Sky watching

This is the website I possibly visit most. That's right. The Bureau of Meteorology page. I like to check out the radar. It's exciting when there is rain.



I also like to try to guess the position of low pressure systems or cold fronts based on the direction of the rainfall.

I then compare my predictions back to mean sea level pressure charts like this:



It makes me feel happy when my predictions are right. And one day I'd like to learn how to draw and interpret aerological diagrams again, like this one:


How cool, right? I love the weather.

Zombie egg quiche

In loving memory of all the zombies Sam and Kal killed and ate.

"The zombies are attacking! What do I do?"

If I had five cents for everytime someone asked me this, someone's boyfriend would be watching the Hannah Montana movie. Like everyone, I too have zombie issues. Some things just die hard. But I don't let the zombie plague get me down. If life gives you lemons, make lemon meringue pie. If life gives you zombies, make zombie pie. That's my motto. There is nothing quite like fresh zombie to add flavour to any meal. Here is a pretty simple zombie recipe you can use to impress your friends/subordinates.

Ingredients (items in parentheses are for those who don't like zombie)
-6 zombie eggs (chicken eggs)
-1 or 2 zucchinis
-1 or 2 medium sized carrots
-milk
-zombie skin (pastry)
-cured zombie pieces (bacon- optional)
-cheese
-olive oil/oil/butter/whatever
-pepper and salt

Procedure
1. Gather some villagers and kill ye a zombie. Use a shotgun. Knives are not effective. Alternatively, visit your local supermarkert and purchase ingredients.
2. Using the oil/butter/whatever you want, grease a large oven-proof dish. Line the dish with pastry (I used puff pastry because I love puff pastry), and then brush oil or whatever over this pastry. I wrote this in bold because it is important you don't forget.
3. Cover the pastry in aluminium foil, and then fill the dish with pasta or rice or beans or something heavy and dry. Put the dish in a preheated oven at around 180degrees C. This is blind baking, and what it does is start cooking the pastry without letting it rise. Remove after 10-20 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, wash and then grate the carrots and zucchini. You can also add chopped onion. Finely chop some cured zombie pieces, and combine all of these in a large bowl. Add the 6 zombie eggs and some milk (I don't recall how much milk I added. Pretend you're making scrambled eggs with 6 eggs, and probably add about that much). Also grate some cheese and mix this in. Add pepper and salt too. Yay!
5. When you've finished blind baking carefully remove the foil + the pasta from the dish. You should have nice, flat, not-so-raw pastry in the dish. Add the zombie mixture and evenly spread it out.
6. Put it back in the oven. I think I put it in for 20 minutes. Might have been longer. Keep checking it until it is all golden and looks like a quiche.
7. And then you are finished. Make sure you wash the dishes. Good kid.

Tips for young players
1. Open each egg separately in a small bowl before adding it to your grated vegetables. This way you can check for (and remove) egg shell.
2. If you want to be clever you can add nutmeg. I did. After I added cinnamon. I didn't mean to add cinnamon. I forgot what I was doing for a second and just added it. Oops.
3. You can substitute some of the milk with cream if you want a richer quiche.
4. You can add a lot of other things. Mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach, children, cats... be creative.
5. Do NOT make friends with the zombies. It's really hard to kill them when you're emotionally attached. It's best not to make friends with your food.
6. Zombie sightings are more frequent in bad weather.



Happy hunting!

Exceptions

Kallie the animal freak loves animals, even the weird ones. Seriously, she has a crocodile skull she has named and feels very attached to, she went to a seahorse farm and happily touched a Port Jackson shark, she's smuggled wolf spiders back to Melbourne to keep as pets, and she was going to smuggle scorpions too but decided they might not survive the plane trip. Freaky kid.

Anyways, turns out even the animal freak has animal fears. Here are the animals she loathes:

1. Cockroaches
They disgust her. They freak her out. Watching that dude accidentally eat half a cockroach in The Mousetrap didn't help. One day there was a massive cockroach in her room, but thankfully a handsome hero came and saved her by picking it up with his bare hands.

2. Earwigs
They look evil.

3. Click beetles
This one mightn't make sense, but her sister used to pick them up and throw them at her.

4. Leeches
Argh! Eek! Scary! X.x
She just had field work in the rain. Upon arriving at the field site Matt kindly told them, "The leeches are out in force today" and then within 5 minutes they saw one climbing on him. Ten minutes later, after stumbling through the wet undergrowth, Kallie felt something weird on her arm. It was a massive leech! She screamed like a girl (to her embarrassment!), brushed it off and then crushed it into the ground about 50 times to make sure it was dead and its zombie wouldn't be able to haunt her.
"Well, at least it isn't spiders," Bryant pointed out.
"Bring on the white tails," Kallie muttered darkly. "I'd much rather be covered in spiders."

Killer whales and giant waves

There were killer whales in Sydney Harbour!

How cool is that!?!! That is amazing! I love killer whales. I want to see them in the wild. Then I could die a happy mouse.