Month: April 2007

From Rob’s phone.

No, not a banjo lovin’ whiskey swillen son of the south, I’m literally a red neck.

An afternoon sitting in the son at the footy followed by an afternoon in the sun at the Easter Sunday bbq has left me with a neck the colour of a freshly boiled lobster. I’ve gone through a tub of moisturiser but I’m still glowing red. Stick me on a buoy and I could be guiding ships in to port tonight. I’d gone all summer without a sunburn, what an idiot to get a really bad burn in autumn.

I finally figured out the macro settings on my camera yesterday. Click the pic – my friend looks better at full size. More of him on my new Macro flickr page.

This morning a train was stuck on the tracks for 20 minutes cutting off our way to The Coat. Cars came, sat and went around the (really) long way. The chef from The Coat was stuck too and while I was there the new waitress ran up to the other side of the tracks, both talking to each other on their phones. He hopped out of his car, threw the keys over the train and headed off. Problem solved, cafe open on time.

When the train eventually disappeared the boom gates stayed down. After a minute some idiot decided to drive over the tracks on the wrong side of the street and zipped through the shut gates. As he drove off Rae spotted a big sticker on his bumper bar : ‘Touched By The Road Toll’.

Priceless.

2007 officially began today. Rob and I went to our first game for the season and it was at The G on a Saturday afternoon. The Tigers went down to the Swans, as expected, but it wasn’t the game most people were expecting. The Tigers came to play and it was only the lack of a ruck and certain mercurial forward that gave the Swans the chances they needed to wrestle the game from us. I’d forgotten just how great it is to go the footy, six months is way too long between drinks and I’m already thinking about heading to the Collingwood game this coming Friday even though we don’t have seats.

Roll on the Woods, roll on the Dogs, car’n the Tige’s!

Ah, what a good day.

We started out this morning on a journey to Ascot Vale to try and hunt down the sign that Jen mentioned ages ago. We pulled in to the street and then I had a flash – we needed to be elsewhere!

I pointed the car east and we headed to Richmond to Tho Tho’s for a great Vietnamese lunch. It’s been years since I was a regular there but the waiter recognised me straight away, I even got a hand shake and a welcome back. Better yet, the food was still great. You really can’t go past Tho Tho’s rice paper rolls.

After a snack lunch (and a beer for me) we went for a walk but rather than wander the back streets of Richmond we popped around to one of Melbourne’s great treasures, the Fitzroy Gardens. We found a great area at the top where we sat and lay on the grass for a while.

Bert couldn’t quite get the hang of rolling down hill so I scooped him up and we went rolling together. Man it was fun, he was screaming and giggling with unrestrained joy. However when we stopped I discovered why grown ups generally don’t roll down hills any more – my head wouldn’t stop spinning. Phee took over instruction and the two of them rolled/spun/ran down the slope for ages.

We wandered down to the far bottom corner and grabbed an ice cream each for the stroll back to the car via the fairy tree and model Tudor village. Phee had had enough by this time and was dragging her heels but not even a surly girl could bring us down after a glorious afternoon in the sun and fresh air and, as a bonus, we’ve still got Ascot Vale to explore on another day.

Idiot Van Driver is first off the ranks. I thought I’d cut through South Melbourne to avoid the gigantic mess that is the Kings Way on ramp to the Westgate Freeway. All was going well until I turned in to Montague St and the traffic stopped dead. I crawled for five minutes until I saw the flashing lights – one set being the flashing red of a ‘you are too tall to get under this bridge’ warning sign and the other being the flashing blue of a divvy van pulled up behind a truck and its driver who decided to ignore the first set of flashing lights. Idiot.

Second is people who use mobile phones while driving. Come on people. Stop it. Just stop it. There is no excuse. If they can make red light cameras, speed cameras and point to point cameras then surely we can make an ‘idiot who thinks talking to their best friend while holding on to the phone and driving is perfectly okay’ camera. If I wasn’t driving myself I would have snapped at least five on the way home today.

Third it’s smokers. And Ebayers. More specifically Ebayers who are smokers. I bought a book off Ebay today (an old web project management book if you’re interested) and as soon as I dropped it on to the passenger seat after retrieving it from the PO Box the stench hit me. When I rule the world (some time soon, but don’t hold your breath as I’m a bit busy at the moment) all Ebayers who smoke, or store their stuff in a smokey place, will have to say so in the product description.

Phew. That feels better. Now roll on the long weekend.