Well this weekend was certainly one of the better ones I've had in Melbourne in the last year or so. Did lots and caught up with some old friends. The weekend started off on Friday with some awesome news of a pending visit to Melbourne by Rachel in a months time. THAT is going to be brilliant and i've already been compiling a (quite expansive...as it turns out) list of "Activities" that are possible during the time she is here. The Rach is good. Can't have too much Rach. I am going to take some holidays to really take advantage of this rare occasion and a big thank you to all the assorted Yacoumii who are "Allowing Rachel to go" again...you all rock harder than the rockiest Rockers in Rocktown.
Saturday started once again with an Alarm going off at 8am. Alarms on the weekend are just not getting any easier to deal with for me. There are very few things I will trade sleep for willingly and it is still a struggle each Saturday to get up within 15 mins of that alarm. Eventually my overwhelming sense of duty and commitment to the 7 kids in the team get the better of me and I get up and get ready. Thankfully the game was at the 2nd closest venue to my house so that meant a quick travel time. I arrived at the venue with about 10 mins to go before game time and scanned the place for my players..they were mucking around under the goal trying to throw the trickiest trick shots they could think of. You know, like trying to throw the ball up over the backboard from the rear and have it go in the basket etc. Totally useless in a game situation but no matter how hard I try week after week after week they just won't practise shooting from ANY position that they'll actually be in with the ball and trying to shoot a goal during the game 99.99% of the time. Accordingly when the game started we had to endure several minutes of shots at goal that were not even close to going in. The game was fairly neck and neck for the most part and my team was again playing quite well except for a few "brain fades" where their little brains go.."When all else fails...just chuck the ball as far and as HARD as you possibly can!!", never ends well that strategy.
The game came to a close with us winning 18 - 12. This is our THIRD straight win now and sees us firmly in 3rd place trailing second place by 1 point. We play them next week I think....if we win...we'll be second going into the finals...or....so I get told by all the parents that are at the game. I tend not to really care where we are on the ladder.... it's really irrelevant....but I feign interest and excitement for the sake of the children :)
After the game I said my goodbyes and as quickly as it all started not 1 hr ago everyone was gone. Having multiple children all playing sport on Saturday mornings must be hell for parents who have child-A playing basketball at 9:20am in Vermont then having Child-B playing footy at 10:30am in Oakleigh some 50km away. The car park is empty about 2 mins after the actual game finishes.
Saturday, Day was started with a trip to McDonalds for breakfast. There is one of those 24hr Jobbies near me that also has a McCafe in it. So sometimes I go and get a coffee and hotcakes after the game (I try not to eat alot of "Burgers" from these places as they really are foul, fat encrusted devilry ... Bacon delux burgers are the exception of course...they are delicious). I was planning to go and fill out my day with some looking at TV's as there where some very good "deals" at the moment on Sony stuff. The problem I face (if you can call it that) is I don't actually watch much "TV" I usually watch movies and shows I download on the internet. For that purpose the TV I have is brilliant...it's ridiculously large (72" widescreen) and it's native resolution is 476p. Getting a 1080p TV would make all the movies and TV shows I download look like crap due to excessive upscaling. I think the new TV idea can go on the backburner for a while as I really don't "need" a new one at all.
I was supposed to go and meet up with an old Adeladian friend of mine from around 1998-99 on Saturday night who had tracked me down on facebook earlier in the year. However they had spent the day shopping and didn't get home until about 7 pm before they contacted me and by then it was far too late for me to start heading into the big, bad city. We rescheduled for lunch the next day. I went and got some Indian from a nice little family place near me and proceeded to kill myself with "Worlds Best Garlic Naan" and Vindaloo. Saturday night was then looking good for a extensive Scrabulous session with Rachel. Much to our collective dismay the scrabulous webpage was just throwing up error after error when we tried to access any games. I must admit...I panicked a bit....we both did I think...scrabby has become much more than "just a game" to us. We both seem to be uncontrollably addicted to it and when it was not there we tried to find something internetty to fill the void. I must mention that we decided NOT to indulge in the "official" Hasbro version of Scrabble in a silent protest against their litigation against Scrabulous. This however left us floundering in internetland quite at a loss as to what to do. I think we eventually decided the non-facebook version of Scrabulous was just a monstrosity of complexity and we couldn't be bothered with it. So Rach went and blogged ... or something... and I went and played Teamfortress and worked off the aggression by punishing the randoms who dared stand a
against me :). I had a good laugh when I got 7 dominations during a round of the map "Gold rush". Sure, my sentry gun did all the killing and all I did was smack it with a wrench for 20 mins keeping it repaired and full of ammo....but I came out a clear winner. 7 dominations is unheard of as to get a domination you have to kill the same player at least 4 times without them killing you. That means I had killed over half the opposition team repeatedly without them getting me. In my defense though, my sentry placement was exquisite and sneaky beyond belief. To satisfy the internet rule "Pics or it didn't happen" here's the pic (2 players actually left the game before the score sheet screen appeared..so only 5 are still there). EDIT: According to the bottom of that screenshot..I had *8* dominations..so this result is actually 14.28% more impressive!!!
Went to bed and had a good sleep after that. Slept in until about 10am and then got ready to head into Melbourne for lunch with Louise and her sister. I parked in the casino and headed to southbank in order to meet up with my lunch dates. We found each other quite easily and proceeded to find somewhere to have lunch where a sandwich didn't cost $700 (which is probably the standard price on 99% of Southbank). I remembered there was a good Irish pub in a little mini-mall thing a bit further up the river bank so we went there and were pleased to be greeted with reasonable prices and HUGE glasses of beer :)
In totally unrelated news, I finished my first modelling gig last Friday and the results are now circulating in the print media. You probably always said to yourself, "That Mikey...he's so really, really, really, ridiculously good looking....he should be a male model". Well, in the immortal words of J.P. Prewitt "I'm a hand model, mama. A finger jockey. We think differently than the face and body boys... we're a different breed. ". Behold the beauty that is me...if you're really lucky one day you may be touched by me, or stroked, or massaged ...either way you now know you're in the grip of a celebrity.
The game came to a close with us winning 18 - 12. This is our THIRD straight win now and sees us firmly in 3rd place trailing second place by 1 point. We play them next week I think....if we win...we'll be second going into the finals...or....so I get told by all the parents that are at the game. I tend not to really care where we are on the ladder.... it's really irrelevant....but I feign interest and excitement for the sake of the children :)After the game I said my goodbyes and as quickly as it all started not 1 hr ago everyone was gone. Having multiple children all playing sport on Saturday mornings must be hell for parents who have child-A playing basketball at 9:20am in Vermont then having Child-B playing footy at 10:30am in Oakleigh some 50km away. The car park is empty about 2 mins after the actual game finishes.
Saturday, Day was started with a trip to McDonalds for breakfast. There is one of those 24hr Jobbies near me that also has a McCafe in it. So sometimes I go and get a coffee and hotcakes after the game (I try not to eat alot of "Burgers" from these places as they really are foul, fat encrusted devilry ... Bacon delux burgers are the exception of course...they are delicious). I was planning to go and fill out my day with some looking at TV's as there where some very good "deals" at the moment on Sony stuff. The problem I face (if you can call it that) is I don't actually watch much "TV" I usually watch movies and shows I download on the internet. For that purpose the TV I have is brilliant...it's ridiculously large (72" widescreen) and it's native resolution is 476p. Getting a 1080p TV would make all the movies and TV shows I download look like crap due to excessive upscaling. I think the new TV idea can go on the backburner for a while as I really don't "need" a new one at all.
I was supposed to go and meet up with an old Adeladian friend of mine from around 1998-99 on Saturday night who had tracked me down on facebook earlier in the year. However they had spent the day shopping and didn't get home until about 7 pm before they contacted me and by then it was far too late for me to start heading into the big, bad city. We rescheduled for lunch the next day. I went and got some Indian from a nice little family place near me and proceeded to kill myself with "Worlds Best Garlic Naan" and Vindaloo. Saturday night was then looking good for a extensive Scrabulous session with Rachel. Much to our collective dismay the scrabulous webpage was just throwing up error after error when we tried to access any games. I must admit...I panicked a bit....we both did I think...scrabby has become much more than "just a game" to us. We both seem to be uncontrollably addicted to it and when it was not there we tried to find something internetty to fill the void. I must mention that we decided NOT to indulge in the "official" Hasbro version of Scrabble in a silent protest against their litigation against Scrabulous. This however left us floundering in internetland quite at a loss as to what to do. I think we eventually decided the non-facebook version of Scrabulous was just a monstrosity of complexity and we couldn't be bothered with it. So Rach went and blogged ... or something... and I went and played Teamfortress and worked off the aggression by punishing the randoms who dared stand a
against me :). I had a good laugh when I got 7 dominations during a round of the map "Gold rush". Sure, my sentry gun did all the killing and all I did was smack it with a wrench for 20 mins keeping it repaired and full of ammo....but I came out a clear winner. 7 dominations is unheard of as to get a domination you have to kill the same player at least 4 times without them killing you. That means I had killed over half the opposition team repeatedly without them getting me. In my defense though, my sentry placement was exquisite and sneaky beyond belief. To satisfy the internet rule "Pics or it didn't happen" here's the pic (2 players actually left the game before the score sheet screen appeared..so only 5 are still there). EDIT: According to the bottom of that screenshot..I had *8* dominations..so this result is actually 14.28% more impressive!!!Went to bed and had a good sleep after that. Slept in until about 10am and then got ready to head into Melbourne for lunch with Louise and her sister. I parked in the casino and headed to southbank in order to meet up with my lunch dates. We found each other quite easily and proceeded to find somewhere to have lunch where a sandwich didn't cost $700 (which is probably the standard price on 99% of Southbank). I remembered there was a good Irish pub in a little mini-mall thing a bit further up the river bank so we went there and were pleased to be greeted with reasonable prices and HUGE glasses of beer :)
I settled on the Chicken Parma...because you can't really stuff that up. It was not too bad...at least it was cooked and not pink on the inside. The beer I got (Heinekin) was pretty flat and bland out of the tap..actually tasted watery..but meh...it had alcohol in it. We talked for about 3 hours. It was really good to hear about what Louise and Craig had been doing in the last 10 years. Time really is a strange thing, this is the second time this year I have regained contact 
with someone from my distant past and discovered really quickly that people don't really change "personality" wise. Louise was pretty much how I remembered her, just older and wiser and not such a bundle of unrestrained energy as she was previously in our youth. We used to absolutely run amok together at various "band" nights when our friends and her husbands band used to play all over the place. We used to be the only ones out of our "Circle" who weren't too "Rock'n'Roll" to dance and stuff with the general populace. Good times, good times. She also has 3 kids now and seems to be enjoying herself being a mother.
with someone from my distant past and discovered really quickly that people don't really change "personality" wise. Louise was pretty much how I remembered her, just older and wiser and not such a bundle of unrestrained energy as she was previously in our youth. We used to absolutely run amok together at various "band" nights when our friends and her husbands band used to play all over the place. We used to be the only ones out of our "Circle" who weren't too "Rock'n'Roll" to dance and stuff with the general populace. Good times, good times. She also has 3 kids now and seems to be enjoying herself being a mother.After lunch I took them to the best cake shop I have ever encountered in Melbourne, "Greico" on southbank...they have a huge assortment of artery clogging delicacies that you gain weight just by looking at. We spent about 30 mins "trying" (in vain) to choose just one cake to eat....we
gave up when we realised it was 4:30pm already. A small victory that we manage to dodge the several thousand calories contained in one slice of those cakes. I think I counted 30 different cakes on offer so that is quite an achievement :)
We parted company and I headed back to my car in order to make the longish journey back home. Stopped off to do my grocery shopping on the way so I'd have food for lunch for the week. All in all a good weekend in Melbourne...for once.
In totally unrelated news, I finished my first modelling gig last Friday and the results are now circulating in the print media. You probably always said to yourself, "That Mikey...he's so really, really, really, ridiculously good looking....he should be a male model". Well, in the immortal words of J.P. Prewitt "I'm a hand model, mama. A finger jockey. We think differently than the face and body boys... we're a different breed. ". Behold the beauty that is me...if you're really lucky one day you may be touched by me, or stroked, or massaged ...either way you now know you're in the grip of a celebrity.
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