Out and About

I have quite a few circles of friends, but I’d say that my biggest group of friends is my “scuba diving group”. Once upon a time we used to go scuba diving together. But now, you’d be hard pressed to find any one of us who has touched a wetsuit in years. We’re too busy with kids, mortgages, life. You know how it goes.

We still see each other often. We go camping together. We have barbecues together. We do outdoorsy things like bush walking, kayaking, boating, watching movies. We’ve created a happy little village for ourselves and our kids. It’s a rare and beautiful thing.

So it makes me beam with delight to see my friends (particularly this group of friends) all dressed up and without kids!

Tuxedos, bow ties, top hats, fedoras, shiny croc-skin pointy shoes!

Strappy silk dresses, flowing gold sequins, long satin gloves, pearls, fur, and diamonds!

My lovely girlfriend, Bec, celebrated her birthday with a Casino Royale theme party. There were card tables and roulette tables, finger food, dancing, entertainment, a DJ and a dance floor.

Now if you ask me honestly, I have to say that I don’t like gambling at all. Especially the whole “losing money” thing.

Plus I don’t like roulette. That spinning wheel? I can’t handle it. It makes me want to barf on the table.

But… I really like card games!

I played all kinds of card games when I was a kid and teenager and I am pretty good at it. Especially bridge, blackjack and poker.

I used to love playing poker. I can’t do a straight poker face to save my life. But, I can pretend to be a “ditzy princess” like a star. I’ll be chatting casually about frivolous topics like high heeled shoes, and then BAM I’ll throw a straight flush right atchya.

Look at me! I match the card table!

Because I can’t stand losing, it means I can’t play at casinos. My card playing skills get thwarted by my psychological inability to throw perfectly good money away. So I don’t take any risks, I am paralysed with anxiety and I play terribly.

But since we were playing with fake money at this party and I was amongst good friends… I enthusiastically DOVE HEAD FIRST into the card playing spirit. I could feel my competitiveness rise and rise.

As my chips multiplied like a single-celled organism, spilling all over the place, enveloping the table, I wanted more, more, MORE!

Deal faster damn it, faster! Quit talking! Stop entertaining us with card games, give me my hand noooow!

Unfortunately I lost all my fake money and I had to drown my sorrows on the dance floor haha.

This is what I wore! The dress code for the event was black tie glamour, not James Bond characters. So I wore my stunning Pia Gladys Perry dress that I reviewed here.

Perhaps because everyone else wore black, red, white, gold and silver gowns… I kind of stood out and I received so many compliments! Which is lovely and all, but I really think it’s a strange Kermit the Frog colour! Thank goodness it looks ok with my skin colour.

My girlfriend also gave me a gift. A souvenir for the night. I was told that my dress had a split that was worthy of a racey, lacey thigh gun holster.

So I walked around all night, with this knobbly thing between my legs and used it to pew pew all the law breakers.

It was such a great night!! :)

Recently, I had the pleasure of taking a Premium Barista Course, courtesy of Red Balloon.

It was an introductory course called “Espresso Foundations, Level 1”, where I was going to learn about the science and art of espresso making.

Now, I have to say this – I am NOT a coffee snob, and I have NO interest in being a coffee snob.

I mean, I drink instant coffee! With soy or almond milk! And I always get teased whenever I’m with my connoisseur coffee friends.

However, I was interested to why some cafe coffees that I drink are soooooooo good and others are soooooooo hideously bad. I have had so many awful coffees that were burnt, sour, thin, or in some other way disgusting… and I wanted to know WHY.

JUST HOW HARD IS IT TO MAKE A GOOD COFFEE???

I stepped into the little workshop with 2 other barista-wannabees, and I immediately perked up just from the SMELL of coffee.

Our instructor, and lets call him Mr Barista, was very passionate about coffee. He told us a bit about the coffee bean history, roasting, grinding and coffee basics.

Mr Barista let us hold some raw, dried coffee beans… and I popped one into my mouth (like a sneaky child in a lolly shop). It tasted terrible! BLERGH! They were like raw, hard, dried up, wood chips! There was NO nice aroma and NO bitter flavour whatsoever.

He then showed us how to grind the coffee beans, and then how to make an espresso.

Then I had a go. Yup, I pulled my first espresso and it was really easy, hooray!

Mr Barista poured some frothed milk into my espresso… and HOLY COW it was the most amazing coffee I had ever tasted! So smooth, so clean, so creamy. It was heavenly.

But Mr Barista said that it was so easy, because of the way he had set up the machine and the grinder –  apparently it’s really difficult to set it up right.

He adjusted the coffee grinder (just by moving the grinding dial a few notches) to create slightly large coffee grains. He put it through the espresso machine, I tasted it and… it was horrible! Then he purposely ground the coffee slightly too fine… again it was disgusting.

Our task was to adjust the grinder to make that perfect espresso.

Mr Barista then paused dramatically, and told us that… coffee is sensitive.

(I rolled my eyes dramatically at the thought of the little emo coffee beans getting upset by disrespectful treatment. )

Apparently, the sensitive coffee beans absorb moisture from the air and their texture and consistency are affected by the current temperature, the humidity, the age of the bean, the kind of roast, the blend…  so the barista has to compensate for the combined effect of ALL of these variables by changing the settings of the grinder to produce a coarser or finer coffee. So, a lot like being married with kids, right?

And there were other factors, like how well you compacted the coffee once it was ground, how much coffee you put into the basket, how much water you put through the coffee, and probably the relative position of the planet Jupiter to the constellation of Alpha Centuri.

Not to mention, we had to heat and froth the milk correctly. Omg it was so haaard!

Each time we made a coffee, we could see that the oil that stuck to the basket was the wrong oiliness, or the sponginess of the ground coffee was too spongy, or the flow was too flowy, or the colour was the wrong kind of coffee colour, and each time it took a little bit of tweaking here and there… it took us like 8 TO 9 TIMES and we still couldn’t get it right.

I was shocked (and annoyed) to discover that he was right – coffee is so damn sensitive!

On my 10th go, I finally did it – I made a delicious, smooth, creamy flat white.

I was so proud of myself.

I now really appreciated the fine art of coffee making and the skills of a barista.

The end result was so freaking good.

And here is the bad news. I’ve tasted the good stuff and I can’t go back.

Now, whenever I am in a cafe, I derail the conversation I am having, just to complain about how the coffee is not as good as it could be.

I think I’ve turned into one of those annoying coffee snobs haha!

I absolutely recommend this course for anyone who likes to drink coffee. It was was a very enjoyable and valuable experience.

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I’d never been in a room full of hot, muscled, super fit EXCITED men with almost no clothes on – until now.

I went to a night club to support the Perth Fire Fighters as they launched their 2014 Calendar to raise funds for the Princess Margaret Children’s Hospital Total Burns Unit.

I wasn’t exactly delighted to be going, to be honest. I’m a happily married wife and mother of 3 kids, living in a quiet, modest suburban house… what on earth was I doing going to a “ladies’ night” in a NIGHTCLUB? I get enough loud noises and bad behavior at home from my three sons and one husband! Not to mention the theme of the evening was “Doctor’s and Nurses”! You can see my battle with getting an appropriate costume here.

Am I getting old?

But, I was sure it would be… interesting. After all, it was going to be young, hard men taking their clothes off. I may be getting old, but I am still a woman. And these guys were going to take their clothes off for the best of causes.

When I arrived outside the nightclub, I saw a couple of hundred women queuing up to get in…and also that NONE of them were wearing a nurse’s costume. So how stupid did I feel? Oh Well!

I met up with my media contact (also NOT dressed in a medical theme, dammit!) and we discussed a few of the technical aspects of the evening, about when the guys would come out, and where I could stand to get photos, etc.

And then I said to her “Hey, how about we go backstage before the show, and I meet the guys?”

I wanted to really check out the facts, and make sure everything was what it claimed to be. I was suspicious because, having seen the calendar, they all seemed to be far too good looking to be normal human beings. I wouldn’t want you to buy a calender that wasn’t what it seemed. What if these guys were actually professional models and dancers, and not real firemen?

The media person said “Okay”.

So I was taken backstage to meet the currently twelve hottest guys in my whole city.

The backstage area was large, but cluttered with backstage props, chairs, tables, clothes racks and… FIREMEN! When I first saw the guys, it was a little… awkward… for me. Some of them were in their ordinary clothes, some of them were already in their first costume… and some of them were in between. I was blushing a little, but I suspected that these guys could be professional performers… because they didn’t seem AT ALL shy about me being there while they were changing. There were few other women there in nurse’s uniform’s, and it occurred to me that maybe that kind of dedication to a theme was what it took to “get backstage”.

This is me with Dan (Mr August) and Tom (Mr March). Notice that they are wearing braces to hold their pants up, not belts. This means that their pants gape open a little at the top, and since they don’t have any belly bulge, I was tempted to quickly glance down and see if they were wearing fireproof underwear.

I started to feel a bit warm and… flustered. There were so many hard guys around. There was no denying it.  They were all very good looking with striking, angular features, and intense, kind eyes that you could get lost in. Their bodies were very impressive. The effort these guys must put into building this kind of physique was amazing. But were they real?

So I honed in on John, Mr December. He was lifting a few objects to warm up his chest muscles.

We chatted for a bit while he flexed his muscles, me in my nurse’s costume and him in his peek-a-boo fireman’s pants. I’ll be honest with you… I was trying to maintain eye contact, but I was distracted by his chest and abdomen and everything else he had going on. His muscles just didn’t look… REAL. So I asked if I could take a close up picture of his six pack. I kneeled down in front of him, to get the angle of the lights right for the photo. He was such a nice guy. He even smiled at me while I was kneeling there.

Yup, up-close, his muscles certainly looked real to me. Good, glad we got that sorted out!

Obviously the firemen train to operate in very hot conditions, which is probably why they did not seem to be troubled by the increasing heat backstage… but I was getting very warm, and suddenly wished I had worn the skimpier nurses costume.

I found the coverguy of the calendar, another John (Mr July) and asked him lots of questions about being a fireman. He told me that he had never done any kind of modelling or dancing or performing in front of an audience. He also quietly admitted that he was very nervous, but excited (that made two of us). It was sweet to see a big, buff fireman with a vulnerable side, but I felt I needed to do my final check that these guys were real firemen… so I asked him:

“What is the Fireman’s Lift?”

You know when you watch movies, you always see a fireman walking out of a burning building, as it explodes dramatically into flames behind him, and he is holding a maiden-in-distress in his arms.

Anyway, I wanted to know if this “Fireman’s Lift” was an ACTUAL LIFT, or was it just a myth? Do real fireman actually use this lift? Could coverguy John possibly perform this lift on ME? John knew exactly what the Fireman’s Lift was and he performed it to perfection. I could tell it really was no problem for him at all. And it was no problem for me either. He was so strong, he could have picked me up with just one arm. I imagined that he could easily have handled me AND my best friend as the same time.

Ok, I’m aware that I don’t look very distressed here. And that John also has a very big grin on his face. But I’m sure if there was a burning building behind us, it’d look very authentic.

Then someone said that it was five minutes till the show started. John put me down as gently as can be, and suddenly dropped to the floor and started doing push-ups, to really pump up his muscles. I asked him if there was anything I could do to help, and he said I could sit on his back, to stress his muscles more. I thought he was joking, until another fireman yelled out for me to do it.

So I did.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) there are no pictures of me going up and down on a fireman’s back… but I can tell you that I was riding side saddle – in this position, you don’t get to hold on with your knees, but it seems more dignified. Tragically, the media person came by and said I had to leave coverguy John, and join the crowd out the front. My only regret is that I never really got to say a proper goodbye to him.

I found my reserved spot in the front row, joining a crowd of excited women, and the show started. The firemen did short performances and dance acts with cheesy themes – fireman outfits (obviously), pilot outfits, strip trease, etc. You could tell the firemen were not professional performers – they were a bit nervous, but at the same time loving it.

The music was loud and pumping, the energy of the women in the audience was heaving. There was so much screaming, cheering, hooting and laughing. The guys on stage were flirting, grinding, tearing their clothes off. I felt quite intoxicated and energised by it all… and I joined in with the cheering and hooting until my throat was sore! It was so much fun!

Watching the guys on stage, with huge smiles on their faces, you could tell they were having a great time and that’s what made it really enjoyable – as well as the fact that they were all as HOT as can be.

But on a serious note:

Fireman actually have a real excuse for spending a part of every day building up their muscles… because they have a very particular job. They go into a building that is on FIRE, wearing very heavy protective clothing, pick up a whole human being, and carry them up and down ladders and steps and through windows and doors that are on FIRE. So they need to be super strong. And they rip open crashed cars to get people out… not using their bare hands of course, but using really heavy equipment. These are actually super fit guys who literally risk their lives to save you. Of course there is something VERY appealing about that.

At only TEN DOLLARS, the calender is a PERFECT novelty gift for several of your friends for Christmas.

All proceeds will go to support the Princess Margaret Hospital Total Burns Care Unit by funding state-of-the-art equipment and vital research.

You can buy Calendars online from the PMH Online Shop.