The Boyf's Birthday Weekend

Another good weekend, another Monday starting out feeling all full of the wonderfulness of life. Life really is good at the moment <3

On Friday night The Trucker came over and we had a quiet evening at home. I watched The Iron Lady, he got bored and read a book. I won't go so far as to say I loved it, I will be looking Margaret Thatcher up on Wikipedia a little later tho for more background info. And I definitely think Meryl Streep deserved that Oscar, she was unbelievably brilliant in the role! Seriously. (Although I haven't watched the Help yet). Anyway, the film was generally boring tho. I guess because I don't really know what all happened at the time really. I suppose it'll be more interesting for an older generation? Hard to say.

On Saturday The Trucker & I took a drive out to Villiers for breakfast with his Mom & Gran (it's about the half-way mark). That was a nice start to the day and afterwards we did a little shopping and then relaxed at home till it was time to head out for dinner for his birthday. He invited a bunch of friends to The Greek Sizzler. I don't think I've been there before - well, I might've once but it would've been a very very long time ago. Anyway, I was surprised to find he didn't need a booking on a Saturday night and we were probably about 15 people. The Trucker & I started with a small platter to share as a starter. I quite liked it :) And we both had the Halloumi & Chicken Pita for our mains (not too big which was perfect after that starter). But it is not a pita like I was expecting at all. I was expecting something more like and Anat Pita ... but this was just Halloumi & Chicken along with some tomato and peppadew rolled inside a pita like a wrap.

After that we headed to a pool bar for a couple of games where the boys showed off some impressive  skill. And then 4 of us headed to Red Room to end the evening. Sadly it's nothing like I remember it back when I was going almost every weekend (probably that's 2yrs ago now! Sheesh). But we did have a good time and I drove us home at about 02:30am.

We slept late-ish and then The Trucker opened my gift. He loved it. So did I (I hadn't peeked either!). He knew what he was getting because it was something on his Xmas list. I used Print Wild and had one of the photos I'd taken on our Botswana trip printed on canvas (900x400). It looks amazing!

Then we headed off to breakfast with his Sister & niece. He went and played cricket in the afternoon while I got a bunch of admin done. And then he came over for dinner. Hopefully I'll get to take him out for a special dinner this week sometime, we weren't really in the mood last night.

Survived

Right, blogging. There isn't much to tell this week, honestly. Worked late on Tuesday eve, so missed @clairam's birthday SCM Dinner :( The Trucker came over and made me dinner on Wednesday night and then we proceeded to have a mammoth disagreement, but all is back to fine and lovelyness now :) He popped in last night to surprise me, which was very sweet. We're not very good at arguing, sadly. He has a flight response when he feels under attack. He just shuts down, does not want to talk and leaves. Me, I need to talk about the issue and get it resolved and then I'll be fine. If I don't it won't go away and I will end up an emotional wreck. So yeah, thank goodness this time we kept talking and got everything back to happy early yesterday morning. I adore this boy. Even when he drives me crazy.

And that is about as exciting as my week has been ... But it is The Trucker's birthday on Sunday. Not that that matter seems of any relevance to him. So yeah, I'm open to any awesome birthday special things you can think of to suggest :) I did consider making him breakfast on Sunday ... but I dunno. Haha, how ridiculous that I was so much better prepared for valentines Day :P

How To ... Make an Awesome Photo Wall

So, it has been a long time coming (more than 2 years now), but my photo wall is officially up and I thought I'd write a proper post about the process.

I'll admit when I first started collecting the frames, which started long before I thought about what photos would fill them, I also didn't give much thought to the process of getting them up on the wall. Luckily when I was almost done, I found something on pinterest showing me the perfect solution to this.

First I had planned where on my new wall the photos would go. This is the entrance wall in my new house. The electrics box is hidden behind the front door when it's opened and this wall leads all the way thru into the lounge. The kitchen is directly opposite, so some of the photo are now visible from just about everywhere in the house (except, obviously if you're actually inside either of the bedrooms or bathroom). I left the string up, demarcating the area for quite some time, just getting used to the space (there was another potential wall for the photos to go, but this turned out to be the perfect fit).



The trick to doing this is buying a few rolls of brown paper from any stationary store. Then you take all your frames and trace them onto the brown paper and cut them out. I wrote on the front what the photo was, if it was colour or black&white and what colour the frame was too (so I could tell what they were for because I have 34 frames!). Then I place the paper cut-out against the back of the frame and used a permanent marker to trace where the keyhole was (most of my frames had keyholes for hanging), so that I could see thru the brown paper where to drill the nail. This is quite a tedious process, I won't lie.

Then I started trying to place my cut-outs on the wall with prestik. Although this felt like instant gratification (seeing the space my frames would occupy), it turned out to be a completely ineffective start. I couldn't place them easily and ended up with some weird gaps. Also they were all brown paper so it was harder to visualise the end result that I thought.

My next solution was to mark out the exact same space on the wall, on my lounge floor and place the actual frames. This turned out to be a much better solution, I could easily visualise the end result because I was looking at the actual frames with their photos. And obviously placing the tangible frames made moving them around and fitting them together an easier process to get right and have fewer gaps (with mismatched frames, it's virtually impossible to have no gaps at all).



Once all the frames were placed on the floor, I covered them with their brown-paper cut-outs. This was handy to ensure they all actually had markers (3 didn't) and it helped me take them in order as I started to actually re-create the layout on the wall.





Then I stuck them all to the wall with prestik and The Trucker came over with his handy drill and started drilling the nails as per the markers. It was a close to perfect process (the only glitch being a pipe we found and had to shift one of the frames slightly ... no one else will probably notice it). We hung as we drilled in a top to bottom approach (because once the nail is in and the brown paper has been unstuck, it's very hard to remember the placement (unless you did it all in one go while your frames were still placed on the floor, but this process happened over a few days for me)



I absolutely *love* the end result. I've gotten used to it now, but I couldn't stop staring for the first few days. I've chosen family photos, it's become a sort of family-tree wall :) The tricky part, of course, will be adding to the wall (like with The Peeb's wedding photo later this year), which is part of why I waited till I had so many frames before hanging it in the first place (that and I never lived in my own home so it seemed silly to put the effort into somewhere temporary before now). I think it'll be okay tho, the edges are uneven and there is still space on the lounge side of the wall ... Sadly tho, it's tricky to photograph effectively (the one below was taken in the evening after we'd finished hanging them), but this should give you a good idea :) I haven't had anyone over (except The Trucker and my Mom & The Peeb) since it went up tho, am dying to see how people interact with it ... some of the photos are really small and you have to really look at each one individually, if you're interested.

Visitors

Wow. That weekend just *flew* by! Seriously, I just about blinked and it was over. Mom and The Peeb flew up late on Friday night (The Trucker & I picked them up at 10pm after an evening of watching series while he worked at home). Was awesome to see them, and to try and show off my house in the dark - haha.

Anyhoo, on Saturday I woke up early (was still coughing up a storm from last week, luckily seem better today) and sat outside reading watching the bunnies waiting for them to wake up. Had a bit of a cat incident on Saturday morning which left the bunnies pretty spooked! This does not make me happy. Luckily it hasn't been back.

We had a lazy morning at home, with some yummy breakfast and then it was off to Mangwanani Spa for the Afternoon Half Day Spa Package. Let me point out here that this really was a treat for us three, none of us are really pamper types, we probably rarely spoil ourselves like this usually and certainly have never done something like this together. But since I am missing any potential pre-wedding stuff for The Peeb, it seemed like an awesome opportunity. And it was lovely.

I was surprised at how packed the place was, but I suppose it was the post-valentines weekend. The light lunch was tasty and the treatments were all pretty good. There was a lot of dozing going on! Haha. I really quite like it as a venue. You feel like you are out in the middle of the country or something, I think it's been nicely designed :)

We finished up at about 5pm and headed home. The Trucker met us a little later and we headed off to dinner at Cafe del Sol. I've been wanting to go back here for a while now and this was the perfect opportunity. Shoo, the food was so good (Admittedly I ordered exactly what I had last time - it was superb). Such a nice evening :)

On Sunday it was Mom's birthday and the 4 of us headed off to Market on Main. I was a little disappointed.Although I was absolutely enthralled the first time we went, this time it fell rather short of the Neighbourhood Goods Market we'd been to last Saturday. The first time we went, Neighbourhood goods had yet to actually start up, I think. There were definitely fewer stalls and fewer people. There was a lot less on offer that appealed for breakfast than there was last weekend at Neighbourhood Goods. Oh well, it was still good to go and taste all sorts of things.

In the afternoon The Mom and I popped out to do a little more shopping, I found something I thought would be perfect for her bday gift but she wasn't so sure so we went hunting for an alternative ... sadly we haven't yet found the perfect thing :(

And then there was some more relaxing before The Trucker came back to take them to the airport with me again. Shew. Seriously, it flew by!

Fallen by Karin Slaughter

On an ordinary spring day, Special Agent Faith Mitchell of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation returns home to a nightmare. Expecting to find her mother minding Faith's new baby daughter Emma, she is horrified to discover Emma locked in the shed, her mother's safe open, her gun missing and a trail of blood to the front door. Without waiting for back-up, Faith enters the house to a scene of carnage. It has been torn apart and a man lies dead in a pool of blood. She stumbles across two more intruders, and within minutes they too are shot dead. And when the Atlanta police force turns up, Faith has some difficult questions to answer. But she has some desperate questions of her own. What were the killers searching for? Ex-Atlanta police chief Evelyn Mitchell was once under investigation by Faith's partner Will Trent. Is her mother directly involved this time, and where is she now? With Faith suspended from duty, Will, together with the help of Dr Sara Linton, must piece together the fragments of a brutal and complicated case - and catch a deeply troubled and vicious murderer with only one thing on his mind. To keep on killing until the truth is finally revealed...

I kind of enjoyed this one ... I think all Crime stories will fall a little flat after The Whisperer for a while. Haha. There was an okay twist in this one. But I wasn't exactly gripped.

Be My Valentine

Well, I started this post by reading thru all the past Valentines posts (or lack thereof) on my blog ... It certainly highlights the truth of the matter that Valentines Day is really not right up there on my list of things to do. It is not a major event for me, by any stretch of the imagination. And as I said last year, the only really vivid one that sticks with me is a picnic I'd had with Bean ... perhaps it's because I have photos from that evening?

Anyway, this year, I'm with The Trucker. And I wanted to do something special for us. He made it clear upfront he doesn't "do" Valentines Day. Which I'm totally okay with (I'm not big on the card & gift bit either, flowers would've been nice tho ;) ) as long as he agreed to dinner with me. He seemed a little nervous it might actually be out at a restaurant, but I do NOT want that sort of chaos or pressure. Besides, we eat out plenty the rest of the time. That wouldn't make it special.



I had lots of really simple plans that came together absolutely perfectly and the evening was pure bliss. Seriously, things are going so well at the moment and life is so awesome (aside from the fact that I'm still not feeling 100%), that I'm a little nervous for the down that might be coming ... but that aside, I am loving life right now <3

So I pictured a picnic dinner in my little garden with candles in brown-paper bags and red lindt balls and chocolate hearts strung from the trees. It worked so well. And the weather was perfect :)

We drank champagne (and the ciders we'd bought at the neighbourhood goods market on Saturday) and ate heart-shaped watermelon for starters (an awesome idea I saw on Pinterest!). Dinner was simple: Tuna Salad with some ciabatta (I even got him olive ciabatta, which shows how much I care because I despise the stuff! Haha). And then dessert was Berry Sorbet on Wafer biscuits. Dessert didn't quite turn out how I'd planned (was supposed to demo it on Monday night for @louisabouwer, but that never happened :( ).

We sat and chatted outside all evening. Spending some time planning our Vietnam holiday (hopefully Aug/Sept) and discussing the last little details for our April/May River Rafting, Namibia & Kgalagadi trip :)

I won't lie, it was about as perfect as it gets *gush*

A Little Bit Sick

Thursday was quiet, just what I needed. Cause on Friday The Trucker and I got all dressed up and went to watch The Phantom of the Opera at Monte. It is one of my all-time favourite musicals, I saw it in London back in January 1998 and I own the cd. Of course, I know the songs by heart. Strangely it's one of only 2 musicals The Trucker will agree to watching (luckily the other is Rocky Horror, but I have my heart set on forcing him to watch Moulin Rouge too - haha).

Anyway, I wore my Sass Designs dress and off we went. I was ready to be awed, and I think that was a problem. Don't misunderstand, I did enjoy it, but I wasn't blown away. The niggly things: Carlotta's voice was far too high-pitched for me and during the medleys she drowned everyone else out (I think we had Hanlee Louw) and Christine, although her voice was amazing, she looked too awkward, gangly and pointy for me (we had Magdalene Minnaar) ... I can't explain it exactly. The highlights: The set for the boat scene was spectacular, I thought. And no one could fault the guy playing The Phantom, he was spot-on, perfect.

All in all a good night out and I'd recommend it :)

On Saturday we decided to go try out the Neighbourhood Goods market for the first time. Wow, it is truly an awesome little spot. Initially it's all a little overwhelming, crowded with so many stalls with so many options of things to try. We did an initial wander around looking at everything, trying to decide what to settle on for breakfast. We also took a wander upstairs but that is more clothing / craft stuff which I find less appealing. Downstairs we decided on these Seasonal Breakfast pancake type things. They were amazing!! It'll be hard not to have them again, but there are so many other things to try :) We bought some Spanish chorizo and pesto to make pasta for dinner (we had it on Sunday eve with some avo and it was delish!). We bought some flavoured chips, some samoosas (not great) and some cider to take home too. And we ended our wanderings with a yummy waffle to share (and I took home a divine pumpkin & feta mini-quiche for lunch - yumyum). Couldn't believe we were there for only an hour ... and we left with only R5 left in our wallets - no wonder they make you pay for parking upfront! We'll be back.

In the afternoon, The Trucker had to go work so I faffed around at home. I bought some new plants for the garden and started designing my new kitchen :) Later we were supposed to go to a movie, but he was a bit exhausted so we stayed in and watched series. Saturday was a perfect and superb day <3

He was up early on Sunday morning to head back to work and then to cricket. I faffed around and did my grocery shopping and not much of anything, really. He came over after cricket and we had our delish pasta dinner and watched more series.

In other news, here is the update on my MTN saga. So I finally got my 3G activated thru their call-center on Thursday. Should be up and running in 24hrs she said. I left it till Friday when I got home from work to check (more than 24hrs later). Only to discover that although it was now successfully activated, I was apparently not RICA-ed. So it didn't work. Despite the fact that I handed over all my relevant documentation over to the delivery guy as requested. On Sunday morning I popped into an actual branch and got myself RICA-ed (with the exact same documentation I'd already given them) within 5 minutes. The sales guy was very nice and helpful. And yes, this has all been a spectacular advertisement to actually go into a branch and get things done immediately. It would've saved me so much hassle.

Well, let me tell you, after I got home from all my shopping and I finally tried to use my internet, that I'd been assured would now be working, I was in for yet another surprise. Instead of the 2Gb I'd signed up for, I had a mere 850Mb available. Oh. My. Gawd. Seriously. Could they have got not a single thing right the first time during this entire process? I raced off to my nearest MTN store (not the one I went to this morning), where I found their 2 employees standing outside locking up the store. I explained my frustration with this more-than-a-week long process but it fell on less than interested ears. They couldn't help me. Right. Of course not. More than ever I was seething with the incompetence and sheer lack of service from this company.

I had to phone their call center yet again yesterday morning, only to be told that my 2Gb will only kick in on the 21st of the month. Thanks alot. You could've mentioned that upfront :P At least I have internet now. But I am just waiting to see what else they can screw up in the next 24mnths of my contract. Pity they had the best 3G contract, otherwise I would've stuck with Vodacom.

Yesterday I stayed home from work. I woke up with serious sinus, I couldn't stop sneezing or blowing my nose, my throat was sore and scratchy and my ears were blocked. In short I was miserable. I popped into Dischem and the Sinutab, Med-Lemon and Strepsil combo seems to have helped. Am very annoyed because I had to skip gym (okay not that annoyed) and dinner with @louisabouwer (rather annoyed). #sigh

At least I managed to get most of the bookings done for Birthday Holiday 2012 :D And this morning I'm feeling *much* better than yesterday morning ... although still not 100%. Oh, and today is Valentine's Day. And no, I'm generally not into the schmaltzy side of it, I do like any excuse to do something special. No, we won't be going out for dinner, I have something planned for at home. Tell you all about it tomorrow :)

#annoyed

So, mostly this week is going just fine. On Monday I had a mad crazy busy evening driving around. Gym to Home, cleaned the bunny hutch, showered, made dinner, inhaled dinner, drove off to J9-double0blonde's place to collect some very old books from our previous bookclub. And then on the way back I popped past DJMike's to deliver my empty hard drive for refilling.

Got home after 9. I was exhausted. On Tuesday I went to SCM Dinner, always good :) And The Trucker surprised me by coming over after :) Saw him last night for take-out and a movie as well. We watched True Grit. It was a surprising movie. I'm not really sure what the point of it was, but it had some great dialog. Seriously, watch it just for that. The actress is really funny-looking tho.

And then, in other news ... I can't figure out where my pillow cases currently are. They use one of those US tracking websites ... but the last entry is from Grand Rapids on the 3rd. It's now the 9th. Are they sending it to SA by boat, do you think? (Is that what they do with post? I just assumed they'd fly everything over). They did say 9-10days for delivery ... so maybe I won't worry just yet. The annoying part is they won't just give you an email address to contact them for queries, you have to select all these things, I assume to direct your query properly, but there is nothing labeled "Where is my freaking parcel?!". and I certainly don't plan on calling them :P I'm not even sure their tracking site would update from SA, would it? Anyway, that is the least of my annoyances currently.

MTN. So annoying. So last week I applied thru MTN Direct for a 3G, so that I can finally have internet at home again (I was borrowing one from my mom since Nov, but had to send that back). Wow, I was so impressed with the MTN Direct sales process when placing my order. It was smooth and efficient and apparently my 3G would be delivered within 3 days, but the sales lady said I should have it on Tuesday this week.

So fast-forward to Tuesday when I have an hour left of my working day (and my delivery address is the office) ... I call them to find out what is potting. MTN puts me thru to their Delivery company, RTT, with my tracking code. All fine so far. RTT has no record of my tracking code on their system, could I please contact MTN again. Tell me how there is a tracking code if the delivery company doesn't have the item ... ? But anyway. So I phone MTN again. Nope I must go back to the sales dept because they can only give me my tracking number at this dept. Right.

So I speak to the 4th person of this hunt, in the Sales dept, and he was actually very helpful. For some reason my 3G has been sitting in the warehouse since Friday, no idea why it hasn't gone to the Delivery company yet. Great. So they sort that out and later in the afternoon, I get a call from RTT asking if they can deliver it the next day (yesterday). Definitely.

And hour before I left work yesterday, I start the same process, because it hasn't arrived yet and no one has phoned me (they said they'd call an hour before they came to deliver it). At this point I ask MTN very specific questions about this delivery company, their name, their number (so I can call them directly). And I get transferred thru to them. But they don't answer. So I try calling directly. Wrong dept get transferred to switchboard. Get transferred to the tracking people, they check and apparently it's with the driver. They'll transfer me to the driver to see when it'll be delivered. Disconnect.

I try calling the 2 numbers for RTT that MTN gave me ... no answer. I phone MTN again. I ask them again to give me the numbers, I get two new different numbers from the first two! They transfer me again. It never answers. I try again, I think about 3 times. I finally get thru. They finally successfully put me thru to the driver. Who was fantastic. He managed to get my 3G here before I left for the day.

Later, after gym, when I was home, I tried to call MTN to activate my 3G & sim. Do you think that worked? No, apparently there are no records for my id number & sim card combination. And then every time they were going to transfer me to an operator for help the call just disconnected. Completely. Useless. I've just tried again this morning and the call crashed while they were repeating my sim card number back to me. #sigh

And what really blows me away is that I've been complaining about this dreadful service on twitter and no one has responded at all. Does MTN  not have someone managing their social media? How very naive of them. Although I guess we already know that most of these big corporates don't really care about our business or service delivery :P

The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi

Six severed arms are discovered buried in a forest clearing. They are arranged in a mysterious circle, and appear to belong to missing girls between the ages of eight and thirteen. But the rest of the bodies are nowhere to be found. Criminologist Goran Gavila is given the case. A dishevelled, instinctively rebellious man, he is forced to work with young female police officer Mila Vasquez. Lithe, boyish, answering to no one, Mila has a reputation as a specialist in missing children. She also has a tragic history of her own that has left her damaged, unable to feel or to relate to others. Theirs is a fiery but strangely affecting working relationship - and as they uncover more secrets about the dark secrets in the forest, their lives are increasingly in each other's hands...A gripping literary thriller that has taken Italy by storm, The Whisperer has been as sensational a bestseller in Europe as the Stieg Larsson novels. It is that rare creation: a thought-provoking, intelligent literary novel that is also utterly unputdownable.

This may just be the best crime/mystery book I've read in a long while. Seriously. It was un-put-down-able. I devoured it. And it has twists and turns. I highly recommend this book. Wow.

Full of Awesomeness

Shoo. It was a good weekend. Am still feeling all loved up :) Which I'll take to be an awesome sign.

I collected my photo frames from The Frame Shack on Friday and when I got home from work I got the brown paper markers out and stuck them all back on the wall. That's them all laid out on my floor, planning the layout, half with their brown paper markers in place. I am so excited to get my photo wall hung before Mom & The Peeb get here :)

Later, The Trucker came over with pizza and we watched Drive because we were both pretty exhausted from the week. Hmmm. The movie was kinda weird. Way more graphically violent than I was expecting. I dunno if I liked it really or not ...

On Saturday The Trucker was supposed to be working, but that got postponed to a night this week instead. So we headed off to The Salvation Cafe for breakfast with @Toxic_Mouse and his lovely lady. Yum. I forgot how truly awesome their breakfasts are :) And then it was off to get lots of admin done. I got a mattress for the spare-room day-bed. And a fitted sheet. So everything is now ready for Mom & Peeb's visit. Excellent :)

In other very awesome news, I've been looking for a new linen set for my bed and on Friday I saw these adorable pillow cases on Pinterest. And I bought them :) They've been shipped already, not sure when they'll be arriving. But I also got myself a new plain white duvet cover & 2 pillow cases to go with them. Once they've arrived I'll decide on either a black or red sheet to match :) I am completely thrilled. I have honestly been looking for something I like for ages now!



We also hit Builder's Warehouse for a multitude of nails and whatnot to get all my photo-wall pictures hung (along with a bunch of other stuff that needed re-attaching to walls).

And then we had a pretty relaxing afternoon ... with some re-planning of our April/May river rafting trip :) In the evening, we decided to go for dinner at Cranks (has been ages!) and I dragged him along to watch We Need To Talk About Kevin. I didn't think the movie was bad ... I was worried that The Trucker was bored during it tho ... it is a bit sloooooow. I would vote you skip the movie and read the book (isn't that always the way?).

On Sunday we stayed in bed surprisingly late (The Trucker slept while I read my book and dozed - I'm usually up at 6:30 on weekends! On Saturday I went and read outside on my bench while the bunnies ran and he slept - it's why I prefer staying at my house :) ) and then headed to breakfast with his sister and niece before getting some grocery shopping done. I also collected our Phantom tickets. We're going this Friday and I can't wait :)

After that we headed off to The Trucker's LMS cricket match ... which ended up being rained out before the first innings was over. Sheesh it was quite the storm. But I can't complain because the fact that we got home early meant my photo wall got hung. Seriously, I can't stop staring at it. It looks so awesome :) (way more awesome than that awful photo taken with my BB shows, I promise ... but you can sort of get an idea) I am more than thrilled with it! And this morning the photos were all still on the wall too - haha. Wow, I adore this boy, he spoils me so with handy-man tasks!

After that, we got some sushi for dinner and watched Margin Call. Hmmm. I saw the trailer for this and was quite keen to watch it, what with it's star-studded cast. But what a *yawn*. Seriously. Usually you can't go wrong with a Kevin Spacey movie ... but this one. It was so boring. I do not recommend you bother with it at all.

The Busiest

Well it has been quite a busy week! I am ready for a very quiet weekend.

On Monday night, CollegeInstructor came over for dinner. This involved a mad rush last minute visit to the shops because I changed my mind about what I should make for dinner after I got home from gym. I made my Thai Butternut Soup with Prawns. This time I added in some 2 minute noodles as well, which worked quite well ... but I was really looking more for those glass-noodle type things. Anyway. It was a success and we had a lovely evening catching up :)

On Tuesday I was going to go the SCM, but then I wasn't feeling very sociable and I just crawled into bed for what was supposed to be an early night ... well, I was in bed early. I finished reading my book but then couldn't fall asleep ... typical :P *yawn*

On Wednesday I saw The Trucker. We ended up going to a friend of his bday at Schwabing. It's kinda weird that after dating for 8months there are friends of his I've never met ... and then I realised there are loads of my friends he hasn't met either. But I put that down to me doing lots of girl's nights with my girl-friends. See, so I'm not so bad, he may not have met them, but I have seen them in the last 8 months, these are friends of his that even he hasn't seen since we started dating! Anyhoo ...

Last night was another mad dinner rush. But more so because I got home from gym at about 6pm and had 6 people coming for dinner at 7pm. Excellent planning, I know. It went off quite well although I had to enlist some help as guests arrived and we only ate around 8pm (and it only ended up being 4 of us). I made those Smoked Snoek Babotie in Poppadum cups ... except with smoked chicken instead of fish, a salad with avo, mozzarella and tomatoes and then for dessert the Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries.

Shoo. I'm exhausted. But I still have something more to look forward to today (there are so many little awesome things to look forward to this year! It's amazing so far :) ) ... I'm going to fetch my mounted photo frames! Yay. I can NOT wait. Although I doubt The Trucker will have time to hang them this weekend :( (he's working tomor :( ) I will re-do the brown-paper configuration on the wall and go and buy the nails and what not. I will have them all hanging before Mom and The Peeb come up to visit (in 2 weeks!)

The Lost Life of Eva Braun by Angela Lambert

How did a 19 year-old, middle-class, Catholic girl from Munich become Hitler's mistress and what kept him faithful until the end of their lives? Was her appeal sexual, domestic, political - or did he really love her? This biography of Eva Braun is the first in English for 40 years. Angela Lambert has dug deep into Eva's background and brought into sharp focus a fascinating and unexpected relationship, hitherto neglected by male historians. There are more than 700 biographies of Hitler, yet this is the first thorough study of Eva Braun, his secret mistress. Using never before seen family papers and interviews with her surviving cousin, this book will cause a considerable stir. Illustrated throughout with little-known black and white photographs of life at the Berghof, it sheds new light on the man, the woman and the past.

Okay, so I'll warn you upfront, this is very long at 602 pages. It was perhaps a little ambitious for me so soon after the 900+ page Shantaram. But I waded thru. And wade thru you must. It is very interesting and jam-packed with foot notes (which generally I find make book-reading more tedious than enjoyable). I'm glad I read it. I think it could've been helped with some sort of historical timeline in the front because (since I didn't do history for matric) I am not so up-to-date on all the dates that everything happened or the individual details of the war (obviously tho, I do have a general knowledge of it, but it would've been handy to be able to just know at a glance where in the order of things we were while reading).

I'd definitely recommend it if you have any interest in World War 2. It's quite fascinating.