The Winning Post is Love
Nov. 7th, 2016 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyI should have written this entry last Tuesday to use this title on Melbourne Cup day. Ah well.
Today I thought it would be fun to do some random reviews throughout the day. I found a website that generated three random times for me, and this is what I was up to at the appointed hour:
10:45 – Reading Fresh magazine after unpacking the groceries – ★ ★ ★
I did the grocery shopping this morning, including picking up the November issue of Fresh, the free monthly recipe magazine from Woolworths. I generally prefer the free Coles magazine, but I had to go to Woolworths today because Coles doesn't stock His Lordship's favourite flavours of Fancy Feast cat food and heaven forbid we run out of Savoury Salmon or Seafood Medley.
Anyway, Fresh. The whole point of this magazine is product placement and simple seasonal recipes. I like them because I can use them for a month, then rip out any recipe I want to keep and toss the rest in the recycling. With November being the last month of spring, Fresh is now looking towards the start of summer. The cover recipe is a four-tier red velvet cake topped with berries, which looks good but is not something I'm likely to make. I don't know if it's a print error or deliberate styling, but there's something weirdly retro and oversaturated about the photos of the Weeknight Dinners; even if the recipe sounds good, the pictures are old-fashioned and unappetising. There are a few things I might try – things from the Summer Pastas and Around the World with Street Food sections – but I suspect the whole magazine will be recycled at the end of the month.
Also, it says I can get on trend this Christmas with metallic Sellotape, so look out for that.
(Oh, look! They put it online. You can whip up a four-tier red velvet cake of your very own.)
12:15 – Sending a credit card statement to my salary packaging firm – ★ ★ ★ ★
This is probably getting further into the arcane mysteries of Australia's tax laws than anyone really wants, but short version: because not-for-profit organisations, such as the one I worked for, can't compete with for-profit organisations on salary, they are allowed to offer certain tax concessions instead. One of those is salary packaging, whereby employees can receive part of their pay tax-free, as long as it is paid into a loan account. You have to provide proof of the debt. Hence, on receiving my October credit card statement today, I sent a copy of the front page to my work's salary packaging firm. And that's the last time I'll have to do that.
Basically, the impact of salary packaging is five star, but the paperwork is a bit of a pain.
15:40 – Fiddling around with Time Machine – ★ ★
Ever since upgrading to OSX Sierra, the Time Machine backup on my laptop has been playing up. It gets stuck preparing, or it won't recognise the backup drive if it's plugged in when I turn the laptop on, or it won't recognise the drive if I plug it in after, or it won't let me shut down the laptop, or... you get the picture. I've been following instructions to do various re-sets. I haven't had any problems with the iMac, which is an older machine and the one I'd have thought was more likely to have trouble. Over the weekend, I wondered if maybe it was the backup itself, so this morning I bought a new drive and I was formatting it at review time this afternoon. It's now in the middle of doing a full backup, and all seems well so far. Fingers crossed.
That was fun, wasn't it? Perhaps I could do that all week.
Knitting update: I unknitted the row I had to unknit and threaded a lifeline through it in case I had to do it again, and as that's all I did last week it doesn't seem worth photographing it. I had it resting on my knees during the unknitting and threading and I must say it's very warm. If the cardigan doesn't work out it can be an oddly shaped blanket.
Finally, by popular demand (two), I have set up a Goodreads account as todayiamadaisy (of course). Do friend me (or whatever their term for it is) if you'd like. (For new friends here, I should say I am also todayiamadaisy on Pinterest, if you'd care to follow my quest to find the world's worst shoes. Just when I think I've captured them all, another one shows up.)
Today I thought it would be fun to do some random reviews throughout the day. I found a website that generated three random times for me, and this is what I was up to at the appointed hour:
10:45 – Reading Fresh magazine after unpacking the groceries – ★ ★ ★
I did the grocery shopping this morning, including picking up the November issue of Fresh, the free monthly recipe magazine from Woolworths. I generally prefer the free Coles magazine, but I had to go to Woolworths today because Coles doesn't stock His Lordship's favourite flavours of Fancy Feast cat food and heaven forbid we run out of Savoury Salmon or Seafood Medley.
Anyway, Fresh. The whole point of this magazine is product placement and simple seasonal recipes. I like them because I can use them for a month, then rip out any recipe I want to keep and toss the rest in the recycling. With November being the last month of spring, Fresh is now looking towards the start of summer. The cover recipe is a four-tier red velvet cake topped with berries, which looks good but is not something I'm likely to make. I don't know if it's a print error or deliberate styling, but there's something weirdly retro and oversaturated about the photos of the Weeknight Dinners; even if the recipe sounds good, the pictures are old-fashioned and unappetising. There are a few things I might try – things from the Summer Pastas and Around the World with Street Food sections – but I suspect the whole magazine will be recycled at the end of the month.
Also, it says I can get on trend this Christmas with metallic Sellotape, so look out for that.
(Oh, look! They put it online. You can whip up a four-tier red velvet cake of your very own.)
12:15 – Sending a credit card statement to my salary packaging firm – ★ ★ ★ ★
This is probably getting further into the arcane mysteries of Australia's tax laws than anyone really wants, but short version: because not-for-profit organisations, such as the one I worked for, can't compete with for-profit organisations on salary, they are allowed to offer certain tax concessions instead. One of those is salary packaging, whereby employees can receive part of their pay tax-free, as long as it is paid into a loan account. You have to provide proof of the debt. Hence, on receiving my October credit card statement today, I sent a copy of the front page to my work's salary packaging firm. And that's the last time I'll have to do that.
Basically, the impact of salary packaging is five star, but the paperwork is a bit of a pain.
15:40 – Fiddling around with Time Machine – ★ ★
Ever since upgrading to OSX Sierra, the Time Machine backup on my laptop has been playing up. It gets stuck preparing, or it won't recognise the backup drive if it's plugged in when I turn the laptop on, or it won't recognise the drive if I plug it in after, or it won't let me shut down the laptop, or... you get the picture. I've been following instructions to do various re-sets. I haven't had any problems with the iMac, which is an older machine and the one I'd have thought was more likely to have trouble. Over the weekend, I wondered if maybe it was the backup itself, so this morning I bought a new drive and I was formatting it at review time this afternoon. It's now in the middle of doing a full backup, and all seems well so far. Fingers crossed.
That was fun, wasn't it? Perhaps I could do that all week.
Knitting update: I unknitted the row I had to unknit and threaded a lifeline through it in case I had to do it again, and as that's all I did last week it doesn't seem worth photographing it. I had it resting on my knees during the unknitting and threading and I must say it's very warm. If the cardigan doesn't work out it can be an oddly shaped blanket.
Finally, by popular demand (two), I have set up a Goodreads account as todayiamadaisy (of course). Do friend me (or whatever their term for it is) if you'd like. (For new friends here, I should say I am also todayiamadaisy on Pinterest, if you'd care to follow my quest to find the world's worst shoes. Just when I think I've captured them all, another one shows up.)