right pub, wrong place

shoulder to cry on
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday night was pretty much a non-event. Having spent the entire day trying to fix an urgent problem at work without much success, I wasn't really in the mood for much, so I went and had two drinks down at Yak, Managing a very quick catchup with Lee, who just got back from a holiday in Europe, having got engaged and just having had a birthday there was a bit of catching up to do and not really much time, so we'll need to catch up a bit more at her birthday dinner next weekend. Then I went back up to work, then went back down to meet Bec and her former flatmate Rachel and went with them and Joe and Pommie John to Cherry bar. After another two drinks there everyone went home and I went back to work to keep slugging away at the problem. After working until 11:30pm I finally gave up and went home, anticipating a long day at work the next day, but when I woke up the next day I had a little brainwave and also got some suggestions from a colleague and managed to get it all fixed up without going in to the office, much to my joy :)

Friday also brought a piece of happiness in the form of my prizes for that photo competition. Some new sunnies, new goggles, a 2-day lift ticket and a voucher for some Mountain Designs gear. So on Saturday, after being reprieved from a day of gloomy work in a chilled computer room environment, Joe and I went into the city to do a little shopping and I bought a new jacket.

Saturday night saw us out in the city to catch up with Clare, Peta, Erin and Nikki. Joe and I met up in the city a bit early and went to check out a bar called e fifty five on Elizabeth st, some place that DJ mudgutz was always keen on, which turned out to be a pretty good place. Underground, nice crowd, good bar staff, great music, cheap drinks, and apparently free wireless internet as long as you're there drinking.

On the way to the bar we ran into a guy on the street who was looking for some directions to a particular hotel that he had accommodations for but had forgotten the address. We spoke for a minute or two and he was a bit drunk, having just gotten out of Goulburn jail after nine years, and was having trouble finding the place he was meant to go to. He had it written down on a piece of paper but had the paper wadded up in his pocket and it had gotten wet at some point so it was basically just a big wad of slightly discoloured paper with no chance of getting an address of it. He seemed a pretty happy drunk, not even a hint of violence or danger, even after learning that he'd just gotten out of jail. I think he was a little disappointed we weren't more scared, and he'd obviously spent most of his freedom so far in the pub and only left when his money ran out, so we each gave him a few dollars to get a meal. I hope he found his hotel, he didn't seem to be comfortable out and about on the street, seemed a little nervous and kept repeating himself, but I'm sure he'd have found his hotel, as we were only a block away at most.

After our time at e55 we went off to meet up with the girls at Pugg Mahones. We get to the bar and find it filled with a Uni Football team in an advanced state of loudness, singing along to the two guys playing guitar and belting out aussie pub classics. A bit concerned about the size of the pub, the lack of our friends and the lack of a dance club upstairs as described to us, we finally get a hold of the girls to discover that the "going out in the city" actually translates to "going out in carlton" and that there are in fact two Pugg Mahones. We jump into a taxi out to Carlton, very happy to be out of that place, and wind up at a much better version of the same pub, with a band playing modern dancy hits interspersed with a DJ placing some decent tracks without too much top 40 :) The girls are all there with a bunch of other friends and we all settle in for a fairly large evening.

Later on our friend Sean joins us, as he's down from Brisbane for the weekend, and despite not having met the girls before they were soon all hitting it off like old friends. Overall it was a pretty good night, lots of silliness and fun and drinking of drinks :)

Sunday was a fairly lazy day, waking up at lunch time and then going over to watch a movie with Kate. She was over in Box Hill house sitting for her boyfriend Nick while he was off on some flying trip around the country, and her previous lunchtime engagement had fallen through so she invited me around for a catch up and to watch Young Adam on DVD. It was good to see her as I hadn't seen her much in the last month and was missing hanging out with her. The film was interesting, a rather morbid tale set on the Scottish canals following the life of a man working on one of the barges during the 40's, played by Ewan McGregor. All the scenes were rather pale and dreary and Ewan ended up having sex with just about every woman he came into contact with, to the point where we were joking that it was Scottish Soft-Core pornography. It was quite a good film despite that as the story was quite interesting, and it took a while to work out if he was having flashbacks or fantasies every time he drove the barge into a tunnel. It was also very good to see Kate again, especially since we are catching up on Tuesday anyway to see a film :)