Adventures in Scootieland

So what's been happening? Just the usual collection of shenanigans
Not much amateur alcoholism this weekend as I'm on call, so I had to limit my intake to that of a normal person - very difficult ;)
The week itself went fairly smoothly, nothing much of note except that work provided my birthday cake a week early, so I had to explain to everyone that it's next week, not this week, but It's not worth complaining that you got cake when you shouldn't had, nobody's going to listen to that sort of seditious talk.
Friday night was spent with a little time at Yak with Joe and Daimo. One of the things I like about Yak is that you can sit by the big window on Russell st and watch the world pass by, it's very relaxing :)

Then Joe and I headed off home, only to be sidetracked to The London in Richmond to meet Pommie John, Mick and Steph. The London is a pretty good pub, normal prices, pretty good location for us (short walk to our tram lines) and on any given night, full to the brim with extremely attractive women. :) So we had a few drinks with Pommie John and then went and found Mick and Steph, who were entertaining some Canberra friends, and had a few drinks with them. They seemed a pretty interesting crew, and I even got a bit more of the low down on the KPMG Canberra flooding that happened a few weeks ago. There was a funny moment where Mick brought out his new HP PDA/Phone that he's been talking up for a while, to check a phone number. I think he was planning for us all to go 'ooh and aah' when we saw his new cool phone, but I just quickly pulled out the new XDA I'm carrying for work and started to tease him that his was so big it must be a bit old now :) just some good natured geek fun, to which his reaction was to tell me to go and do something which I won't repeat here :) I don't normally go for the one-upmanship of hi tech, but I just couldn't resist, because he was so proud :) Of course his device he had to pay for himself, and the reports form the people at work who evaluated them say that they are in fact better than what we're currently using, both in features and battery life, but I couldn't a dig because our new devices just happen to be a bit smaller :) We left the pub pretty early, with almost everyone mostly smashed by about 11:30pm (except me [on call] and Steph [driving]), Mick deciding to interrupt a nice photo of the pub with a distinct pose:

Saturday saw the arrival of Kim's "Life of Berley" birthday party, to celebrate the fact that she's the same age as Jesus (and Brian from Life of Brian), with the idea being to dress as your favourite character from Life of Brian. I ended up running very late because I had gotten almost all the way before realising I hadn't remembered my copy of Life of Brian which we were planning to watch, so I had to go all the way home again and get it and come back again :) But apart from that things went well, I arrived in time to have a bit of a chat with everyone and watch Berley blow out the candles on her cake. I also was able to witness the torment of Troy, dressed as King Herod, at the hands of Berley, Rik and Shaz. Very amusing to watch, and of course even more amusing to catch on film:

(I suggest you follow the link then check the next few photos by clicking on the thumbnails to the right of this shot)

I'm assuming that Troy was King Herod, because he was wearing a crown with a big H made out of stars. Of course, King Herod wasn't alive at the time Jesus was crucified, having died some 28 years before Jesus (or Brian). But it kind of works out ok, because Berley was dressed as the Round Yon Virgin (including internal Baby Jesus) and Herod was King of Judea when Mary was preggers, so it all kind of makes sense. Kind of.

After Berley's party I headed into the office to do a photo shoot that I had been thinking about for a while, the computer room. I think there are some nice shots there, and I got to practice a few techniques such as macro shooting and light painting. Saturday night was spent at home with 'teen as she had no money until next pay (a fairly common occurrence these days for both of us).

Sunday was spent wandering around the city playing the tourist game and trying to take some nice shots of Melbourne, but I really only ended up with a few 'blah' shots and a mild sunburn :)

The last week has been pretty good in Scootie land.

Spent a lot of time in flickr of course, but also spent a lot of time shooting photos, which is even better. :)
The weekend was pretty good, Friday at Yak with a big crew of people I hadn't seen in a while, as well as a bunch I had seen a lot of.
Some fun was had by all and I managed to step back into the Friday drinks groove very easily ;)

Saturday was spent hungover :)
Although 'Teen did get me out of the house fairly early to go to a lollie shop in Glenferrie road that Cathy had told us about during the week. She was keen to try and get some Minstrels, which are like gigantic smarties, and this shop supposedly had all sorts of imported lollies and chocolates.

So we met up with Mick and Steph and Tanya and sought out the shop, only to be told by the sign on the door that they'd be back in 5 minutes. We opted to wait and spent the time looking in the window. The shop duly opened a few minutes later and we filed in, searching around for the UK section. Lots of nasty US candies with cherry, cinnamon and peanut butter in them. I don't know what their fascination with Peanut Butter is, I think it's a bit weird myself, but it takes all kinds I guess. :)

We found the UK section and located the Minstrels, and were disappointed to find they only had the very small 42g packets, which equate to about 10 minstrels a pack, instead of the 250g or 400g packets they were hoping for :) So I bought a Double Decker Bar, Terry's Chocolate Orange and some Coconut Ice and we left. No sooner were we out of the shop (standing outside eating our sweets) than they closed for another 5 minutes so the shop girl could go down the street. Not a busy day in the lollie shop I think :)

Saturday night Joe, Nick and I went over to Daimo's house to have a few drinks, as it was his 30th birthday. We spent the night drinking and hanging out and listening to music. A bunch of his friends showed up and they're all a pretty good crew. We stayed there until about 5am, and were in a very sorry state, especially Nick who lost track of the fact that it was early in the morning and that Daimo's sister was asleep upstairs so he kept wanting to turn the music up too loud :)

Sunday morning was spent hungover again, but it was such a nice day that I decided to spend the afternoon walking around Fitzroy taking photos. Managed to take a lot of really good shots and then duly uploaded them on Flickr :) I also went up to Gertrude street and visited the restaurant UME, where Narelle's brother Mikey had made a new sign for them. Narelle had told me the other week that the sign had gone up and I hadn't had a chance to go see it. The sign is pretty cool, so I grabbed some shots for my photo stream :) But the best photo I think was this very blue wall that I found near Wellington st, so I'll link that below instead :)

Dental hygeine

Went to the dentist for a few fillings today, down at the art deco opulence that is Kia's new premises. Now, I go to the dentist fairly regulary, and due to my super-el-crappo teeth, I have more filling that tooth in my mouth (the rest of my head is also mostly filling, but that's another story) so I'm pretty used to having the old numb lip for a while, and have even perfected the art of drinking without dribbling and talking without sounding like Buckwheat. However, today my lovely and mostly painless dentist Madeline needs to fill teeth on both sides of my upper jaw, which means two injections and two numb lips, which throws all my well cultivated 'numb-lip' skills into disarray, and I ended up dribbling and blubbering like a 12 year old with his first root canal. ;)

how about you, you, you

Zoo Day today.

Went to Werribee Open Plains Zoo for Matthew Annable's third birthday, to try and convince him that he does have an Uncle Scooter, and that I am not, in fact, imaginary. Needless to say my presence in his life has been somewhat scant, having only been to his 0th and 1st birthdays prior to this. I was planning to buy him a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, but couldn't find it, so instead got him a couple of zoo related books (including a musical one for his dad to enjoy). Luckily I couldn't get the Sendak, because he's already got it, which I probably should have assumed given that his mum's a teacher (and cool enough to like Sendak).

A good day was had by all, we spent a bit of it sitting around and we all went off on the bus tour that's included in the admission price. On the tour I was on we were lucky enough to see two Zebras fighting and also to see the new baby Rhino, so pretty good stuff.

Matt is very social, and was chatting to everyone about his presents and what he was doing and what he'd seen so far and just about anything that ran through his head :) a lot of fun to watch, scary how big and how smart he is, but that's what you get for not showing up at family functions for two years :o

long time now blog

Well obviously it's been some time since my last update :) what with my new found addiction to Flickr and everything, my time has become full, plus of course there's the basic fact that I am a slacker!

So in the time between posts many things have occurred, including a few 'major' occasions such as Christmas and new years. :)

This year's Christmas was spent like most recent years, down at the family home in Rosebud, conversing with the parental units and waiting for my brother, his wife and my niece to show up and open presents. We've finally gotten to the point where we don't really do presents for the adults (except Mum, of course) so we really just concentrate on Courtney, as the only family member who still believes in fat guys in red suits. There was an amusing moment over dinner when we tried to remember the names of the reindeer and could only manage about 5 (full answer: Rudolph, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Blitzen, Donner & Cupid - Although not the original lineup). Courtney enjoyed her presents, which seemed to be entirely made up of Bratz and Saddle Club merchandise, including a remote control horse that walks across the floor like it has polio as the rear legs don't lift up, but she loved it anyway :) The drive down was cool because Steph loaned me her Statesman so I got to cruise in style ;)

Boxing day saw me, Mick and Steph in the car on the way to Canberra for a few days of fun in Australia's Bush Capital :) The real occasion was for the combined Steph/Ush birthday party. I was lucky enough to get the spare bed at Therese and Edmond's place, while Mick & Steph were on the sofa-bed at her parent's place :) The party was pretty good, started out at the King-o (Kingston Hotel) and ended up at the Durham, with the girls all smoking a cigar :) Not a good idea, especially for Steph and Sandy who both ended up driving the porcelain bus a little later :)

The remainder of the Canberra trip was fairly standard, hanging out with the various people we knew, having dinner with Steph's pop and family, which was a bit of fun, as they're all smart arses too :) We drove back on the 29th, stopping off in Albury for some lunch and some shopping in their mini-Myer :)

Which after a few miscellaneous hours spent consuming Flickr like it's high grade crack, brings us to New Year's Eve. :)

Now the original plan was just to hang out for a bit somewhere quiet, not get too hammered and not go out too late, because we had Summadayze the next day. Obviously, like many plans, this one was not put into action.

What Actually happened was that Damien informed us that he had two free passes to the Belfast dance party at QBH so we went there instead :) We stopped by Damien K's place first to catch up with him, Helen and Rose, then swung by Mick & Steph's place to catch up with them, Dan, Cath, Ger, Blackie, Marnie and Michelle, then headed off into the city for some old school techno action :)

The city itself was full of people, with large parts of the city streets near the river blocked off for pedestrians, and a large number of people walking around drunk :) it was pretty interesting :)

Hadn't been to a Belfast before, but it was pretty good. The music was not exactly all 'brand new' but then that's the whole idea, some old school hits to get everyone going, then Oliver Lieb got up and did a set that was really superb :)

After that we decided we probably should head for home about 3am, wading through the detritus of a NYE in the city, rubbish, streamers, and lots of heavily drunk people :) It was funny watching people trying to catch a taxi when some of them were having problems standing up :) (we caught the tram home)

The next day was, of course, Summadayze. The day started pretty good, I met Joe on the tram and we headed into the city for some breakfast then hit the bowl.
The gig was fantastic, lots of really good music and even ran into a few old friends. The best part was that I wasn't still wrecked from the previous night and so we were able to keep going until it finished up at 11 ;)

Otherwise the rest of my holiday time has been spent on Flickr and watching movies. :)