August 17 - Spring Is Coming!

  I got up at 8am-ish today, had a shower, washed my hair, half-dressed, checked email and facebook, finished dressing, cursed as my socks started to get sucked into my sneakers, changed my socks and made breakfast.  Breakfast was a small bowl of berries and yoghurt.  I didn't feel like the fibre toppers today.  It was already around 9am and I knew I'd be eating lunch relatively early due to a car service this afternoon.
  The morning was unusually productive for me.  I loaded the dishwasher and set it going, sorted and laid away the Lego, sorted my laundry, brought in the almost dry load of laundray and put it on the clothes horse in the spare room, put a new load of laundry on, laid away the now clean dishes,  hung out the new load of laundry and then ate lunch!
  Lunch was my leftover pasta bake from Wednesday night zapped in the microwave.  It was even nicer than on Wednesday.  Some things are just nicer once they've had a bit of time to let the flavours mature and mingle.
  At about 12:30pm I headed off to Brighton Mazda.  Hester (my little green machine) arrived on time for her 50,000km service and I decided to go for a walk and take in the signs of the oncoming spring.  It was infinitely preferable to two hours of gazing numbly at trash mags in the stale waiting room.

  I walked from Brighton Mazda up Patterson Road to Jasper Road and back, a 3.2km round trip.  It took me a whole hour but that's because I kept pausing to take photos.  They were mainly of the new flowers but there is also a cool art installation under the rail bridge.  The installation inspired by the work of the artist Pamela Irving, she's the one that made that dog statue I photographed my nephew on last Sunday.  Anyway, her gallery and studio are on Patterson Road so when I passed I knocked and said hello.  She was busy working on some new pieces for Luna Park's 150th Birthday celebrations.  I didn't want to clog up the post with lots of photos of flowers though so click here if you would like to see the best 18 photos from my walk.
  Once I got back I made myself as comfortable as possible on their awful sofas and flicked through the April issues of Who Weekly, Famous and Grazia.  My poor mind went to sleep in protest.  Luckily the remaining hour passed quickly though and soon enough Hester was ready to roll.  She even had a wash! Woohoo!  Because since water restrictions I never wash my poor car.
  I got home at around 4pm and not long after, Captain Cupcake texted me to check we were still on for Indian tonight with our old friend Hagrid.  We were indeed! And I let her know I was home and she could come over whenever she liked, so she did.  Cupcake kept me company while I cleaned up the kitchen bench and put a few more dishes away.
  Tonight Cupcake and I went out to dinner at my favourite Indian restaurant Raju's Indian Restaurant with our old friend Hagrid and his partner.  He's been hiding her away for over a year now but I finally got to meet her!  A lovely lady, I can see why he's been so happy.
  While we perused the menus, we were served pappadoms with mint chutney and tamarind sauce.  We had soon all spotted something to try and ordered.  For entree the four of us had a Samosa each and shared a serve of Onion Bhaji with cucumber raita.

  For main course we shared four different curries, from left to right we had: Prawn Malai, Butter Chicken, Beef Murghal and Daal Makhani.  This was served with plenty of saffron rice and Cupcake and I split a wholemeal roti as well.

 

  After dinner Cupcake had to leave us for the night as some terrible fiend had conspired to have her awake at 6am on a Saturday!  The rest of us decided to watch Bill Bailey's Part Troll!  Hagrid and his partner had never seen Bill Bailey do stand-up but they have bought tickets for his new show Qualmpeddler in Melbourne at Hamer Hall in September.  I must confess, I didn't know he was coming, but I'm now sorely tempted to get tickets myself but Hamer Hall is such a big venue it's hard to tell if you'd be in a good position!  I hate to say it, but there are a lot of advantages to watching it on DVD instead.  But I love his stand-up, he's a story-teller and jester rather than a jokester.  He weaves these worlds and sucks you into them only to expose the ridiculousness.  I love it.

  Once they left I came into my office to write today's episode.  It's been slow today as I've had a lot to process and share but I was lucky to have further company tonight.  My sister-in-law MinxB kept me company on facebook chat sharing music with me.  Nightwish, George Michael, Shakira and many more.  She's fun to hang out.

  Oh, not that I got the official notification or anything but one other significant event occurred today; I am now officially divorced.  It doesn't really change anything for me, but it's still comforting to know it's over and done.
  Have a great weekend everyone.
  Jess