So, the weekend. My parents and sion_a's parents were both here on the Saturday, meeting each other for the first time. I'd been stressing about this somewhat (as you can imagine) but in the event they seemed to get on okay. Which is reassuring. Still not convinced they have much in common, but hey, they probably won't see that much of each other anyway ...

Cooking for all six of us went okay, too, despite dietary awkwardnesses -- my dad's a vegetarian, sion_a's dad prefers to have meat in every main meal, my mum's watching her blood-pressure, sion_a is just fussy... ;-) We did a roast chicken, a nut roast, and a selection of veg (potatoes, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower). Believe it or not I'd never cooked a whole roast chicken before, but it really was as easy as lnr had assured me that it was. :-) Decided to avoid complicated stuffings and just went for lemon butter all over the chicken, and some onion and half a lemon stuck inside it.

The potatoes were supposed to be lemon-roasted new potatoes -- mix olive oil, lemon juice and a little sugar together and pour over the potatoes, then roast. I used Juliette potatoes (biggish new potatoes) because that was what Sainsburys had on buy-one-get-one-free (cheapskate, moi?) but in retrospect I think they would have worked better texture-wise if they'd either been much smaller new potatoes, or proper big roasties. They tasted nice though.

Will add the nut roast recipe here later if I remember; it came out a bit soggy but very tasty. Will also post a cite for the book it came from as it's a brilliant veggie cookery book.

It was quite amusing to see my dad and sion_a's dad peering under the bonnet of my car ... and quite ego-boosting for me to be able to actually hold a conversation with them about the workings of the car. (And hey, this kind of thing can only be good for my butch cred...) It was much more amusing, though, to see my dad try to drive her ... surprising, as he used to be quite a car enthusiast, but I guess you get out of practice (or rather you get used to the <four-yorkshiremen>luxury</four-yorkshiremen> of a modern car). In the end we had to pull over and I took us back ... which gave me another nice ego-boost as I managed to do a nearly-technically-perfect three-point turn and then drive us back without any gear-crunching or stalling or anything. :-)

On Saturday night we had a partylet -- small, but fun (no analogies, please). It was good to be able to talk to lnr for a bit beforehand (and in a brief kitchen party -- all girls together, nothing dodgy) -- that certainly left me feeling a lot happier about the things that I had been feeling irrationally wibbly about. On the downside, I ended up drinking too much, which meant that Sunday morning was spent in my standard post-party state: that is, hating myself for behaving in my usual overstated way at parties and social gatherings in general. (To be fair, I do feel like this even if I don't drink, so I don't think it's just the alcohol, but I think it's a contributing factor. And self-loathing with added hangover is not good for the constitution.)

Spent Sunday morning (the bits of it I was awake for, anyway) tinkering with pto452 (oo-er, that looks much dodgier when I give her a user-id). Cleaned the horribly murky spark-plugs and made a mental note to move fixing the choke cable much higher up the priority list. (I dread to think what that mixture is doing to the car's innards, and I know what it's doing to the petrol consumption.) I'm wondering about that... is it the sort of thing that could be fixed with a new bit of wire at the end, rather than a whole replacement cable? (Picture here if that helps with diagnosis... I'm afraid it's not a brilliant picture, but was the best I could get with my camera!)

Finally got a chance to attack the rust on the floor, which involved taking the driver's chair out to get to it properly. There are still bits I can't get to without tearing up the insulation-type-stuff that's stuck to the floor beneath the carpet and underlay (and it will be tearing up -- this stuff does not want to come off), but I think I'll need to block out a bit more time to deal with them.

Note to self: DO NOT TAKE OUT THE CHAIRS UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, as they are a complete pig to get back in -- four screws which all have to be perfectly aligned in, and have to go through two washers, a piece of metal, the carpet, and the floor of the car.

Car-faff overlapped rather more than I'd intended with a visit from ewx -- hopefully he didn't mind too much. Still managed to have a nice talk with him anyway afterwards. Then sion_a and I headed over to his and lnr's house for dinner, more talking, and looking through a rather fun set of reproductions of 50s fetish magazines.

Work today was better than usual, though not because of the actual work -- just because of sweet things like a lovely email from lnr (thank you sweetheart -- you made me feel warm and loved...); positive things like getting email from people I haven't heard from for a while; generally groovy things like an eclectic selection of music (looking at the CDs I'd brought with me and thinking "Hmmm, Offspring or Dowland?" was a bizarre moment even for me...); and fun things like flirting by /msg on irc (no further comment, names withheld to protect the 'innocent'.) ;-)

After work I picked up a friend from the station; she wanted to steal some of my furniture. :-) Or rather, I quite happily donated two sets of CD-drawers and a coffee table to her new house in London. We have more space in our living-room!

...

In terms of the bigger picture, I feel like the current rash of emotional angst is more under control -- I still need to talk to daneel_olivaw properly (not scary Big Relationship Talk, just actually have proper conversation!), and I still feel angry (not with him) about a couple of things, but generally things are looking better.

Current Mood: IW4 the weekend, already
Now playing: Jeff Buckley: Grace