Saturday, 28 April 2012

Saturday and Lunch

Hi everyone,

It's been a really good day!  I was out of bed earlier than is my wont on Saturday, which was great as suddenly I had a bigger chunk of the morning to do stuff in.  Leaving the blind open overnight was a great idea - when the sun's up and the room's bright, it's kind of hard to rationalise curling up for even more sleep.  Score!

I used the extra time to read over some things and look for jobs on the web.  It feels good to be flexing my historian's muscles again, it really does.  I was hoping to skype with the girls and sent a message to Joni using Facebook Messenger, but FB has been playing up again and so she only got it after the girls were in bed.  Will try again tomorrow.  At a bit after midday I headed over to Jennie and JPs' place for lunch.  Mum and Dad and Fran and Michael were already there by the time I got there (I hit crappy traffic on Nicholson street and Punt Road).  Lunch was great - rolls with ham, salami, chicken and salad vegetables.  Mum and Dad look well and the place at Shepparton wasn't damaged in a hailstorm that swept through there a week or so back.  Fran still looks like she's doing well.  What I noticed suddenly was that she doesn't talk in that garbled mumble she always used to use a lot.  Honestly, maybe getting out of nursing was the best thing she could have done for herself.  Also, she had a chocolate egg with a little fluffy toy duck for Grace and Rachel, so I'll put that in the next package to go over - I was really touched by that!

Sigh: the people in this world I love most are all on opposite sides of the planet.

We all got on the road again at about 4:30ish.  I decided to get my groceries from the Safeways that Joni and I always used to go to when we lived in that area.  I'm pretty over office dinners, so I made a point of getting some actual meat and fresh vegetables as well as the usual grocery odds and ends.  I've also been craving wine for a while (I appreciate that that sentence makes me sound like a poor man's Oliver Reid) so I also went to a Dan Murphys on my way back to Melbourne as they usually have wine at bargain basement prices.  When I say bargain basement, I mean I walked out of there with four bottles of Cab Merlot for $10.00.  OK, it's not the world's greatest wine, but at $2.50 a bottle it doesn't have to be.

When I got back here I cooked up some of the meat I'd bought (kangaroo burgers!) with a roll and some onions and gravy -





and added to the nutritional value with some oranges as well for dessert.  It was a pleasant evening with some of the housemates - Toby (who describes himself ethnically as a bananna: yellow on the outside, white on the inside (his exact words)) experimented with adding wasabi to red curry.  When he mentioned this to Amrit - one of the Indian housemates - he got the same look of despair that I'd have to give to someone who smothered a piece of rare Scotch fillet in tomato sauce.  Some things are common to every culture on the planet!  I feel a lot of sympathy for Amrit: he's working here in IT, but he has a wife and a little 6 month old son in Mumbai, so we're kind of in the same boat.  He's hoping to bring them out here, but that brings up the challenge of finding a place to live and getting her and his son a visa.  Poor guy.

I'm a little ashamed to say I didn't put the rest of the evening to great use: I wound up watching the end of The Goonies and then a bit of Star trek for a bit.  And now, blogging, cleanup, water and bed.

Oh, and Mum brought my runners up today, so I can get some running happening.  Endorphins ahoy!

OK, I guess that's it.

See you tomorrow.

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