The dinner at The Watergrill was a highlight. When I'd called them to make the reservation, I'd asked if the restaurant was BYO (BYO=Bring Your Own alcohol), as Mum had a $400 bottle of Penfolds she wanted to bring with her. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Oh, are you BYO?"
Them: "No, I'm sorry."
Me: "Oh dear."
Them [huffily]: "We have a wine list with over 240 wines on it!"
Me: "Ah, that's not quite the problem. It's my Mum's 60th and she's been saving this bottle of Penfolds Grange for this occasion."
Them: "Ah. 60th you say?"
Me: "Yeah."
Them: "Grange?"
Me: "Yeah."
Them [confidentially]: "Tell her to bring it along."

And they didn't even charge us to open the bottles (some restaurants charge 'corkage'--a fee for opening and pouring the wine because you're too cheap to buy their wine).

They treated us like royalty and made a great show of decanting the wine for Mum. And I must say, it was GOOD.

I've also catered lunch and a tea party for Mum in the last two weeks. The wall has been knocked down and cabinets are being put up. Soon we'll have to help tear up the lino in the kitchen and her carpet.

She'd better have had a good one, I'm absolutely buggered.

Monkey Business

Managed to lose about 5 despite stuffing myself with chocolate brownie cake, bombe alaska and chocolate chip cookies. Oh, and all the alcohol!

What's all this monkey business about, then?

I send semi-regular care packages containing goodies that are hard to get outside Australia to friends overseas. Admittedly, it's been a while since I've sent a batch of them since finances have been tight, but today I wandered down to the post office with Tim Tams, Cherry Ripes and the like to send to friends in need.

The package to the UK and the package to Canada were fine. The packages to the US? No go.

Apparently, as of December 2003, as part of the FDA's new Food Bioterrorism Regulations ('Protecting the Food Supply'), my box of PRE-PACKAGED food could pose a bioterrorist threat to the US.

What the fuck?

Did Arnotts add anthrax to the list of ingredients without telling me?

Now, in order to send any pre-packaged food to friends in the US, I have to register with the Prior Notice System Interface and warn the FDA that they are coming.

[cut to mental image of Paul Revere riding through the night shouting, "The Tim Tams are coming! The Tim Tams are coming!"]

To warn them, I need to go through a series of excruciating steps and questions, such as:

"The Submitter is the person with knowledge of the required Prior Notice information submitted to FDA. The Transmitter is the person who is logged into the system and who transmits the information either as the Submitter or on behalf of the Submitter. If you are the Submitter, answer Yes to the question below. Are you the Submitter for this Web Entry? If you are NOT the Submitter, select the country containing the business location of the Submitter and then click on the Enter Submitter button to provide further information about the Submitter."

I wish I was joking about this.

Of course, in a completely nonsensical twist, if the food is home-made, I don't need to do anything at all. I can just stuff my home-made sarin gas and anthrax chip cookies into a box and post them straight over to the US. What crack smoking monkey came up with this legislation?

For the love of all that's holy, will SOMEONE please replace the current administration with a ficus? If nothing else, it will stem the bullshit legislation spewing out of the US for a while.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have several packets of Tim Tams I need to unwrap and stuff into ziplock baggies so I can label them as home-made.

It's not supposed to be somewhere you take your mum, but we scored the booth with the gold fringing and piles of cushions, pulled up a nice bottle of bubbly and settled in for a nice drinking session.

Not your typical 60 year old mum, is my mum.

Other plans include seeing Troy so that mum can drool over Orlando Bloom and taking her to see the third Harry Potter film at Gold Class, because what is better than seeing a film than DRINKING and seeing a film at the same time! There's also a bottle of Penfolds Grange that needs to be consumed at some point. Life's tough.

Somewhere in there, we're going to batter down an internal wall and rip up her carpets as a present. I'm sure she'll be thrilled, at least when the dust settles.

Monkey Business

I think I've only lost about 3 reasonably sized but, more importantly, earlier in the week I went to a business meeting wearing jeans I have not been able to squish into for about 18 months. So, the monkey shedding is definitely paying off!

What's all this monkey business about, then?