Send My Conscience Home in a Taxi

So, I did some sewing this weekend. With a hammer! The button on my one pair of shorts fell off. Who sews a button onto shorts with thread?

It turned out I had proper jeans button, you know the metal rivet ones, in my collection of sewing stuff. Yes, I have a collection of sewing stuff! It had a button and the spiked back of the thing that had to be forced into it somehow. So I fished out my hammer and banged the two together through the cloth of my shorts!

This weekend we also managed to make it to the Cirus Oz Blue Show, a somewhat adults only circus in the Melba Spiegeltent in an obscure part of the Docklands. Actually, the whole of the Docklands is so obscure. A pile of new buildings with no character, and a pile of streets with no pedestrians...

It wasn't actually particularly risqué, aside from some amusing nudity and the odd swear word. Oh, and the two performers dressed as bogans. It was only on for twelve performances, and they all sold out, so sorry you might have missed it!

More to come...

Friday night, Deb and I did some ridin'. Saturday was her birthday, so I promised to take her out to a fancy restaurant. This gets complicated when you're dating a gluten-intolerant vegetarian!

So. Were does one take a GFV to spoil them? The best vegetarian restaurant in Melbourne, which as everyone will tell you, is Shakarahari's in Carlton (hmm, that name might have fewer a's than that...)

We had some really ace food there, which I really can't describe, except it was very, very yummy. Then we pottered around Reading's bookshop for a bit, as you do when on Lygon Street. We managed not to buy anything. Wait, I lie, Deb bought some kids books for a friend.

Saturday I woke up in Deb's bed. That was ace. Rode home, then drove out to Warburton! As you do. My first cousin once removed Asher Francis Donald Johanson Neil (I witnessed his birth certificate when he was born in the mid 80's, so I know his whole name!) is joining the army, and was having a going away party.

Warburton's a long way from Northcote. I've driven out there a few times, so I knew vaguely where I was going. I got to the outskirts of Lilydale, and thought "cool, I'm nearly there", when I saw a sign that said "Warbuton 44 KM." D'oh! I was barely half way! Another of my little relatives had made a card for Asher which said, in part, "have fun going to the war. Please don't get killed"!

Headed back to Melbourne in time to acquire gluten free bread, to make gluten free fairy breed! Deb had a birthday party on Saturday night, at which there were many such treats. And of course one was obliged to dress as a pirate! I got myself a rather awesome costume (boots, baggy pants, big belt, baggy top, pirate hat, sword and plastic hook. Oh, and a ugly fake parrot!) and spent most of the evening going "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar."

We also invented a fun game, pretending we were on a ship. All you have to do is get everyone in the to sway in the same direction at the same time!

Some of Deb's friend's composed a sea shanty and performed it for her, which was really awesome.

And the weird event of the night: Chatting to my friend Lisa, and mentioning in passing the name of another friend of mine, Tim. Only to discover that they're cousin's or something!!! How weird is that? Well, actually, this has been happening to me pretty constantly theses days. Ah well.

Ok, I think I'm about blogged out. I have a weird week coming up... I have very little on! Yippee! Apart from work of course...

Following on from this post, some stats I forgot to mention:

Number of fresh oysters eaten: six! Yum!
Bonsai shops visited: one.
Tins of cat food acquired: eight.
Gigs of Black Sabbath MP3s downloaded: 1.8GB.
Number of piggy back rides provided by me: one!

(Before I forget: Amusing story from our weekend house hunting. We looked at a place in Northcote which was kinda behind Northcote High. I'd been teasing Barbara about her lack of men - as usual - and made some comment about how "at least this place is near the highschool". She found this far more amusing than it should have been...)

Ok, Sunday. I finally crowbared my arse out of bed around 10AM. This was a problem, because I had to make a trip down to Geelong - my grandfather is ailing apparently. Although... it's hard to tell from the way my Mother tells it. He's not doing to badly for someone 93 years old, but then people that age can fade fast.

I managed to get out of bed and get to the station, only to find that the train was at 10.35 from Merri, and the Geelong train was at 11AM - that doesn't work. So I jogged back to my place and drove to Spencer Street station in about fifteen minutes flat. I should mention at this point that my car is old and tired and not up to long journeys like Geelong. I seriously thought about renting a car, but couldn't think of a way to make that work - the rental places are all in Preston, and I've had had to return the car before work on Monday which would have sucked. Tried to borrow my dad's car, but a cousin had beaten me to it.

Anyway, made the station, then watched the minutes till the train left counting down while I stood in the ticket queue. I was almost at the head of the queue when the departure time on the wall clicked over to "now". I put my wallet back in my pocket and stomped off... Only to see the train still standing there. Fuck fuck fuck. I could probably have made it. Fuck fuck.

Decided it was high time to get some breakfast, so I drove to the Tin Pot cafe in Fitzroy. It occurs to me that part of the reason I'm always broke is because of my instance on living in the inner city and doing the inner city thing... I was watching all the tattoo and pierced hip young things sipping their lattes, and I thought... I should disengage, stop looking for houses in Fitzroy, head out to Coburg or somewhere and cook for myself routinely. I am not a bright young 20 something any more.

Which I then proved further by going home and more or less passing out. I slept for most of the afternoon. This last week caught up with me. Then I dragged myself to the gym. Will have to make the trip to Geeeeeeeeeeeelong next weekend...