Another one of those "Stuff" updates

So, time for another one of those semi-rambing "what's been going on" updates :)

First up, apologies for the delays for the planned post on gender stuff, haven't been finding a chance to sit down and write it all out, hopefully it shall come soon.
It won't be the next one however, since I've just passed the Six Months point of this blog, and plan to do a writeup there. I'll need to compare myself to my benchmarks from the start before I can do so though.

Anyways, main things that have been happening:

Entertainment:
I've been reading through the Dresden Files books recently, up to book nine at the moment. Urban-fantasy detective books with a noir feel. I won't go into too much detail for fear of spoilers, but they're definitely worth a look if you're interested. There's quite a few books but they're self-contained and relatively small, so you don't need to worry about "Arg, I'll need to read a dozen books to get the whole story" type of thing.

Food:
Well, as people have been continually poking and prodding me about, the 'vegetable of the week' plan fell by the wayside as something that I just didn't have the time to keep up with, but I've been trying a few new things with food.
Most recently I've been having a go at roasts. Sounds simple, right? But not something I'd done before (other than one of those ready-to-roast splayed chickens that you just throw in the oven for X minutes), because growing up I'd ended up with the impression that Roasts were some huge arcane ritual taking hours of prep and half a day of cooking time, so I'd never attempted one.
Laura disabused me of this notion while chatting online one night, so I've been having a go at a few of them recently.
Here's one of my first attempts:

It was tasty :)

I'm still failing at managing to do a decent roast potato though, they're just not coming out crispy...

I roasted a Girello last night (from what I can gather it's a similar cut to Silverside) in foil, mustard on the top and covered in red wine. It came out tasty, but a bit dry somehow :(. I've made up a few containers with meat, potatoes, steamed veggies and gravy that I can heat up for lunch the next few days.

Oh yes, my plans to start making my lunch rather than buying it each day? Have been up and down. Some weeks I'll manage it but more often I won't. Hopefully as Summer approaches and non-warm sandwiches look more appealing I'll get back into the swing of things.

I've also been doing more experiments with my shortbread, mixing in new and different things. People seem to be enjoying it :). I've been asked for the recipe, and a couple of people have asked me to bring some along to the next Swordcraft camping weekend.

Alas I'm.. having issues eating it a the moment due to mental association (while I was sick with gastro the thought of shortbread made me ill, so those associations are still there, even though I know it won't make me ill), but that should pass in time.

Hair:

A couple of weeks ago I went into a new hairdressers (also discovered through Laura) that should hopefully be able to finally kill off the pink hair that my 'do had turned into after Shave for a Cure. 

For reference, the pink hair had had temporary auburn and dark brown colours put over it (by me), and a dark red (professionally) and yet the pink still kept coming through.

So I went into this place, which has received awards for its colours, and figured that they should be able to do something with it, plus I was ready for a new style.

So we agree on a dark brown, the hairdresser says there will probably still be some reddish bits to it in the sunlight, but I didn't think that'd be a problem. Then while washing out the dye, she takes one look at my (still wet) hair and goes "Hrm.. let me get some toner to try and get rid of the pink that's still showing..." so even after having a permanent dark brown done over it, the pink was *still* visible. Talk about hard to kill!

After the toner was put in as well, the pink is finally gone, but rather than dark brown I have black hair in anything other than direct sunlight. 

I also had it cut into a new style with some layers (moreso than they'd normally do) and such, and for shits and giggles I had it curled before I left (hairdresser's idea, though I went for rather smaller curls than she'd thought), I was only having a weekend at home catching up on tidying and stuff so no big issues if it looked horrible. 

I think it came out pretty darned well though.

New Thing (TM):

Another new thing for the month, a couple of Thursdays ago I went along to a Burlesque outing with a few friends. It was an.. interesting.. show. Lots of audience.. if not participation, at least banter, very strong kinky themes, probably quite confronting to a lot of people since there was no sugar coating of anything.

It was quite funny watching the reactions of some people who were there. Some evidently were quite into it and having fun, others were very obviously going "Ohgods what have I gotten into, pleasedonttalktome!"

The group of girls I'd gone with were very much in the former category, several of them having been to the show before (and were recognised as such by the performers).

I dressed up for it as well, ending up rather more... feminine than I'd planned, but it worked. I learned two things: 1) Silk shirts offer NO wind protection, and are freezing cold even with a woolen jacket on over it. 2) Corsets aren't nearly as hard to ride in as I'd suspected.

Patient Zero:

This one hasn't happened yet, but it's booked for a few weeks time and I thought I'd mention it :D

There's a place running what is basically a laser-tag Zombie outbreak in Melbourne. You and a bunch of friends (half a dozen total) form a squad, make a booking, and have to go through a building full of people dressed as zombies, presumably find survivors and the source of the outbreak, and get out again.

Very much looking forward to it, I think it's going to be awesome :D

Anyways, I think I'll finish up this post there. Next one should be up in a day or so once I've compared myself to my starting benchmarks and can give a "Six Months In" update.