerdy and smart but with a big gob and the ability (and willingness?) to stand up for myself. Didn’t let any fucker push me around, but you know, I think that just made things worse.

Anyway, I had a bit of a weird dream last night in which me, and many from my year at school, were doing a weird quiz thing in a huge gym/assembly room (stand on this side of the room if you think X, move over here if you think Y … I don’t know). Someone got in my face so I put her up the wall and suggested she back off before I did something we might both regret. (Incidentally, this actually happened, but with a different girl in a different place and for a different reason. It worked, though.)

Yeah. I’m not sure why I’m writing this down … I guess I just thought that at the grand old age of not-quite-26, that I wouldn’t give school a second thought now. Pregnancy makes you dream strange things.