Last time I blogged was ages ago, so let’s just start with Friday night and work our way forward. I think we had fried rice for dinner and flicked between Friday Night Games and the Commonwealth Games - I’m not sure which is more pathetic *ouch*. When Lara went to bed, I played poker on the PSP for quite a while and made the final table in a tournament.
Saturday I took Charlotte grocery shopping as usual and then came home and read the paper. I had a look at the horse racing, but decided against betting, although I told Blacky about a horse that was running. It ended up winning at juicy odds. Blacky had only backed it for a place and I hadn’t backed it all. Lara and Charlotte made a delicious pineapple and coconut cake in the afternoon, while I lay on the couch fighting off the onset of an allergy/cold type thing. I summoned up the strength to get Red Rooster for dinner and then we both crashed at about 9pm - crazy early for a Saturday.
Sunday morning Bek called to firm up the arrangements for SLC. She said she’d call Blacky, but he called me first. Having vowed to do things that Dean would usually argue against, we decided South Bank would be our venue. Turns out Dean was right and South Bank presented all kinds of pains in the arse. First was getting there - Blacky walked and Brek scootered - but the Glaramobile had to deal with thousands of kids doing some kind of crap triathlon (I choose not to mention the name of the sponsor) and the associated road blockages. We eventually grabbed a park on the road, but it was only for a hour. We met up with the rest of the gang - N.B. Leyton had not responded to the original SLC SMS so we assumed he wasn’t coming - and wandered along Little Stanley St before settling on Toscani’s as the lunch venue. I had to go and move the car and some stage, and when I got back everyone’s order had arrived except for mine. After a while, we managed to grab the attention of a waitress, who may or may not have been using pens to hold her hair in place, and apprised her of the situation. She didn’t get back to me for quite a while, but we heard he tell the kitchen staff that the item in question was in the computer ordering system but had not been delivered. By the time she came to talk to me about the it, the others had pretty much finished, so I said not to worry about it. She came back later with my meal and they gave it to me ‘on the house’ as they had already prepared it. It wasn’t particularly impressive and I wasn’t particularly impressed. The free meal didn’t even make up for the crap milkshakes we endured.
After a quick scout around the markets, we headed back to Blacky’s (that’s what it’s called at the moment) once we found a set of stairs that went to the lower level car park and stopped at the IGA for some ice blocks. We watched an episode of My Name is Earl and checked the footy scores - at last something went right for me - and complained about Dean pillaging the poker accounts. Didn’t hang around too long as Brek needed to get to the shops (hopefully my call about them being open to 6pm was correct) and I needed to make dinner - Char-grilled chicken salad. Was OK, but I was interrupted by a phone call about the car we are selling. That’s good, as it’s the first phone call we’ve had in over a week, but the woman asked me a lot a of questions in the ‘I know you’re hiding something and I’m going to find out what’ kind of vein. It sounded like she was interested though, so hopefully we’ll have a sale….
Now I’m at work and three sheets to the wind…the result of a deal I had with a few other guys about 5 years ago that whenever any of us got promoted we would shout a round of drinks. There’s been a few promotions since our last get together, so we had some serious catching up to do. Seeing as we were at the Irish Club, pints of Guiness and Kilkenney seemed appropriate….now I’m not so sure….