Weeks of Sundays......!

Hi!

Well. Here we are, Monday evening. Am late. Like way late. Am sorry. The last few Sundays have been way busy. But more on that later. But seeing as it's Monday I don't have the usual groovy jazz tunes to help along, but I do have the modern TV that streams non-stop groovy jazz tunes from that same radio station - cooooool. Got the nice cool glass of standby white wine. And the lorikeets have begun their return to the eucalyptus trees around the 'hood - hooray! 'Course, in saying that, it also means they've returned in the mornings too. Little critters woke me up the other morning earlier than was necessary for a weekend. Hmm. But I'm really happy they're back. Let the games begin between the crows and the lorikeets! Otherwise, the evening is cool and showery, winter's last hurrah before Spring takes over any day now.......! So yes, here we are! Finally!

So work. Yep. Still deathly quiet. I get the odd little thing to have a look at now and then, and that's temporarily exciting... I just wish there was more of it! Buuuut, must be careful what I wish for.....! Our teeny little department is moving to another floor, so that'll be exciting for a day or two while we move our stuff and get settled into the new space. I'm hoping for a window view at least...........? Otherwise all's well. Always happy to have a job!

And then there were all those weekends. A few weekends ago, I guess maybe it was the weekend after returning from Cairns, was nice in a kids party kinda way. That Saturday was chores so I could go to Jason and Clare's son Jack's 5th birthday party on the Sunday. That was cute. They have such nice family and well-behaved kids (even a dog came along). It was nice day with lots of food and cake (I made my multi-layer bean dip) and I even had a swing on the swings with their almost-2 year old Reece. He was funny, he just smiled the whole time. I rather like happy kids, y'know, compared to the usual terrors. That was a good little weekend. (That's the birthday boy there in the red shirt on the right. He had a really cool rocket-ship cake that Clare made. I neglected to bring my camera as I was in a rush to get there - but you get the idea! And that's the smiling Reece that she's holding - cute kids.)

And last weekend I had to forgo the chores owing to a slight hangover. Friday evening was my neighbor's birthday and she had a good-sized party that she insisted I come along to, complete with a brazier going full blast out in front on our driveway. Made her my Mexican Wedding cookies and my way bitchin' guacamole. Met lots of her interesting and cool friends and consequently ended up drinking what felt like too much (even tho I only had 2 glasses of wine), I stayed up way too late, didn't crawl into bed until 2ish....... Plus, standing on concrete outside in the cold for 4 hours, after getting up at 5.30am that morning, yeah, I guess I was just super tired. So that Saturday was pretty slow going until it was time to head down to the Gold Coast with Kim for our next attempt at whale watching. Checked in to the hotel - Holiday Inn at Surfers Paradise (it manged to be one of the H.I.s not yet hit by their multi-gazillion refurbishing bug, even tho it says they have on their website. Hmm, not the room we were in) where we promptly dumped our bags and headed back out to explore, find out where the marina was where the whale watching tour left from and to find some dinner. We ended up at the quieter end of Surfers (I didn't even know they had one) where we had a most excellent dinner at a little place near the water called the Lazy Lobster. I had the "Prawn, Crab and Barramundi Tondo" (ravioli) - it was amazing. It was soooooo damn good. The service was nice, friendly and plentiful. I can totally see why they've won awards. Definitely worth another trip. Definitely.

And the next day, Sunday, we were up early, which was amazing considering the room next to us was fulla teenagers who'd had a HUGE party that night before. I almost considered calling the front desk but I couldn't be bothered. Someone must have at some point tho, they went quiet after 3ish I think. That or they passed out. Kim and I had a look over at their balcony in the morning and there two girls asleep in chairs, surround by soda and booze bottles. It was hilarious. So on our way to whale watching I managed to nab their "Do Not Disturb" sign. It was the least I could do. Gotta get your revenge where you can.

So. Whale watching. I don't know if you remember our first attempt at this on my birthday last year, with a completely different tour company in a completely different part of the coast (Redcliffe)....? I just have to say, and this isn't saying much, that tour was actually better and we "saw" more whales. This tour sucked. Not totally the fault of the company, Spirit of Gold Coast, by any means. The whales just didn't feel like playing in front of or anywhere near our boat. You could see them waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out splashing and having a grand time, but by the time we motored over there, they got shy and refused to even skim the surface. I won't go on about it. It was a nice hour out on a boat, the weather was glorious, we were happy we didn't pay full price (I had a coupon for like $30 off) and we decided, well, I most certainly have decided, to never, ever go whale watching again. I get it. I'm sure it's neat. I've seen videos. Whatever.

Afterward we headed to Peter's Fish Market, a fairly "famous" place, for their fresh fish and chips for lunch. Tell you how popular this place is - they had security guarding the door to control the crowds. Crowds. Lines of people. Granted, this was around lunchtime on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, but yeah, security. He'd only let people in when enough people went out. But for the size of the crowd and the line, it moved way fast. I was impressed. I mean, I'd been there once before yeeears ago when I first moved here, and there was nothing of this kind of crowd then. Guess word gets out! So, happy with our scorching hot fish and chips (I had the #2 Special - it was so good and I could actually eat all of it (except the chips)), we wandered over to the little boardwalk that skirts the fanceeee pants Versace Hotel and sat and watched the nice boats drift in and out of the little marina/harbor and giggled as the seagulls annoyed a guy fishing in his little boat (or "tinny" as the locals call little tin boats). And we also watched as a storm brewed and got ready to move in. We'd timed it perfectly as we finished our lunch and drove away headed back to Brisbane - we'd just missed it! So it was a fine way to end what started as a bit of a bummer of a day. Good, fresh sea air and fresh fish and chips can redeem any not-so-great day!

And finally, that brings us to this past weekend. Saturday was chores again so I could have Sunday off to go out driving in mah new car! Woooooooooooooooooooohhhhhoooooooooo!!!!! I finally got one! That certainly took long enough! It's a white, 2008 Toyota Rav4 Cruiser L (which stands for Fanceee), all leather (black interior), sunroof, roof racks, heated seats - the works! I'd picked it up after work on Monday; Wednesday I took it out for a spin with my friend Dave who's moved down, again, from Cairns and drove the hour or so to Bribie Island and the Surf Club there for lunch (we had that Wednesday off for the Ekka - like the state fair); then on Sunday took it up to visit Kim in the 'hood of Brendale and to go up to the Northlake mall to pick up a couple things before heading over to Redcliffe and Margate for some lunch. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh wheels. It's awesome. Even more totally awesome than the last car I had (but never more awesome than the wee scooter). I meant to take Glamor Shots of it on Sunday but it rained. I should've taken some on Saturday when the weather was perfect but I figured the weather would be just as nice Sunday..... So will keep trying! But man it's nice. It's probably the nicest thing I own. And it's certainly nicer than my apartment - hey, I just bought a spare room - so if you need a place to stay, I got you covered!

And then later that evening, and the reason why I couldn't check in last night, my very nice Indian neighbors invited me over for a proper Indian dinner. Wow. Can she cook. And she laughed and said when she was growing up her Mom always chased her out of the kitchen so she never learned to cook for reals, she's had to teach herself (with much correction from her husband. They're so cute, they're just a young couple, only married like 4 years). It was sooooo good. And just spicy enough that you could still enjoy it. They laughed and said that was mild! Ahhhh am so white. Will work on it! But it was a very lovely meal and just nice to sit and talk with them instead of in passing collecting the mail or the laundry. I was just really honored to be invited over. He's finishing his PhD in Biotechnology and she's a mechanical engineer, tho she can't work because they're here on her husbands student visa. So they're smarter than our entire building put together. It was a really good evening. My contribution was a pint of Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream for dessert (which you can only buy in a very few of those fancy gourmet shops at like triple real world prices - but it was worth it), because she said they love ice cream and can never find any good stuff here. They had like two bites of it and they were hooked. Happy to help! And by that point I was so tired I just stumbled home, brushed my teeth and went to bed and that was that. Whew!

So there you have it. Apologies for not checking in for so long. Now do you see what I mean about being busy all these Sundays? And man, I'm impressed I can remember that far back - and all the details! Who needs fish oil, my memory's fine! So I hope you're all well up there. Drop a line sometime. As I mentioned, the weather is trying it's hardest to be Spring, so feel free to come on down anytime, you only have a couple months until the furnace is fired up and that's no fun until March or so. And hey, I have plenty of room now!

BYE!
J!

P.S. Speaking of the wee scooter - I discovered a new way to walk to work and along that way happens to be where all the motorcycle folk park their bikes. Well, one morning as I walked past, nestled in there amongst the big beasts was this little silver scooter. I thought it looked familiar and I committed the license plate to memory. Well, I just now looked through my old blog photos and lo and behold it's my wee scooter! And this morning I saw the guy parking it! I almost said something to him but I didn't know until now it was mine. If I see the guy again I just might say hi and ask how the wee scooter's doing. It looks well by the looks of it! HOORAY!