Smugness

I love holidays. I love staying in bed until 8.30am. I love getting up and having a slow breakfast while reading my emails. I love having the kids quietly playing. I love going down to the treadmill and not having to rush.

After I'd come upstairs, stretched, showered, done my hair and did a quick tidy, I headed out. I took Billy-Joe down the beach to stay at a freinds' house and then I headed along the coast to the Plaza and I picked up the DVD recorder that we decided upon, and also my new saucepan set from House. It's amazing how easy it is going to the shops with only two kids in tow and not three! Now Billy-Joe is generally my best behaved child, especially considering he's the eldest, but with him out of the picture it was just ten times easier. At one stage Sammy and Mickey played up, in House of all places. Too much crockery there - so I pulled them aside, made them each hang on to opposite sides of the trolley, and voila peace reigned again. I bought them a couple of biscuits from the Cookie Man and they were happy. I didn't want to buy them lunch, as it all adds up, and I had spent enough money, plus Barbi was coming to have coffee with me at 1pm and it was 12.40pm by the time we'd picked up the saucepans.

I had a lovely cuppa with my best friend. It's so lovely just chatting and debriefing. Even though I'm no longer involved in the business, we still share a very close connection in regards to Daisy's which is really special, and something we vowed to keep when we agreed that I leave the partnership. Barbi headed off back to the store, and in the wake of her encouraging words I decided to attempt to instal the DVD recorder myself. The funny thing is, give me a computer, peripherals, software, cameras, and to a much lesser extent a mobile phone, and I can navigate around it no worries, and have solved many a problem on my own. Unfortuately this skill has never crossed over to anything to do with TVs, VCRs, DVDs, or stereos........ I think if someone sat down and explained it to me I would probably understand, but the whole in/out thing gets me, how do you know what it goes out of and into??? What if it's out the other and in this one? Far out - too confusing to this chickie. Have I instilled you with any confidence in me at this point?? My reasoning to attempt this myself was a strong one. When we bought the last DVD recorder, we got the cable guy to instal it. $130 well spent! Saved us bucket loads of angst, stress and headache pills. When we bought the new plasma TV, we got the cable guy in again and it cost $170 to hook up the DVD recorder, VCR and Austar (cable TV) and we also had him instal a special surge protector which we'd bought but we needed extra cables for. Again money well spent. The VCR had already not been recording, but was still playing. Two nights later the kids wanted to watch a video - nada, zilch. It didn't work!! Then about a month later, the DVD wouldn't work anymore!! It started falling apart slowly, it wouldn't play certain DVDs and then it just stopped all together. Then it ended up just flashing 'loading' without ever stopping. I had solved the problem by unplugging the wretched flashing nuisance, but discovered my digital stations didn't work because they were running through the DVD!!!

The fact that an 18 month old DVD recorder had broken was one thing, and I was quietly happy that it had died, because I hated it. It would record to DVD, but was so painful and so slow that by the time I'd worked out how to record something the show was half over. I hated it!! I think it knew! I was move peeved that we had spent a large sum of money getting the whole thing hooked up and the only thing that was okay was the TV and Austar box. So, that's why I decided to hook it up myself. I really had nothing to lose. I had bought a HDMI cable, which allows you to pause the TV. How cool is that? I can hit pause watching my favourite show, while I duck off to the toilet!

I hooked it all up. Was very excited when the lights started flashing, and then sat back very smugly, while I just pushed buttons and had the thing working, playing a DVD without even opening the destruction (err instruction) booklet!! My motto has always been 'When all else fails, read the instructions'.

So when I told my darling what I'd done, he was very excited and I'd scored some more brownie points. He was so excited that when I mentioned that nice ice cream would be nice for dessert, he headed straight out after dinner and bought me some Sara Lee ice cream. I did good. I am happy, and smug. I have already recorded a movie that we've only half watched, and I only had to have a quick look at the manual. It's an awesome machine, I am impressed. It's the same brand as our Panasonic plasma TV so it has a viera link, so both items work very well together. I can even do away with one remote control and use the same one for TV and DVD player. Pausing and rewinding live TV is a huge plus too - I'm very happy. No buyer's remorse with this baby. I bought a five year extended warranty, we're not getting burnt again with an item breaking a few months out of warranty.

I did have another coup today too. My saucepans are fabulous. The set included a fry pan which I wasn't that fussed about, but since I'd been reading about the quality of steel pans, and all good chefs use stainless steel pans, they don't use non stick, I decided I would use it for my dinner. I cooked hamburgers in my scanpan and did the bacon and onion in the new one! It worked very very well. I just used a bit of peanut oil but it didn't stick and cooked fantastic. When Scanpan completely dies, I 'll buy the bigger Baccarat one. My hamburgers were the best I've ever made. I'll put a recipe here if you're interested, but I didn't take any photos - sorry. It's rather hectic making six hamburgers at once!

Shiny new Bacarrat Elite saucepans.My old ones are 23 years old and have served me well. I kept the big one which is top left in the photo. It's great for pasta.

Scanpan in the background with my hamburgers and onions and baking cooking in new pan, without sticking!!