How Was Your Weekend?

Let's see. Had an early lunch Saturday - yum cha with family and friends. My nephew Lionel was there, and after lunch we went shopping for a while. He didn't want to stay in the stroller, so I picked him up and carried him for a bit. When I tried to trade him off, he wasn't having any. Don't wanna be carried by Uncle Kay or Auntie Dee! Don't wanna be carried by daddy! Wanna be carried by Pixy! Sorry, Pixy's arm seems to be coming off. What has mummy been feeding you, lead pancakes?

There was a lovely table at Bay Swiss - at about twelve feet by four, it was even bigger than my existing dining table (which is about seven feet by three, but extends to ten feet). If I had the money (a snip at four grand!) and had the room (well, it could go on the balcony...) and had any idea how to get it home, I would have bought it. Zero out of three. Too bad.

I did buy some t-shirts at Kathmandu, which is a camping/hiking/mountain-climbing goods store. I've been in there at least a dozen times, and I've bought a grand total of... Nine t-shirts.

Hey, they're good shirts!

Then off to cousin Jay's for chocolate cake and hot chocolate and ice cream and accidentally breaking his coffee table. That wasn't Pixy, Pixy didn't do that! This evoked the traditional family response whenever something gets broken: bring out all sorts of tools and glues and assorted hardware and fix it better than new on the spot. I'm told things don't work this way in some families, which must be very strange.

Then back home, getting a lift in cousin Elle's new car ("Just drop me at the station." "I could give you a lift! I'm happy to give you a lift! In my new car! Isn't it a cute car!") which is a Honda Jazz. It has magic folding seats, shiny shiny paintwork, and the quietest cabin I've ever been in in a small car. Is the engine actually running? Must be, we're still moving.

Home now, but I seem to be out of food. Off to the supermarket, but on my way up the hill

(WARNING: RANT AHEAD)

I spot a leaflet stuck to a telegraph pole. It reads "SMASH MIDDLE EAST TERRORISM". Well, I'm all for that. "BOMB ISRAEL NOW". Right. That's coming down. It was glued on pretty well, so I was reduced to tearing it into illegible strips. At the next pole, some other right-thinking person had already started in on the leaflet, so I finished the job. And so on until I reached the supermarket.

To the backwards-evolved febrile pus-monkeys who stuck these things up: Your little hate-papers are gone now, suckers. And may you get run over by a speeding garbage truck before your next birthday.

(RANT ENDS)

Anyway, get to the supermarket (Did I mention that my idiot local council has a policy against providing public litter bins? They claim it increases littering. Which means I had to carry those damned leaflets with me until I found a bin at the supermarket.) and buy some food. (They didn't have Solomon's Matzo, only Sniders, and they don't carry Blue Diamond Smokehouse Almonds any more. Grr.) Eighty dollars? How did that come to eighty dollars? Is anyone else just the slightest bit suspicious about the official inflation figures? I wonder just what they include in their numbers; if they are including anything electronic then that will be off-setting price increases on groceries and other items.

I lug my goodies back down the hill, and find that there's no room at the inn for my frozen dinners. Oh no! It seems that the freezer door was left ajar a couple of weeks back (I think the Sticky Date Pudding held it open), and it quickly frosted up to the point where even after I moved things around the door wouldn't close properly. Another week, and my freezer compartment looks like a scene from The Day the Earth Froze. There weren't any saber-toothed squirrels in there, so it couldn't have been Ice Age.

There's so much ice that my roast chicken rolls and my beef in red wine sauce with unnamed pasta won't fit. This is a disaster! So, I roll up my sleeves (well, I didn't, though it might have gone better if I had), turn off the fridge, and get to work. About an hour later the massive ice shelf clinging to the ceiling of the freezer compartment finally gives up the fight and is ceremonially dumped in the sink. Then I wipe things down and stow away my dinners.

Upstairs now, because it's time for work. (Half-past seven on Saturday night. Sigh.) I have some database updates to apply, and this means shutting down the entire system, which is hard to do while people are using it. This turns out not to take too long; what was once an all-night job is done in an hour thanks to the miracle of being able to fit your entire database into memory. Bless you, Gordon Moore.

Then I relaxed for a while and read The Woad to Wuin, which is the sequel to Sir Apropos of Nothing. Or a couple of hundred pages of it, at least. I found myself stopping, not particularly interested in going further. The problem is, I think, that the book is just mean-spirited; it's in the first person, and our hero is a weasel. In the first book he was a much put-upon weasel and it worked; this time around he has no real problems but complains twice as much. No thanks. I have many books and a limited amount of time, so this one gets the heave-ho.

Dinner time. Odd, this frozen roast chicken roll isn't very frozen. Odd, the fridge isn't making any sound at all. Maybe it would work a little better if I turned it back on...

Sleep.

Sunday. I've been meaning to get my hair cut for about, oh, for about the last four months. Today is the day! Off I go... wait, more sleep? Okay.

Head into the city to get my hair cut and maybe do a little shopping. (Another beautiful winter's day in Sydney. Blue sky, sunshine, all of that. Ho hum.) There's a fifteen minute wait at the hairdresser so I wander into HMV and have a look around. Find a Weird Al album I didn't have and a best-of collection of the Hoodoo Gurus. Click-click... Oh, I have to take them to the counter, right.

Get my hair cut. I look human again! Haha! Just when my secret was in danger of coming out, my mask is back in place and I can...

Oops. Ignore all that.

I've been going to The Cartoon Gallery a couple of times a month since I got back into anime (and cartoons in general) in 1995. I've spent more money there than I have in any other single shop. Today they have half a dozen DVDs waiting for me: Cardcaptor Sakura #15, DNA Squared #3, Inu Yasha #7, Mahoromatic Maiden #3 (I like Mahoromatic a lot. It's kinda schizoid - light and fluffy but with a very dark backstory. And the closing theme, the Mahoro Mambo, is a delight.), Noir #4, and Sugar, A Little Snow Fairy #2 (what I refer to as Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar) I also picked up volume two of .Hack//Sign and volume one of... Of... No, I didn't end up buying Corrector Yui, so it wasn't that. Oh yes, Eden's Bowy. No, I have no idea what it's about either. Maybe if I actually read Newtype instead of piling it up in the spare room, I would.

Then down Pitt St to King's Comics. The last time I was in there (in their wonderful shiny new store), they didn't have anything I wanted. Not a thing. Nothing at all. Depressing, that, when you go to one of the best comic stores around and you don't want anything.

This time, I walk in the door and Peorth is looking at me. Peorth?! Yes, and Hild, too. Cool! I bag one of each to go with the Urds, Belldandys and Skulds I already have at home. Volume seven of Futaba-Kun Change is in at last, and so is a new Groo collection: The Groo Odyssey. All good stuff.

Oh, and my DVDs from the Cartoon Gallery didn't set off the alarms, which is a pleasant change.

Back up Pitt St to Grace Bros, where it's the last day of the toy sale. Lego is 20% to 60% off! Yay! I get some giant bugs, a plane, a couple of Star Wars sets (a Landspeeder and a TIE Bomber), and ooh! The Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets set, marked down from $140 to $59. Oh, little buckets with orange bricks, down from $22 to $15? I'll take a couple of those, too.

Dump it all at the sales counter. No, I won't be taking your six month interest-free offer on your store credit card. I don't have your store card any more. No, I won't be taking up your frequent flyer points loyalty card offer, either. Since I don't fly if there is any practical alternative. Now, if you had a frequent train-travel point scheme, I'd be there like a shot.

Now, pick up all my purchases and did I ever mention that in large quantities Lego is both very heavy and very awkward? Back through the Queen Victoria Building to Town Hall Station and home again. (Did I also mention that it's possible to get from the Zegna store on the corner of Macquarie Street and Martin Place, to the food court under the Coopers and Lybrand building on the corner of George and, what, Bathurst?, without ever coming out from under cover? Well, it is.)

Lug my new goodies home. Oh dear, my arm seems to have fallen off. How annoying.

Now I think I'll take a little nap.

So how was your weekend?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:29 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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