aka R’acquel

Thanks to Mrs.Lifecruiser for the recipe. My mouth was watering when i first read about these and it was a pleasure to try and create it in my kitchen.

At first, i was curious to see just how much this dough would rise. It’s the most amount of yeast i’ve ever used in my entire life!

I was impressed after the first 30mnutes, thought i’d let it go until the full 40min and this is what happened.

My son had fun helping me punch this big fat mushroom.

For the first one, i did the cinnamon filling.

The second one, i thought it would be cool to try out the hazelnut filling suggestion - so i used nutella.

Here’s what they looked like before the oven. I couldn’t believe they would take only 5-10minutes to cook and almost burnt them! Pulled out of the oven in the nick of time!

 

Cinnamon.

 

Nutella.

Slightly over-cooked i think. Looking forward to next time with sultana, apple, cinnamon & custard filling

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Amaryllis - a summer flowering bulb, for which i paid $10 for!

I will need to dig this up and take it with me when i move. Imagine when even more flowers come up the next round - i look forward to that! Yummy.

Calendula - I’ve enjoyed growing these so much. I love the different hues of orange-yellows. Looking forward to harvesting these for use in an anti-inflammatory herbal remedy soon.

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My goodness. Another morning without the ability to gain a cup of coffee for two days in a row. Why else was it important to make sure that the fridge was always stocked with milk? Perhaps it was meant to be, perhaps it will help me quit.

Worth checking in here to keep in touch. A space i can not allow my life’s priorities to take over and forget about this part of the brain. The freespace from other people’s demands. I have so much work to do before i can spend more time in here, but i’m getting there in small steps.

So - how to overcome a serious round of coffee withdrawal? Time to get the rental lists from the real eastate agents to see what’s available. I’m hoping to go to a cafe on my own to get a real coffee. Two birds with one stone.  

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Nice to see BlueHost offer me something more to buy. If an onine business is elusive with their costs upfront, expect more of that kind of behaviour?

I was able to restore a new Zen Cart shop within 3 hours. Quite a sensation of relief to know that all the time i spent building it up to this point has not been wasted.

Life atm, is about ticking off boxes and clearing the weight living in my house. Lots of books have been bundled off for sale. Can only take things step by step. Life rewards action. 

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A good morning to wake up to. Everything connected to a database has finally resolved. So good to see NM & Oz Whistles working again.

The problem, caused by another misunderstanding. A configuration error at there end, upon “further checking”. In other words, this issue could have been resolved a lot more sooner.

I’m glad to have things working well and it’s likely that the account will not see any further problems for a long time. Looking forward to moving on.

Greetings from another land of green fields.

I say,

“Moooooooo!”

Those familiar with Newtown Mums are bound to understand to full significance of that terminology.

New pastures - not for Newtown Mums so much but for me. A back-up strategy, because MD Webhosting has done such a fine job of messing up my account very badly this last month. tsktsk.

It’s been bad. I was not informed of a server move - this company thought it was OK to just press-on and do such a stupid move anyway, giving me no chance to do back-ups on my own or give clients some advanced warning of potential downtime and….

DATA LOSS.

Stupid move it was - especially if you are running websites with dynamic content. It took about 72 hrs for the sever move to get through it’s propagation but the account has still not found resolution.

Problems with trying to restore a back-up of an eshop. The cpanel back-up wasn’t working properly. They were almost going to charge me up to $79.90 to restore the database, even when it was their fault for messing up my websites because of the server move. Problems with the subdomains not displaying the url address properly in the browser. Problems with cpanel not being able to install to the subdomains - because somehow, the subdomains became unknown to cpanel. They’ve had to reset the account, another DNS propogation to undergo and it’s exceeded 72hrs.

Time to move on? Yes. Until i can get the existing account to get properly fixed over there. Then I will see how things go.

So, this account is currently hosted by Bluehost. I did a review on the reliability of the service and it looks like someone else went through exactly the same kind of problem as i did with MD Webhosting - so hey - i’m certainly expecting this company to fuck me over too.

This company has many bad signs already upon signing up. Failure to properly disclose prices, cheeky sideways selling of “Free $50 Yahoo Advertising Credit” (so long as you’re happy to pay Yahoo $5 to actually activate it).

What’s going well for it so far is that the CEO has a very strong stand against pornography. No pornographic content allowed to be hosted. Oh yes, this is big for me.

I was researching for which webhosting company to go to next. I saw some good ones but then i clicked on the “adult” webhosts - and was shocked to see that the ones i was interested in were ok with hosting pornographic content - so hey, fuck that. If i have the ability to make a stand against it with my money, i will - but i won’t corner myself in the process if i find myself being placed into a situation where i do not have that freedom of choice either.

Another good sign is that they have been operating since 1996, so that’s looking promising. This is my 6th webhost. 2 of my former ones collapsed and went bankrupt! (One.Tel & Dingo Blue)

Another good sign is that this business is offering a shitload of more bang for my buck compared to the current one. This has been my experience with designing online - there’s always something offering much better value somewhere. 

It’s my first time with a webhosting company that lives outside of Australia too, however the aussie MD Webhosting mob were also using data centers based in the US too.  

Anywayz, i’d better retreat back into another non-fiction book to learn about how to make a no-loose decision. See which way i should go with regards to transferring my other accounts. If MD Webhosting fails to give me compensation for downtime of 7 days, is that enough signal to move on? This current webhost doesn’t guarantee uptime either. They have crossed the line with me, but i shall see how things go.  

For the meanwhile, this is the beginning of another life. I have been been going through a big phase of transition lately and i’m looking forward to seeing where this one is going to take me.

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I’ve tackled many major things with my emotional shelf again this week. My photos have been well sorted into themes but it will take at least 3 months for me to composite my first 60 pages for a digital scrapbook publication. I also completed 30 days of keeping my kitchen tidy, so I deposited $44 into my savings account last night for a job well done. I’m extending the goal for another 30 days because the habit isn’t up to the “autopilot” level that i want it yet, but i’m getting close. Sewed two more shirts & another pair of trousers for my son.

So here is how things stand. It sometimes confuses me - what is the objective of this game? To make my shelf empty? This shelf is a bit like my brain. More space opens when i can finish these things. There will hopefully come a time when i can bring more art back into my life, but for now - i still have things to finish first.

My bonsai fig, sometimes known as Rx, is maybe about 3+ years old now. I forget what year it was when i bought him and he was such a tiny little thing when i first got him. He is like my Madonna plant - a baby tree that has experienced many extreme make overs in his whole lifetime. He’s been nude quite a number of times too, so can be quite the baldy exhibitionist but he can also have his very bushy moments too. I have quite a few pictures of him in my archives.

This tree is very much like an organic book of my life. I have travelled with it for so long. The main branches are like the major chapters of my life. The sub-branches that emerge are no different to facing the forked roads in my life. Which way do i want to go? Where am i headed? I have nurtured it’s branches to do very crazy artistic things because this is what fig trees are good at. I’m not following tradition - i’m just bending the branches to the kinds of curves that I find aesthetically pleasing. It sometimes feels like i’m building a house out of a tree, or even a magical playground and sometimes i hope it might be able to turn into an asymetrical celtic knot. If he gets too bushy, life usually has far too many things going on at once so it’s good to cut back. When he gets too baldy without enough leaves because maybe some animals have tried to munch him down really badly - i don’t need to worry because he is an everlasting pool of resource. He will ALWAYS find a new way to branch out regardless of the circumstances. Nothing can stop him. He’s almost invincible! A never ending source of many beautiful metaphoric connections with life. One of my most treasured plants!

I haven’t slept for 38 hours in an attempt to adjust my body clock today so i’ve had to take things very easy going for today’s tackle. I didn’t know what i could do that would be small and simple until i spotted the dirty table, which reminded me of Mrs Lifecruiser’s table last week. It’s amazing how good things can feel after a very simple wipe for a glass table!

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