Phew!

Last week was a bit crazy for me. We moved house; I started supplying cupcakes to my local cafe; and I had an important deadline at work. Amazingly, all three turned out very well. The move was quick and painless, and much helped by the lovely Bear and Pirate, who drugged themselves to the eyeballs and endured dust and cats for the day. A week later we were in, unpacked and celebrating with a housewarming party.

The cupcakes were a great hit. They sold out within the day and I've arranged to supply the cafe with a batch twice a week. In the meantime they will use other caterers for cakes. I'm thrilled because it means I can continue to bake for them but at a manageable level. I'm loving all the piping work and playing around with all things sugar craft.

And the work thing went well too. I've been doing some knowledge management consultancy work with a client we're trying to develop our relationship with. Last week I presented my findings and recommendations, which they loved. They've asked me to present to their global legal board next week, so my Partner is feeling pretty pleased with me right about now, which is always nice.

All in all it's been a big week!

The times, they are a-changing

Tomorrow is my last day in job number 4 of 2006. I chose to leave after only a relatively short amount of time, and I'm going to a job I think could be great, but there are things I will miss about this position. The 20 minutes door-to-door commute, the views from the 35th floor (particularly at sunset, it's really quite stunning), the people. But most of all, the sense of ownership and achievement in a big project. In the last couple of weeks I've started to feel on top of the job and have been working quite hard on my intranet project; designing and creating one from scratch is something I've previously had no exposure to, and found more than a little overwhelming to begin with. Today, my penultimate day, we've managed to install the server and start creating. It's quite exciting. But perhaps it's a good thing to be leaving now: if I stayed much longer I might slowly morph into an incurable geek (please be kind and leave this one alone! I know it's an easy shot).

Food, glorious food! Hot sausage and mustard

I've been doing some longer than usual hours at work this week, trying to finish of the first stage on the intranet project I've been working on, and making sure things are in a fit state to be handed over to the next person. Yes, I'm leaving. Job number five in 12 months starts on the 15th, and I'm really looking forward to it. I'll be working in the corporate department of the last firm I worked for (as a temp) as a Professional Support Officer. It's a big jump toward where I'd like to be, and I feel very privileged to be offered such a position, usually given to lawyers with several years experience.

But what I meant to write about was the various blogs I've been reading during some of these longer than usual hours. It mightn't come as a surprise to any of the Brenans out there, but I think I'm addicted to food blogs. Almost half of my RSS subscriptions are to food blogs, and each morning I arrive to several new mouth-watering recipes. My favourite blog at the moment is Milk and Cookies, written by a Sydneysider and filled with wonderful recipes and pictures. It was one of the many things that inspired me to buy a blender this week. I'm very excited about it, and have been having lovely daydreams about all the nice things I'm going to cook with it. Vaughn, inexplicably, wasn't so excited. Strange as it may seem, he wasn't really very interested in hearing about the specifications of different machines and why it is important to have a range of speeds and a dough hook. Bizarre. I'm sure he'll come round, though, when the cakes start appearing. And meringues. And crepes. And smoothies. And mousse. And...