Sunday 30th June - Lockyer Powerfest
Day
I had meant to get up earlier, but didn’t, so by the time Bronwen and I had driven the hour or so to the Lockyer Powerfest at Lake Dyer it was after midday. I drove past the bakery at Rosalie for breakfast on the way, which didn’t help. Fortunately, despite raining fairly consistently in Brisbane, it wasn’t raining (though the ground was wet, so presumably it had rained) out there.
It looked as though many had already left, but there were still several hot rods parked around the place, and of course - the main attraction - lots of high powered boats. We spent the afternoon hurting our eyes looking into the glary reflection on the water and watching boats go past very noisily, and very fast.
Night
Bronwen and I drove back to Brisbane and went straight to Livewire Comedy at the Powerhouse. I wasn’t feeling so well - I seemed to have developed glare-inflicted ouchies (a lesser known medical term) - but managed a few laughs. As usual, the MC was the best.
After comedy we drove to Halim’s, where we met Maz, and ate a delicious dinner - though my infliction prevented me from enjoying it as much as I otherwise would have.
Monday 1st July - Disco Strobe Egg
Day
Worryingly, I awoke to find I was still afflicted, but it bettered throughout the day.
Other than that, I worked. It rained. Bronwen and I had tacos for lunch.
Night
Bronwen and I had a quiet night at home. It is still raining. Bronwen’s walking-into-doors-in-the-dark prevention egg has changed from being a nice glowing, slowly colour changing egg to a disco strobe egg - but only when it changes to green. It’s slightly disconcerting.
Tuesday 2nd July - Sizzler & Superman
Day
I have run out of breakfast at work, so instead I have to drink ALDI white chocolate.
In other news, I worked, Bronwen and I had an argument (because the bakery only had one veggie pasty, and Bronwen foolishly wanted Thai), then veggie lasagne and beetroot, pumpkin and fetta salad from the Pasta Pantry for lunch, and it finally stopped raining.
Night
After work I drove past Bronwen’s work, got Bronwen, and we drove to Toowong Sizzler, where we stood in line for nearly half an hour - mostly because we’re stupid, but also because we’ve still got two-for-one-Tuesday vouchers. We then ate lots of food (though to be honest, quite a lot was missing and it wasn’t all that good considering how much it costs), and somehow managed to screw up so badly that we only had seven minutes left to eat dessert (and it took me nearly all my seven minutes to manage to get ice cream to come out of the ice cream machine. Bronwen, who must presumably be broken, likes chocolate soft serve - and seeing as she was probably the first person to have ever used the chocolate soft serve machine, it came out just fine. I (and most of Brisbane) on the other hand, need vanilla, which was exhausted), before we had to rush to South Bank to watch Superman. As expected, it wasn’t a very good movie - Harry Potter is better. Superman doesn’t even have a wand.
Wednesday 3rd July - Free Pies
AM
I worked. I had lunch with Anne and Bronwen. We had veggie pasties and discussed everything from real estate to African development to the steepness of hills and office gossip (just in general, not the steepness of it).
PM
I’m sleepy. Bronwen and I stopped at Stone’s Corner Govinda’s for dinner, where I ate too much and got free pies from Alexandra. We dropped past Woolworths on the way home, and that concludes a so-far non-remarkable day.
Thursday 4th July - The Police
Day
On what would - in a certain lesser developed country - be considered independence day, I went to work, then went to Rosalie for lunch, just as I normally do. However, there wasn’t any parking in Rosalie, so I had to drive through Rosalie and do a U-turn at the roundabout - in front of a police car who then proceeded to follow me. In what was probably somewhat confusing for them, I pulled over in front of them in someone’s driveway (as I wanted to wait for another car to vacate a parking spot on the other side of the road), just moments before they put their lights on to pull me over. Presumably thinking alcohol had given me psychic abilities, the policeman breathalysed me, asked who owned my car, what I was doing, and did a (very slow) licence check. Annoyingly, he also tried to claim I was driving too fast through the 40 zone - when in fact, as I was looking for parking and had also seen the police car, I was doing around 35 - however as per my new record-everything policy, I recorded the conversation and he back-pedalled and claimed some cars look faster than others, and that he was too far away to know for sure anyway. I also found out that the police’s penalty units are far lower than councils, so parking tickets from police are much cheaper than from the council, though while he wasn’t sure, it seems police only enforce things like not parking within the required distance from an intersection - not local parking rules like bus stops, 15-minute parking zones, and so forth.
Conveniently, Bronwen turned up while I was being harangued, and the car in front of me left, so when the police left I had myself a parking spot, and shortly later also a veggie pasty, though Bronwen left rather suddenly and rudely shortly after - right in the middle of lunch she said “oh no”, jumped up, and literally ran away - though she did message me later to say the meeting had been cancelled and she was sorry.
Night
After work I drove to Bronwen’s parents’ place, where Bronwen was, and ate yummy quesadillas, tasty rice (I don’t know what it’s called) and salad. A good night was had, and I left quite full.
Friday 5th July - A Celebration of the Female Form
Day
I had chips with Bronwen and Anne and her boyfriend, in the park at Rosalie - and no police harassed me.
Night
I’m tired. After work I drove down to Bronwen’s work, and we drove to “A celebration of the female form” - an art exhibition at the Graydon Gallery. Unfortunately, it was extremely busy - to the point of being impossible to actually see most of the art, or move around without squashing people who didn’t look like they should be squashed. There was a little bit of burlesque and a body painter and things, but once again - nearly impossible to see due to the crowds.
I also managed to nearly kill myself on the way there. Just after parking, and while putting my camera into the boot, I somehow banged my head on the boot lid, which somehow caused it to shut on my head, which made an ouchie on my head and I had to sit down and feel sorry for myself for a little while.
After not seeing as much as I’d wanted at the gallery, Bronwen and I drove to Halim’s, where we met Maz and ate delicious curry (and perhaps a Cold Rock Supershake), before driving home and reading about homeopathy.
Saturday 6th July - New Farm v Brisbane Wolves & The Teneriffe Festival
Day
I had a sleep-in, because I’m lazy. I then drove, with Bronwen, to the bakery in Rosalie for breakfast, and from there to New Farm where we watched New Farm lose to the Brisbane Wolves - though at four nil, nowhere near as thoroughly as everyone had predicted (they’re two teams from very different leagues), so all in all I think it was seen as a triumph.
After the soccer we spent many, many minutes driving around in obtuse triangles, pentagrams, and various other unusual shapes, trying to find parking at the Teneriffe Festival - which we eventually did. Lots of other people seemed to have had the same idea, and for forty-five minutes, my phone didn’t work - only one in ten attempts to dial out would work, I couldn’t receive calls, and data was more dysfunctional than its former minister, Conroy. This made me unhappy, and is the first obvious failure I’ve noticed since switching to TPG - however, after forty-five minutes, it began to work just fine, which I found a little odd. I assumed it was network congestion (though of course, Bronwen’s gold-plated Telstra service seemed fine - though at an almost unimaginably greater cost, I’m unsure it would pass a cost-benefit analysis (sort of like Conroy’s NBN I suppose)), but I’m unsure why that would have suddenly improved.
We met Dan and some of his Mexican (except I think they were Colombian - they all look the same to me!) and some of his soccer friends, shortly before leaving to drive to Kookaburra Café, where I ordered a delicious Lasagne (which Bronwen ate) and Bronwen ordered an amazing pumpkin gnocchi in blue cheese sauce (which I ate). Oh, and one of the best caramel milkshakes around (which I drank).
Entirely satiated, we dropped past Bronwen’s parents’ place to say hi - and had a coffee (or in Bronwen’s case, a tea and a coffee… it’s a long story), before driving home, attempting to correct oh so many poor, mistaken people on the internet, and going to bed.
Sunday 7th July - Relaxing
Day
Ned slept in, quite thoroughly.
Night
Ned rushed to Woolworths with his chef, Bronwen, as she had run out of his favourite chips. He arrived mere minutes before they closed. It was not as exciting as it sounds.
Monday 8th July - Tacos
Day
Bronwen rode to work, so I slept in and had to rush to work, arriving just on time - fortunately (and surprisingly, as I thought all the snotty-nosed kids would be back from their holidays) traffic wasn’t too bad. I then had a busy day at work, a veggie pasty with Bronwen for lunch (we made the mistake of sitting in the middle of the oval at lunchtime, forgetting school had gone back, and became surrounded by small children pretending they could run. Fortunately, I wasn’t arrested) and then working hard again for the afternoon.
Night
I drove down to The Burrito Bar in Rosalie, where I met Bronwen, Dan and Maz, and had tacos. They’ve changed the menu and the tacos are significantly worse, so I’m not sure I’ll go back for them again - though we did get free fries by checking in on Facebook.
Tuesday 9th July - The Lone Ranger
Day
I had a busy day at work. I had meant to get in early, but a combination of bad traffic and bad Ned meant I slept in and wasn’t early - I wasn’t late either, just not early.
Lunch
Lunch was a Thai red curry with tofu and coconut rice from Sing’s, which I ate with Bronwen.
Night
I stayed at work late, and - in keeping with my unofficial “let’s always be late” policy - got cheap Tuesday pizza from Paddington Domino’s and rushed to the Rosalie IGA to buy a drink and meet Bronwen, only to leave it so late that by the time I got Bronwen it was twenty to nine, and we were going to watch “The Lone Ranger” at Southbank at ten past nine… so we made haste to the cinema, ate some pizza slightly too quickly in the park at Southbank, and bought tickets and seated ourselves just as the pre-movie ads were starting.
Unfortunately, there was something wrong with the projection - everything had quite distinct red/blue fringing as if the projector was suffering convergence problems. Unfortunately this rendered the movie almost unwatchable - I don’t have the time to go back and see it again, so I stayed to see the storyline, but scenes which were presumably quite spectacular took on a very low-fi retro look, which did not suit the movie at all. It also made my eyes a bit sore.
I took some photos of it, and we complained at the end of the movie and were asked to send one of them to a number so the projectionist could have a look, and were given two movie vouchers.
Wednesday 10th July
Mr Day
Ned got up far, far too early and drove to work. He was at work by eight o’clock.
Mr Lunchtime
For lunch, Ned ate a veggie pasty.
Mr Night
Ned picked Bronwen up from her parents’ place and drove to Govinda’s, where Alexandra gave him curry - but no lasagne, for that was specially packed away for other people - and then went to ALDI for coffee capsules. Continuing their trend of logical stocking, today ALDI are selling shoes - only two pairs though. Well, one pair now Bronwen has bought the other. They go well with their snowboards and baby cots, and as such are logically placed near the wool and magnetic rowing machines.
Bronwen did the right thing, and recycled some more batteries.
I bought petrol. It cost $1.59 per litre - perhaps the most expensive it’s been. I assume it’s Kevin Rudd’s fault.