let the christmas madness commence.

 I thought I might pop into the shops quickly on my way from one meeting to another today and pick up a present. I try to avoid taking Rohan on these kind of things because as soon as he hears a christmas carol he undergoes a jekyll and hyde transformation from good natured science geek to raving psychopath. I thought I'd duck into central square carpark and do a quick in and out mission. 
Mistake number one was it was lunchtime. 
Mistake number two was it was raining and windy therefore increasing likelihood of all round craziness from people. 
Mistake number three was to go to the roof carpark. 
I saw a park one from the end of row and I zipped round a corner into it. I will admit now I didn't see the indicator on in the ute that was in the row - I thought they were driving out. 
That was mistake number four. The driver went mental - her horn was beeping, she was swearing (my lip reading is pretty good and I definitely made out 'Fuck you'), she was waving her hands in the air in exasperation. Not a happy lady.  
So I thought, oops, that was genuinely my mistake, she can have it. 
I reversed out of the park and then she goes crazy again. But this time it's a whole new kind of crazy, now she's waving like an old friend, my lip reading makes out 'thank you' instead of 'fuck you' followed by more crazy waving. Okay lady - your hormones are out of control. Its still over 3 weeks till xmas. Take a freaking chill pill.
I headed back into the main part of the car park and someone was up on the ledge in their car doing some paris type parking as they tried to get in?/out? of a park. I decided that this is too much for me to bear on an empty stomach.
 Clearly an early am assault is required. 
Note to self - start christmas shopping in January next year. 

the drought breakers strike again

So the drought breakers in the form of rohan and I struck again when we headed off to queenscliff music festival - and we weren't even on the motorbike... We headed down fri after work and made home for the weekend the rather spiffy barwon heads 13th beach resort where they were much nicer to me after I'd filled out my name with my title of Dr.  We had thought we might go see pseudo echo fri night but instead spent the evening in ocean grove with lach and jane and the sleeping fin.
Sat started with our planned breakfast feast thwarted by the fact that the hotplate wouldn't work so I couldn't sizzle my bacon (no that is not a euphemism for anything)....it just went more pear shaped from there. The heavens opened and as I checked the radar on my phone I said to Rohan 'surely it can't rain all day'.

Famous.

Last.

Words.

Rain all day it did.
Torrential rain in fact.
More rain than has ever been recorded on one day at this time of year in the geelong region.
So much rain that we had to drive through a flooded patch of road to get to queenscliff. If it was not the lure of the triffids my all time fave aussie band (sans david mccomb - r.i.p you genius), then I would have curled up in a ball and hidden inside. Instead I curled up in my raincoat and headed for the lighthouse tent (after a quick diversion with carus thompson), where I spent a sensational two and a half hours as the triffids played their way through the whole born sandy devotional album, followed by some fave hits. Rob Snarski and the blackeyed susans (sans warren ellis- he's too cool and parisian for them now), mick harvey, alexander gow from oh mercy and my new fave on stage preacher, simon breed, made appearances on stage. It was 2 and a half hours of heaven.
Meanwhile the heavens kept pouring. We left the tent to search for food and took shelter in the dumpling tent, followed by donuts for desert. Such a healthy meal... Soon it was time for Henry Wagons and I marvelled at the fact that someone who more than slightly resembles Bill Oddie can be a sex symbol. Soon I was scared off by the drunk teenagers and the fact that I had lost all feeling in my fingers and toes and appeared to have the early stages of hypothermia.

Sunday dawned not bright and sunny, but grey and rainless and that was good enough for me. We began with Lannie Lane, who I hadn't seen before and would be happy to see again as long as she doesn't talk too much - every time she speaks I want to punch her in the face, but her singing voice is quite magical. Then david bridie and my friend the chocolate cake were on my menu. Rohan decided that david broke his marriage up so he had more material to write songs in minor keys about, but I figure that's a bit harsh. Far too soon we were heading home so rohan could face the beast that was exam marks that needed to be entered by monday....In 3 days I had seen a classic aussie band and my fave aussie band of all time - does life get any better than this?
I'm left with the thought that meredith is only 2 weeks away and surely it can't rain then too....can it?

soaking up the atmosphere

Thursday heralded the unofficial start of summer. It may be this Thursday that summer actually commences, but for me summer starts when the bands come out to play, and last Thursday night we headed to melb to see two of my fave Australian bands - You am I and Cold Chisel. I had done a crazy trip to Warrnambool the day before for work and dragged myself out of bed at 6 am to be on the road by 7 and back to Ballarat for work on Thursday. A trip down to Melbourne and I was feeling alert, but slightly alarmed - how long before I hit the wall of tiredness? A quick catch up with Ben at the mitre tavern (thanks for the free beer and pizza Ben!) and then I asked Ben if he would escort me from the premises in front of a bunch of suits - I've never been thrown out of a pub and thought it might be good to see what it was like...

I had shamefully signed up for the 'Cold Chisel fan club' (clearly I'm not so ashamed if I'm happy to admit it on here) which meant that I got presale tickets and ended up with seats that were only 10 rows from the stage or as Rohan described it 'close enough for mossy to sweat on us', that wouldn't be difficult, however, as the man is a ball of sweat. Bizarrely he seems to sweat more than Rohan and who thought that would be physically possible? (are you reading this Woody? I'm not lying and Rohan agrees!). The tickets said that the gig was at 7.30 pm and I figured this was so that Jimmy and co could grab their zimmerframes and get an early night (and after my one beer at the pub I was feeling like the early night was a very good idea). You am I hit the stage about 8 with timmy rogers looking quite the anorexic messiah in his all white outfit. By nine Chisel was on stage and I felt strangely at home - it was like being in the lady bay circa early 1990 - bogans as far as the eye could see and everyone singing khe sanh. It was a great gig - there was a whole lot of love in the room, mostly from grown men hugging each other with delight, but the boys on stage were in fine form. The beautiful don walker (and this may be the only time I use the word beautiful to describe don) was magic on the rinkytink and can that man write a quality lyric. We wandered back to the car through the gardens and I was glad to say that I'd seen a classic aussie band and I couldn't wait for the weekend when I was going to soak up the atmosphere at queenscliff and see my favourite band of all time - The Triffids! I ended up soaking that's for sure.....