Hi everyone,

It's an early blog night tonight.  It's Saturday evening.  I've had dinner (the hambone soup from the other night with rice).  I have StarStuff on the speakers and there's a load of laundry in the machine downstairs. Once I've got the laundry attended to and hanging to dry I'll have some dessert (a canned pudding or part thereof).

It's been a bit of a quiet day.  In the morning I got a FB message from a good friend of mine and Joni's.  He's just recently broken up with the girl he was with, and he said he needed some man time.  So, he's invited a couple of our other friends (also friends of mine and Joni's) for some competitive go-karting (and, one suspects, a lot of drinking).  We've teed that up for next weekend.  I have to say I'm kind of honoured that I was in the top three people he contacted.  Really good!

Joni and the munchkins were at a crab boil over there on the Friday night, so skyping wasn't really an option.  Jealous though.  I passed somewhere on Lygon Street today where I could have sworn I could smell boiling crabs!  I did however get a great email from Joni today showing Rachel playing with the drawing toy from the birthday box.  By all accounts she loves it!  And, she tells me Grace loves the Disney princess tea set (no surprise there!).  Way, way, way awesome!

Not having any other plans for the day I decided to go for another good walk.  Not as long as last weekend; only across to Lygon Street and then down Lygon Street to the National Gallery and then to the Botanical Gardens (again).  I picked up a couple of rolls and an avocado from a supermarket on the way and made them into lunch in a park just near the the Gallery.  I had a real yen to see the Pacific Islands gallery, so I made my way straight there.  That's where the pictures of the shields come from - they're from Papua New Guinea, and the ancestral figures (the two carvings side by side) are from West Papua.  I just kind of like that sort of thing: seeing artefacts like that kind of takes you into the world of their maker.  In a way that doesn't lend itself to easy expression, the artefacts tell you about themselves and the world they come from.  It was also there that the Egyptian canoptic chest came from.

By the time I came out of the Gallery the clouds had closed in overhead.  The sky was not completely obscured - there were still flecks of blue - but the otherwise thick clouds somehow seemed to muffle the noise of the city.  It was fairly humid and the Gardens were a good and peaceful place to be.  I went back again to the Californian Garden and the Cactus Garden, as well as the New caledonia walk.  I was surprised to learn that New Caledonia actually tends to dwarf plants, because of the very high metal content of the soil.  Which does make sense: As I recall the island's main export is nickel.  While I was there I got a couple of good pictures of palm trees.  I love exotic plants; again, it just seems to take you into another person's world.  And I found the herb garden, was like plugging one's nose into an amplifier.  Just perfect.

I walked back as far as Bourke Street.  I tried to convince myself I wanted to walk the rest of the way back but couldn't: I was tired as hell and for some reason my boots felt heavier than they ever had.  I trammed it back here.  Dinner was, as I said, ham soup with rice, and then StarStuff and blog.  I'm definitely going to be sleeping as soon as my head hits the pillow tonight!

[Insert gap here for me to get clothes from washing machine, hang them up in my room - which now smells pleasantly of Tide - and have a shower].

OK, I think that's everything.  Hope you're all having a great weekend too!

See you tomorrow