• 09:47 Getting excited about the bank holiday weekend...
• 10:52 Needing coffee...
• 11:00 Coffee obtained, hurrah!
• 12:24 Wondering how to pronounce "Bareilles". Baray? Barayls? Bareels? Barryeyelez? Barbecue?

Does anyone have any experience with Extended or Continuous Wear contact lenses?

Extended Wear = Leave em in for a week, night and day
Continuous Wear= Leave em in for a month, night and day

See (har!), I wear glasses most of the time for convenience - I'm far to lazy to put lenses in every morning - but I like to wear contacts when I go out. I used to get 30 pairs every three months, and since I only ever used about 5 pairs a month, I built up a stockpile! A contact lens mountain as it were. I cancelled my order when we moved over to Ireland.

This mountain is now a tiny hillock. I am running out. Looking online, there are some great deals for daily disposables, but the Extended and Continuous Wear ones caught my eye (har again!).

I love the idea of not having to put lenses in every day, but it feels a bit icky having them in constantly for up to a month... I'm sure they wouldn't be able to sell them if they were bad for you, but still...

I'm tempted to order some of the weekly ones, and see how I get on. They are a bit more expensive than the daily ones, but I think the convenience would easily outweigh the small price increase.

Has anyone tried them?

• 08:52 Considering painting false eyes onto my eyelids so I can sleep at my desk. Hmm, but how would I remain upright? Needs some thought...
• 10:43 Loving payday, hating rent day. Sucks when they are the same day.
• 12:51 Glad I confirmed that my Hungarian colleague knew the difference between kidney beans and baked beans - my chili is saved!
• 14:46 Ready to go home now, please.
• 20:42 Being gobsmacked that the camera crew didn't stop the cat from eating the canapes on Come Dine With Me!

I just caught two flies doing it on my postit notes...

Brad's ridiculously easy pizza recipe.

For the dough:
2 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup oil (supposed to be olive oil, but I just use vegetable or sunflower oil)

For the sauce:
Tinned tomatoes
Whatever else you want to put in it!

Toppings:
It's up to you!

And so, we begin.

Mix all the dough ingredients together in a bowl, and then knead it a bit, you can add a drop of water (or I sometimes add a bit more oil) if it's a bit dry. You should be left with a fairly clean bowl and a firm, non-sticky dough. Leave it in the bowl somewhere warm for a half an hour or so, maybe 45 mins, covered with a teatowel or some clingfilm. It doesn't seem to rise very much, but you're supposed to leave it so I do!

While it's resting, I make the sauce, but you could just use something out of a jar. I use tinned tomatoes, drain off some of the juice (you don't want watery sauce!), put them in the blender with some garlic, then put it in a saucepan to heat it through and add whatever you like (chilli, oregano, paprika, mixed herbs, lemon juice, half an oxo cube...) and some salt and pepper. Heating it through helps all the flavours mix properly, and also if you leave it and give it a stir every now and then it will thicken up nicely.

Pre-heat the oven to about 200 degrees (but see note at the end of the recipe). Back to the dough. Flour the worktop and sort of smoosh it out flat. I make mine into a rectangle because it fits on the baking tray properly that way. It doesn't have to be perfect, rough edges look good! It's rustic! I make mine quite thin, you could use a rolling pin if you wanted to.

When you've got it the shape and thickness you want, put it on your baking tray and coat it with some oil to stop the sauce soaking in too much and making it soggy. Then cover it with sauce. Use lots of sauce, because it will dry out in the oven. If you don't cover it right to the edges they go a bit crispy, I don't like that but it's up to you.

Finally, just put your toppings on! Whatever you like, but bear in mind some things take longer to cook properly. I often use mozarella (sliced roughly) and ham.

Now, the temperature in the oven actually depends on how thick your pizza dough is. I make mine thin, so about 20 minutes at 200 degrees is fine. If the dough is thicker, it needs more time to cook through properly, so I'd say a bit longer at a lower temperature - you'll have to experiment to get it how you like it, but that just means more pizza! Hurrah!

• 08:47 Having sweaty pits and sore little toes after walking to work.
• 15:49 Drinking the closest possible thing to black coffee without it actually being black. There must be milk rationing in Hungary...
• 22:38 Mmmm yoghurt. Nom, and indeed nom.

• 09:10 Still in bed asleep. IN MY MIND!
• 10:40 Blinking rapidly after somehow hitting my glasses with the telephone.
• 11:09 Wondering if I could pull off a cowboy hat...
• 14:31 Kicking myself for not saving that excellent naan recipe I found! I can't find it again... *uncontrollable sobbing*
• 14:40 Hurrah! Saved in my gmail for all eternity!
• 21:39 Also contemplating yoghurt...

You know those pics on the internet of people putting CDs and grapes and other things in microwaves and coming up with some pretty spectacular results?

Well check out what happens when you zap a mobile phone!

Seen on Gizmodo.

• 10:20 Remembering why I used to love Steps so much! I'm so gay...
• 10:40 Supping coffee, coveting crisps.
• 15:11 Sing singing along to the Ting Tings...
• 16:13 77 minutes to go...!

Doesn't my boss realise how much work I've got to do? She just forwarded me this in an email.

CLICKY

Like I need any help procrastinating...

• 11:28 Still way confused about my fecking iPod playlist...
• 11:29 Oh, my bad, it's fixed.
• 12:42 Drowning in a sea of paperwork...
• 13:02 SO glad it's lunchtime cos I REALLY need a wee...
• 14:40 Wishing I could have the last 40 minutes back again, please...
• 17:21 Commencing ten minutes of procrastination...NOW!
• 19:54 Nom nom choccy bikkits...

• 08:48 Wondering why I didn't go to the toilet at home. The work toilets are horrid. Woe is me.
• 09:07 Mouthwash + Coffee = Yeuch.
• 10:03 Wondering what I did to my iPod playlist yesterday to make it stop working properly...
• 13:56 Thinking how nice it is when there's someone waiting at home.
• 15:03 #Over and over and over and over, like a monkey with a miniature cymbal, the joy of repetition really is in you...

• 10:31 Understanding what it's like when people bugger off on holiday! #
• 14:06 Wondering why it took me so long to discover the Young Knives! #
• 15:56 Thinking that "time and motion" records are a waste of time. And motion. #

We're back safe and sound, currently lounging at the boarding kennels with a beeyoootiful smoothie and waiting for the man of the house to come back and grill some meat to within an inch of its life. Actually, I'm rather hoping it will already be dead when he starts grilling it.

Anyway, we're shattered, so I'll write tomorrow - I'm not back at work til Monday, yay!

Or, rather, too early. Far too early.

We're at the airport waiting for our flight, which is due to leave at 6am. We left Galway just after midnight, and we've been here for a couple of hours but had a leisurely walk to the departure gate which is just as well cos it's about 12 miles from the security check in bit. And they confiscated our deodourant because it was more than 100ml. So we'll smell in Berlin.

Anyway, I've got 40 seconds left so I'd better go!

30 seconds, argh!

Jeez, it's been a while.

I've been ok, busy at work and lazy at home, hence the lack of blogging. I've been keeping an eye out, but not commenting much.

We had a lovely weekend last week with Nick, Mrs F and Mr S. They blogged all about it, so I won't repeat it, but I had a lovely weekend, and it was over far too quickly. The bank holiday was rounded off with a barbecue at our friends' house, followed by a mammoth WoW session (four of us in one room! how sad is that?!).

And so now for the excitedness! We're off to Berlin tomorrow!

We have been planning it for ages, but we didn't book our tickets until Thursday, and I've only just received hotel confirmation! Talk about cutting it fine...!

It's actually been pretty stressful. We couldn't book the flights when we wanted to because we didn't have a suitable card to book flights with Ryanair. So we applied for a suitable card, only to find out that it wasn't suitable. So we switched to a different bank who provide a suitable card, which arrived three weeks ago, but there was no money in that account to pay for the tickets. We paid a cheque in to cover the amount, and waited for it to clear. And waited some more. And then on the Thursday, it was supposed to have cleared but noooo it hadn't, I phoned up and asked what was going on, and was told they would call me back and let me know as soon as they found out.

I went to the Ryanair site to make sure the flights were still available, and found out the price had gone up by €30 since I last looked, bit of a bastard but what can you do, we should have booked earlier.

The bank sorted out the cheque, I went to book the tickets, put my card details in, and it bollocksed up. I put them in again, still no good. As I was entering them the third time, I noticed that my name is spelled incorrectly on the card, and I think that's why it wasn't working. So, I started again and used Landers' card details instead. Imagine my horror when I saw that the tickets where now another €40 more expensive! I think they had sort of reserved the tickets before, even though I hadn't been able to pay for them, and now they had two less tickets to sell so the website automatically puts the price up! I tried to call them to sort it out, but it just rang out forever so I gave up. Annoying, but that's Ryanair for you.

Yes, Ryanair are cheap if you get tickets at the right time, but the downside of that is the customer service if anything goes wrong. They cut costs everywhere.

It is nice if you only take hand luggage though. I have already checked us in online, no messing about at the airport, and no waiting for luggage at the other end - marvellous!

So, last night we decided where to stay (with Rampage's help I'd narrowed it down to a few places) and we've booked into a floating hostel! It's a boat on the Spree, right in the city centre as far as I can make out. We're staying with Rampage for a couple of nights, but we didn't want to impose too much. Boaty goodness FTW!

Our flight is at 6am on Sunday morning, we have to be at Dublin airport for like 4:30, and we're driving there, so we stayed up late last night, watched a couple of films - Saw 4 (gross) and Stardust (amazing and beautiful and funny and soppy) - and got up at around 7am. The reasoning behind this madness is that we'll be tired this afternoon, we can go and have a nap, and we'll wake up this evening, drop the dogs off at our friends' house, and we'll be OK for the drive to Dublin. We might have to have an early night on Sunday but that'll probably be for the best since we're meeting Meno on Monday and we'll need all the energy we can get by all accounts!

We're packed, camera batteries are charging, iPod playlists are updated, I've got a bit of housework to do so we don't come back to a total bombsite, maybe a quick WoW session, and then bed for a few hours.

Berlin, here we come!

Hope you like it!

...for Soyunperdedor, if I wasn't skint and things of that nature.

CLICKY!

I'm not sure she'd fit into it though, maybe Super Hans would get more use out of it.