Yesterday morning, Justine woke me to the exciting news that the pilot light had again gone out on our hot water service. It’s done it around half a dozen times since we’ve been here, and every time I’ve been able to get it lit again.

This time I couldn’t.

Going back inside, I shut the side door; I should say “slammed”, since the door gets stuck and needs a good solid closing. Well, a good solid closing it got, and out exploded a pane of glass (no one was hurt, thanks for your concern).

Later in the afternoon, with garbage bags over the hole in our door and us unshowered, I went outside to see that my car had been “egged” the night before. This is quite strange since our area is generally a pretty nice, quiet area. To those jerks that did it, screw you.

I went to the local car wash and spent three bucks cleaning the car — it hadn’t been cleaned for a long, long, long time so probably needed it anyway.

This morning, the glazier came on-time, and replaced the glass. With no hot water I had to have a cold shower… fun. The gas people finally called me at 10:30 to say they couldn’t come until tomorrow, which I didn’t consider good enough. Another was contacted and could come out today.

Since yesterday, I’d been trying to light the hot water service every now and then to no avail. Finally, I got it to work! Still needs to be checked out though, in case it’s stuffed.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have a hot, hot shower.

Well it’s been exactly one year since I got my grubby mitts on my Canon EOS 350D camera, and just over 5 years 4 months since I bought my Kodak DC4800. In the time I regularly used my DC4800, which was around 4 years, I took around 4,600 photos.

Since having my camera I have taken 7,014 photos, which is about 19 photos per day. Obviously not all of those are good; in fact there is a low percentage of “good” photos, but it’s obvious that I’m getting a lot more use out of this camera than the Kodak one.

Given the higher cost of the camera, lenses and other accessories, the Kodak camera still cost me less per photo than the Canon one, but since the Canon one is still in use it should cross over and start being cheaper per shot rather soon… unless I buy more bits.

Here’s to another great year with my beloved DSLR. Don’t forget to check out the photoblog!

Tonight, Justine and I decided on Indian take away for dinner. After making our decision — we were going to share a fish punjabi masala — I called the local place. The local Indian restaurant is pretty good, has been featured in The Age Good Food Guide and not too far away.

So, I was surprised when I got a “number not available” type message when I called. Thinking I must have dialled incorrectly I tried again. Same thing. Maybe there was a network problem. I tried my mobile. Nope, definitely not available.

Well, it was a nice night for a drive. We drove to the place only to find it has closed down. This is especially strange since I drive past it every day after work (though never actually look over there, as it’s on the other side of a divided road). This really sucks, it’s hard enough to find a good Indian restaurant; there are two in our area (or were) and we haven’t tried the other one yet. I just know it won’t be any good.

How about Nando’s? It’s not too far. On the way, Justine convinced me we should have another crack at some Krispy Kreme donuts. Besides, it was a nice night for a drive. It, however, is far. We got to Narre Warren and though the line was smaller than our last visits, it still took us 35-45 minutes to finally get to buying some donuts.

My favourite Krispy Kreme donuts are the custard filled and cream filled ones. They didn’t have any of either of them. In fact, about half the varieties I wanted weren’t available. Disappointed, we drove home with an uninspired selection of donuts.

Not before stopping in at Nando’s. And not before stopping in at Safeway to buy some fancy custard to pour over a plain chocolate-covered donut.

At least something tonight lived up to expectations (and it wasn’t the donuts)

Have you ever had one of those just strange moments, where for some reason you’re sure something is right but a moment later you realise that same something is totally wrong?

I had one today. While walking out of the office to get some lunch, all of a sudden I realised I had worn my slippers to work! This is probably one of the most embarrassing things I have ever done.

A moment later I looked down and sure enough, they weren’t there. My regular shoes were there. Now, a couple of times I have actually left the house wearing my slippers, but I always realise before I get to the car. What a strange experience.

As Justine and I often do, yesterday we decided on a random meal to cook. Justine suggested a roast chicken (which we have made a number of times before) and I suggested “a Moroccan/Turkish fish thing”, which ended up being the dish of choice — most likely because Justine couldn’t be bothered cooking.

After a quick Google, I found a recipe for Moroccan Fish Tajine. The particular recipe I used wasn’t cooked exactly in the same way as the Wikipedia entry mentions, but had the same flavours. The main flavours of the dish were — for me — the fish (obviously), cumin, lemon, coriander and paprika. The flavours mainly came from the Charmoula which I made first and took only a couple of minutes. In addition to the Charmoula, I added carrots, celery, onions and some fish stock (I had quite a bit of trouble finding fish stock at our Coles — it was there but hiding from view!).

I’d intended on using sea perch for the fish, but the local fish shop only had 250g of that fish, so I opted for around 700g of rockling, which ended up tasting pretty damned nice anyway.

The final dish had a slight curry-ish flavouring to it, but mostly flavoured as I mentioned above. The new things we try to cook don’t always come out, but thankfully this time it worked out extremely well! Even the leftovers tonight were good, though the fish was a tad rubbery.

I have no idea why, but I’ve been recently been getting heaps of spam sent to my regular email address. I’m usually pretty careful with giving this address out to forms and putting in web pages and the like, but I guess I must have signed up to something inadvertantly.

Gmail is usually pretty good at filtering out spam, but it’s now letting through up to 2 a day and Thunderbird, while it allows you to “train” for spam, is letting through 3-4 some days.

I know this is actually a pretty low figure for some people, but it’s irritating to me. Has anyone else been getting more spam over the last couple of weeks?