The Canberra Connection

Hydrant
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This past long weekend was spent in Canberra, checking in on The Canberra Connection and making sure Mick get's his fix of Kingsley's Fried Chicken.
We went up there for Usha's Divorce party, celebrating a very happy occasion that lead to a large number of hangovers on Sunday morning :)
Drove up to Canberra on Friday with Kate, which was as much fun as an 8 hour trip can be in the pouring rain after a long week at work :) we had a fun time singing along to cheesy music in the car, and she didn't object too much when I stopped at Holbrook to take photos of the submarine buried in the ground :)
While in Canberra I stayed at the home of Therese and Edmund, who are very nice and generous people, and they treated me very nice, cooked me breakfast and didn't get too upset when I interfered with their dog Sammi's training by playing with her when they were trying to get her to be still :)
Saturday was raining too much to take photos outside, so Mick, Edmund and I went to the Australian War Memorial to avoid being trapped shopping with the womenfolk ;) Therese's brother Martin was not so lucky, as he's just moved out of home (that morning) the girls dragged him around all the homeware stores to determine what he needed. Poor guy :)
Saturday night was Usha's party, with a large crowd in attendance, and a good time had by all. At one point the guest of honour had to retire due to drunkenness, but soon rallied and got back into the party :)
Sunday was a good day to be at Therese and Edmund's, as they made steamboat for lunch, and a whole bunch of people came around for us all to tuck into some very good food. Tender morsels of meat, fish, seafood, cooked in a spicy Tom Yum soup. The only problem was working out when to stop, I ended up eating for about an hour and a half :)
Sunday was a very nice day, so after lunch the guys went off to play golf and I drove around the city a little and took some photos. Sunday night was off to Steph and Katrina's parents house for a big roast dinner.
Now one of the cool things about Canberra is that they still have fireworks on Queen's Birthday weekend (which was this weekend, for the overseas readers, I know it's not the actual Queen's birthday, it's just a holiday thing) so Ger had some fireworks and we let them off. Never mind the fact that we weren't actually in the ACT, as the suburb they live in is over the border in NSW, we let them off anyway :) Steph was pretty funny, as she was not very comfortable around the fireworks and was very keen to move away when they went off, a process that often involved fleeing in panic :) The funniest part was when one of them flew up and over the neighbours fence into their yard, Steph and Katrina's mum laughed so hard I thought she might be going to pass out. We were all laughing ourselves silly at that stage though :)
Monday was fairly boring, mainly involved with driving home, this time with Katrina in the car, the both of us laughing at the people driving who were too competetive to let anyone pass them, but too scared of speeding to actually go over the speed limit by more than afew kph when overtaking to get back in front, so they'd come up fast behind, pull out into the next lane, then drift past at a miniscule rate :) morons :)