365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 100 (Saturday 10 April 2010): Driving Me To An Organic Future

I had planned a slothful start to the day with much sleeping in and very little energetic activity.

What I got, after discovering my car's battery had magically emptied itself of ant and all charge - no headlights, interior lights or boot lights left on so who knows what caused it - was an early morning call to the NRMA ( well I should make some use of my yearly fee!) to re-start the car (performed by a lovely friendly guy) and then the need for an hour long drive somewhere, anywhere to charge up the battery. So off I set - it turned out without my new rego sticker or license! - for a one hour drive down to The Shire and back. I couldn't stop or see any friends down there and I am not the sort of person who likes drives for the sake of a drive... I like, no adore, a destination, and while this one technically had one since I did get home eventually, it was not my idea of a jolly good time....

After a wonderful chat with my close friend Kerry, I set off for some shopping at Moore Park Supa Centa with my friend Warren - finally got a new storage unit for the bathroom! - which was truncated when Warren's date moved up the time. So I diverted quickly to Broadway Shopping Centre, quickly met his date (yes really!), did my grocery shopping at Coles, and headed home for a much-needed nap....

Awaking just in time to get ready for a dinner out at Peasant's Nest, a great organic restaurant on King St., with my friends Warren, Ian & Ingo which was just sublime. The conversation flowed easily, the wine just as easily, and we relaxed and enjoyed the night and some divinely delicious food. It is so nice to just stop and enjoy the conmpany of people that matter to you, and even better when the restaurant you choose has great food, service and ambience. A wonderful night.

The only thing that would have made it even better would have been the presence of my lovely man but he was far away in Melbourne and having a wonderful time of his own with his family....

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 99 : Farewell To All My Friends

I am being abandoned today!

Yes left all alone. My friend Stephen is off to NZ, my friend Fahmi off to Singapore and Europe for 3 weeks (and I am feeding his cat, collecting his email and generally keeping an eye on his place), my housemate has left for Canberra for a weekend with his boyfriend, and lastly and most importantly, my beautiful man, who makes my weekends fun and delightful, is off to Melbourne for a weekend with the family.

My beautiful guy sizes up his flatter than flat ciabata sandwich at the airport food court. I, meanwhile, ate a plump Subway Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich, and yet again they asked me which sauce I'd like with that....um, the sweet onion one?! Why do they ask?!

So where does that leave me? Well with a box set of the United States of Tara season 1, the rest of my book Ark, and lots of napping to try and recover from the tiredness (I feel a flu coming on but I am knocking back zinc tablets to try to head that off at the immune system pass).... and missing my lovely guy.

Have a lovely time away everyone..... see you soon!

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 98 : Knee Deep in Snoozy ZZZZZZZZZZZs

How tired was I today?

I felt like I was sleep walking to work, at work and leaving work.

I zoned out on the bus and train home - I read the paper and magazines but don't recall what was in them.

I had to cancel speaking to a dear and special friend in Brisbane because my brain had decided it couldn't think clearly enough to string together intelligible sentences.

I didn't go and exercise despite really needing to and lay on my bed watching Cougar Town instead.

After a wonderful chat to my gorgeous guy - when we discussed him sitting on the plane with his Ipod Nano (or Nanna as he jokingly terms it) singing along aloud while a bemused plane load of people looked on (well we think that's funny!).... oh and filming it for You Tube of course - I headed to bed, read some of a novel Ark by Stephen Baxter and..........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 97 : Off to Temple Once Again...

Tonight, after a very busy full-on day, I raced home, changed in mere light seconds - no I am not geeky enough to know how fast that actually is but I am betting it's VERY fast right? - and met my car at the chirpily titled, Trade Gate (and no we don't mean plumbers unless they are like the ones in porn movies), at my complex for a trip to IKEA.

Usually I love my trips to IKEA - once you've battled the traffic on Parramatta Road (we wisely chose the back roads through Haberfield etc tonight), I love picking up a bright Splorken or a zippy Farken Goopen and going home with all this stuff  that I didn't know I needed! But this time we went to get all the parts of the wardrobe and buffet my beautiful guy is buying for his apartment and frankly it was a nightmare.

We had a lovely time together, as we always do, but that was no thanks to IKEA who seem to specialise in making it as difficult as possible to locate what you want, ensure that the quantities of said goods are ridiculously low if not non-existent, and refuse to deliver anything approaching customer service such as reserving items for you. I can understand their cut price retail model works well for the little things where it's just a matter of plucking it off a shelf, but for the big ticket items like wardrobes etc, they should make some changes so buying them is not an excuse in frustration and disappointment, which are two things you don't want when you parting with big bucks for funky furniture.

Thankfully we did encounter a very helpful guy right at the end who was able to find a lot of stuff we couldn't find and worked out much of it was on pallets ready to be 'dropped' the next morning from the higher shelves of the warehouse. That eased the frustration somewhat but it did mean another trip Thursday morning by my guy to get his wardrobe and buffet,m which he mostly did bar one single unit in the buffet. So it all ended happily but was far more difficult and annoying a process that you'd expect it to be, especially not on a feel good process like furniture.

We ate our frustrating night away at Happy Chef in Newtown - yay the combination fried rice and beef and vegetables! - before my guy dropped me off at home and I fell deeply asleep, resolutely ignoring any urges to go walking at 5 the next morning!

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 96 (Tuesday 6 April 2010) : Having My Phil of an Old Friend

Continuing what seems to be a recent Tuesday tradition of catching up with friends I haven't seen in many a long day (and quite a few fleetingly short, fast ones), I met up with long standing friend, Phil, tonight, recently returned from being a missionary with his wife and three kids in Mozambique.

I never did make it to Mozambique to visit him - every time I contemplated it some disease outbreak or unrest persuaded me to go to Canada instead which has a dearth of ebola virus or cholera outbreaks - but thankfully he's back in Australia, working at Bondi Junction and living in Wollongong. We met up in the City and walked down to The Rocks for a hearty steak and salad dinner at my favourite pub, Phillips Foote, acompanied by wine (me) and beer (him), and we caught up on the events of a number of years of sporadic contact during which I came out (which Phil didn't handle well at first, as he'll be the first to admit, but which he now understands is who I am... he even asked how I met my gorgeous guy), he had another child, and I changed jobs and he changed profession and countries! Phew!

The lovely courtyard of Phillips Foote (we sat at the table in the top left of the photo, up the stairs)

There was so much to catch up that we continued the catch up - we slipped back into the sort of easy familiar conversational style that you have with old friends, no matter the years of separation - next door at The Rocks Cafe where I had the yummiest lemon meringue cake (with a towering crown of meringue that I ate separately from the lemon custard section, a habit I haevn't shaken since I was a kid!) and a wine before we walked back to Circular Quay and our trains home.

It was a delightful reunion and it will be so lovely to be back in regular contact again.

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 95 : Much A-Goo About Nothing.....Healthy

Well it's day 4 of the Easter weekend, and I am both happy and sad to report I have done nothing today but loll around in sloth and indolence, watch Ellen and The View while consuming French toast, hot cross buns and chips and then shopping at Moore Park Supa Centa (for an Easter tree in special of all things!) and Bunnings. Yes another visit to Bunnings!

In the middle of all this delightful public holiday laziness, and the consumption of the annual caloric intake of several small South Amercian villages, my guy and I even managed to get his new shelving unit assembled - no it wasn't IKEA which no doubt helped! - and his study looks a million times more organised than it was, meaning working from home will be a breeze hopefully from here on in.

The best part was spending the entire day, and indeed the Easter break in the company of my darling man who is the most wonderful of people to spend time with.... it will be hard to say goodbye tonight after 4 lovely days in his arms but at least there's Wednesday night and the Archibalds to look forward to...

In the meantime, is that yet another Easter egg calling my name? It's amazing how articulate they have become over the last few days.

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 94 : Smurfin' Easter 3 - Bedroom Hunting, Rabbit Baskets and Roasted But Not Toasted

This was such a fun day!

It was even almost bigger than Christmas..... Almost I said! After all, as if I, the ultimate Christmas junkie would let anything dwarf it?! Seriously what were you thinking?...........I woke up early, and went out to pack up my gorgeous guy's Easter gift basket in the kitchen - on the pretext that I needed a cold drink which let's face it on a cold morning did not hold water (haha!) and which we both knew was a ruse to get me out of the bedroom - while he pretended to do nothing in the bedroom but laze around. In reality he was frantically laying out a fantastical Easter egg hunt right around my room, which I didn't notice at first because of the wonderful rabbit puzzle and ginormous red Easter egg sitting on my side of the bed but which I couldn't miss the moment I turned my head.

There were eggs scattered from my iMac keyboard right around to my fan to the Smurf Palace, down to the VCR and DVD player, and held tightly by Kiajo the Koala, Boris the Bunny and any manner of plush toys. I laughed in sheer delight - well I am a kid at heart and a screaming queen when I put my mind to it! -and I was tickled pink, red and a nifty shade of vermillion to see how much trouble he had gone to. He loved the basket I have him too, which contained an Easter Bunnykins egg cup, and a hot chocolate mug with a pink bunny on it. It was wonderfully fun and romantic and I love tha fact that my guy is as much into these occasions as I am.

After some more lolling in bed, and a yummy hot cross buns brunch with my housemate on the balcony

we headed to our friends' John and Essie for a yummy roast lamb dinner, lots of Easter eggs (including one containing a Buddha! That was so hilarious!), and an Easter Egg Hunt that had two very unhappy 2 year olds smiling and enjoying themselves within seconds. No doubt their change of mood was helped along by one or two thousand small Easter eggs (although, thankfully, I think we pulled up just before we hit Vomit Level...phew!). It was one of those relaxed, just kick back and enjoyed the company of good friends that I love so much, and while we had planned to head home mid-afternoon, the day ran till 5pm. No one was complaining.

After that, the night was very quiet and chilled with some hot cross bun and egg grazing and TV...... OK more like an egg and chocolate bunny massacre but grazing sounds so much nicer....

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 93 : Smurfin' Easter 2 - Markets and Tea and Flicks

So you have no doubt noticed that in an effort to detract our attention from the evil feral rabbit, who is a tad too fecund for the fragile Australian ecology, that many environment groups, chocolate and plush toy makers have been trying to push the Easter Bilby as a more eco-friendly symbol of Easter. (I am fairly certain that Jesus, who legend has it is responsible for this orgy of chocolate eating and rabbit over-promotion, was very eco-friendly and didn't leave his iron on overnight but he isn't, let's face it, as cuddly cute as a bilby.). Anyway in my effort to source all sorts of fun Easter pics for the blog came across this one for....the Easter Rhino! Yes! I am not so sure he's such a wise choice given the frazzled panicked look on his face, and one gets the sense he may trample small Aussie plants underfoot, but nevertheless, what a cool alternative.... I mean if you like hard-skinned, large aggressive mammals as your Easter symbol....

But if rhinos aren't your thing as an Easter icon, then why not more smurfs? Today's smurfs were a smurf painting eggs in the Greek tradition and another stuffing his face in a reasonably accurate depiction of me 'refraining' from overdoing it on the weekend. We even snapped the painting smurf as Badde Manors, a fabulous vego cafe we go to in Glebe, where take my word for it, the eggplany schnitzel is too die for! Not that I would since that would preclude the consumption of any more of the delectable crumbed vegetables, but it gives you some idea how good the food is. Today though I eschewed martydom-inducing food items (though it was the weekend for it) and stuck to a vegetarian Big Breakfast with lots of yummy haloumi cheese.

After all the vegetarian goodness and virtue - which no doubt warded off all the less than deisrable though totally delicious chocolate calories - we went shopping first at Glebe Markets (yes more smurfs from my 'dealer' there! My beautiful guy is wonderfully understanding of my need to own ever increasing numbers of small blue plastic people) then Broadway (I grabbed some Easter M & M plush toys while my lovely man grabbed some Easter eggs and treats for me. althought naturally at the time, he obliquely told me he just had to get 'stuff') before heading back to his place then Marrickville Metro (where he insisted he needed to get the 'paper'...yes more code for secretive egg purchaes, which next day found their way into every nook and cranny of my bedroom) and my place.

We barely drew breath as if we rushed into my place, where  got changed into jeans before we headed to afternoon tea with my good friends Warren (and his mum), and Ian & Ingo at lovely cafe, Astino's (where everyone got Lindt chocolate bunnies). For some weird reason, my gorgeous guy and I felt compelled to add to our already burgeoning calorie count and we had count while everyone else sensibly didn't. I just didn't want the chocolate calories to feel lonely I guess... anyway we had a lovely catch up and then my beautiful guy and I went across the road to Dendy and met up with our close friends, Fahmi (the one who brought us together......well accidentally but we give him the accolade regardless!) and Stephen, to see the delightfully engaging French movie, Micmacs, from the director who brought us, Amelie. The movie was visually rich and eccentric with a simultaneously overwhelming but rich world created in its entirety, populated by a cast of misfits and societal castoffs, all of whom drew together as a surrogate family to enact revenge on some evil arms manufacturers. The dialogue was a treat, the characters well rounded and wonderful to watch, and it confirmed to me once again that no one does over the top farce quite as well as the French.

Dinner followed at Sushi Train - yes we got moderately healthy which disturbed my commitment to caloric overload but I recovered the next day so no ongoing damage was done! - before drinks at The Bank Hotel on King Street where we mixed with the fabulously glam, hip crowd. Naturally we went home way before any of them, and my gorgeous guy and I were tucked up snug in bed by 11.30 like any, um. middle aged guys...... well a boy needs to sleep to have the strength for all that egg eating......

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 91 (Thursday 31 March, 2010) : Apocalypse Retailing

What is Apocalypse Retailing I hear you ask? (Which is odd since we don't have Skype connected so if I am hearing you, then there are voices in my head which isn't a good omen for continuing sanity, assuming I have it in the first place.)


It's that weird frenetic impulse that people seem to have to rush to the supermarket the day before a one day public holiday and load up with trolley-loads of groceries to tide them over till the shops reopen. Keeping in mind that their fridges and cupboards are likely fit to bursting with more food than a gluttons convention in the USA,  this means that supermarkets on a public holiday eve are hotbeds of chaotic pushing and shoving as people desperately prepare themselves for a..... 24 hour period without retailing options. Ooh scary...

Alas against my better judgement I had to head into Woolies tonight to grab some food for dinner, and while I kept my purchases to just a few select items - meaning I could use the still over-patronised express lines - I did get stuck behind a couple who decided that 2 groaning basket loads constituted an express line quantity. This delayed me even further, after stopping for petrol, and I took far longer to reach my gorgeous guy's place that I'd really wanted to. No more Apocalypse Shopping for me!

Still, the frustration of being in the midts of this retailing madness was not a big issue next to the great day I had had off from work. Even the visit to the dentist went well, with my mouth recovering everywhere bar one tooth from gum disease after ridiculous amounts of flossing, brushing and Listerine-ing by myself and my visit to my lovely career counsellor and good friend, Jane, also went well, and I am confident that we'll be able to craft a really good plan to get me from my current job into a creative job of some kind in about 12 months or so.

All very relaxing and fulfilling... I just need to avoid the supermarket next time!

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 92 (Friday 1 April 2010) : Smurfin' Easter 1 : Eggs and Bacon and Sloth

I love Easter!

These days that is largely, or let's be honest, entirely due to the fact that I get a much welcome 4 day break from the frenetic Outlook-inpsired madness of my work life when too much forward momentum is never enough, and lots of delicious chocolate eggs and hot cross buns, and a chance for some wonderful quality time with my gorgeous guy.  (Back in the day, when I went to church, it naturally revolved around celebrating Jesus's death and resurrection but given that my faith is not the be all and end all anymore - or even at all much of the time - I have stripped my Easter observations back to all the fun, pagan stuff!)

Today was the most delightfully stripped back day of the whole weekend. Nothing was open - bar the service station and frankly my desire to spend quality time there sits somewhere between being attacked by angry villagers with torches and pitchforks, and watching a box set of Neighbours episodes - so my yummy guy and I just kicked back, ate a delicious brunch, kicked back some more and finally.....yes kicked back even more!

It was so bliss-inducing, stepping off the manic fast track of 21st Century life, and just spending time with the man who makes my life the wonderful place it is now. I loved not having to rush here, there or anywhere, and in the end the only place we did go was back to my place before walking a whole block - yes we walked a whole block on a day of sloth and indulgence! Fancy that!! - to my friend Warren's for champagne, pizza and lots of fun conversation (with his mum and my friend Fahmi along for the ride) till late....

Oh and the Smurfs? Why not? I have started collecting them again, I have 8 Easter themed Smurfs so for a bit of fun I have included 2 of them each day over Easter in the photos....