You think our currency is in trouble?

Just as a complete aside, remember the Zimbabwean economy, and its crazy inflation? A colleague at work has friends out there, and they dropped him a note detailing, amongst other things, their bill for one month's broadband connection to their home in Harare. This is for December, quoted in old (pre-August 2008's "redenomination" of the currency by a factor of 10,000,000,000!) Zimbabwe Dollars:

$1,512,484,799,972,590,080.00 !!

I reckon you might want that in words:
1 quintrillion
512 quadrillion
484 trillion
799 billion
972 million
590 thousand and
80 dollars (zero cents).

Can you imagine writing a cheque for that amount?!
For reference, the most that you can take out of a bank today is $500,000, about enough for a loaf of bread. In terms of the old rate of the above monthly bill, $500,000 current dollars is $500,000 * 10,000,000,000 = $5,000,000,000,000,000 or 5 quadrillion dollars.

I think I worked out what his monthly bill was using an online currency exchange site.. if you fancy having a go, put your guess in a comment on this post, I'll post my estimate later.

Unclean!

Yep, we're all ill here with this flu thingy that's "the worst outbreak for 10 years". Even Javier Mascherano has it, but you need to be a fan of Liverpool FC to worry about his health.
All four of us were on the sofa watching TV yesterday afternoon, Mishka has sympathetic flu, or perhaps something he ate upset him.
I like to be positive about everything, so it's a good thing we've had it for the past few days, so with any luck we'll all be over it by the time we head up to Radcliffe to Grandma & Grandad's on Thursday :-)
Lara's dealing very well with it, perhaps because she's had it for weeks, but also considering she's got her top front teeth coming through now too. Hopefully she'll be able to properly bite her turkey on Thursday afternoon (before falling asleep after watching Her Maj the Queen like the rest of us). Famous Last Words but Lara slept through the last two nights, waking only to cough, and we had to wake her this morning at 7.40 to get up for nursery! Fingers crossed for three nights in a row.

Our singing snowflake

Lara starred in her nursery's Nativity Play on Tuesday, despite a bad cold and teething problems. She was one of the snowflakes - we weren't convinced the male babies were overly impressed at being snowflakes, but Lara seemed to like her fairy costume - the suggestion from the nursery staff had been just for the babies to wear something white, perhaps with the odd doily or two stuck on for that snowflake effect, so we went overboard :-) Just click on the slideshow to see the full size photos and watch the videos.



Lara didn't last too long sitting in her high chair, once she realised we weren't far away, in the audience, she wanted to come and join us, although she wasn't very tearful, she was very loud. We reckon she was singing along :-)

Haute Cuisine

It's been a strange few days in our kitchen - I watched Saturday Kitchen and saw what Rick Stein was going to make, and realised straight away that I just had to have a go at making that... Fish tacos with guacamole from Baja California . Considering I'm not a great fan of salsa (too much raw tomato, eeuuchhh) or guacamole (I'll have a little bit of it with some doritos) at first this seemed a strange thing to do. However, Olga and I enjoy chicken fajitas, and this is pretty much a fishy version of that, and I knew Olga would love it.
The funny bit on the recipe page on the BBC website was "Prepartion time, less than 30 minutes". This may be true for Rick Stein, but after I'd spent an hour in Asda finding all the ingredients - I'd never had to find avocados or plain flour before - it still took me an hour just to make the salsa. Then another 30 minutes to make the guacamole... and that's before I'd even started on the fish. I took a break from the kitchen and walked the dog at this point while Olga cut up the fish for me.
Anyway, deep-frying the fish in my batter in a wok half-full of oil worked a treat, as we don't have a deep-fat fryer, and all in all it was a great success, and without wanting to blow my own trumpet, it was the best salsa I can remember having. I didn't take any photographs - my presentation left a little to be desired, but I'm inspired now to make salsa and guacamole more often - visitors, you have been warned! Here's how it would have looked, courtesy of www.loscabosrecipes.com's photograph:


Then, as if to balance things out, on Monday I reverted to a staple meal from my childhood, presented in the style that Mum poineered to make mealtimes more interesting for me... and this time I did take a photo! Can you guess what it is yet?

Yep, sausages, mash and beans. Olga had the castle/moat design, I had the smiley face. Just so you don't think I was completely slacking, the sausages were Sainsbury's special pork and honey ones (reduced for quick sale). Somethings never change!

Two very tired kids **Updated**

We went for another long walk today, but a little closer to home, around West Wycombe. The baby carrier we bought has turned out to be a good purchase, it makes it so easy for us all to go out for a walk in the countryside. We were lucky today with the weather - it had rained all day yesterday, but was dry today; this seemed to put people off going for walks and we barely saw another soul while we walked for three hours. It also meant that we could let Mishka off his lead, we love to see him running free and enjoying himself, but we love it even more when he comes back to us when we call him! He was very well behaved today, and the long walk (we think we covered about 7km, but Mishka will have done more like 10km!) has tired him out completely. It did mean he got a good bath when we got home, which takes some time, but is very good for his coat.
To help us recover from our exertions, we had a swift half in the George and Dragon in West Wycombe after the walk, where Lara enjoyed playing with the landlord's little terrier - it's nice to see Lara's not afraid of dogs, albeit this one weighed about the same as her!
We really enjoyed our walk, and hope now to make it a regular weekend thing during the winter. Lara was fine all the way round, she had a little sleep for half an hour or so en-route, and was asleep in the car within 5 minutes of setting off for home. Considering it's only an 8 minute drive home, she thankfully slept on at home for another half-hour or so which gave Olga time to bath Mishka!
This wasn't a documented walk, we just made it up from the OS map - I think I might investigate hand-held GPS systems so we can accurately measure how far (and exactly where!) we've been. Here are a couple of photos from a scenic break for coffee, and one from the aftermath! I've plotted part of the route we'd taken on the second photo, just for the fun of it.


And here's a map of the walk (it's been quiet at work on Monday!)

(map: Crown Copyright 2008)