Packed week

Yowzas, it's been a long week filled with stuff. To celebrate our recent good news, as well as some special time before the incoming mother, we booked a night at a small room in Byron. It was a really nice spot, close enough to the beach but far enough out of the action that we weren't bothered by booze fests. A particularly good thing given that we'd failed to realise that it was schoolies week.

Of course a trip away for us wouldn't be complete without the odd culinary discovery. We've been dying to try out this little English cafe, Marmalade Deli, that's just down the road from us. Breakfast prior to the drive down to NSW offered the perfect opportunity, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. Aside from a lovely plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and maple syrup dressed over hot waffles, I treated myself to some snacks from the old country I'd been missing. Great to know that I no longer have to go to Sydney to get my Monster Munch fix.



At Byron I ignored my mild crustacean allergy and indulged in a whopping plate of seafood. I suffered a minor sore throat but somehow managed to survive without an adrenaline shot to the heart.



Even after that feast we choked down a little platter of delights from l'Ultime Patisserie. That succulent piece of chocolate cake was divine.



Mum flew out on Tuesday night so Alsie and I took Wednesday off to show her around the new area. She's since been busy feeding us gut busting quantities of yummy food and sketching up a pile of drawings to capture our renovation ideas. We've had to reign her in on her more eccentric bias towards water features but overall the plans look very exciting.

It unfortunately didn't take me very long to destroy the mower that Peter had lovingly restored for us. On the second trip into the yard I managed to lose a wheel, drop a bolt into the spinning blades and finally cause the engine to die unceremoniously. We were mower-less despite receiving a letter from granddad, with misplaced faith in my proficiency with fuel injected machinery, containing explicit instructions on how to diagnose the problem. John, in his great generosity and obvious discomfort at the thought of an unkempt lawn, bought himself a new lawn mower only to hand down his old model to us.

Dad's old Honda has "Easy Start" plastered on the side of the motor and thankfully the claim appears to be genuine. Increased robustness combined with a walker function meant that I trimmed our front yard in record time. Great thing too as the recent storms had encouraged the local weeds to take to ground with gay abandon.

Inspired by a neat yard, the three of us visited the Rocklea markets on the weekend for the first time in search of fresh veg and cheap plant life. Our inaugural gardening project was to clean out the plant box under our front windows to resit the resident yuccas and introduce a mature cordalyne to the mix. Cheap river stones from Bunnings scattered haphazardly over the soil completed the look. Not bad for landscaping novices.



Our green thumbs weren't satisfied even then. Soldiering on we demolished the lemon grass infestation at the side of our house and replanted a few tamed stalks in a new pot. Barbara came by for a visit as well and brought a pot full of cute unidentified succulents which we transplanted in the hope of cultivating new growth. Apparently they're prolific little buggers.

Looking forward to another week of fun in the lead up to Christmas holidays.

Ready to rock!

Our collection of fake plastic instruments has exploded recently on account of the release of two big games I've been waiting for. The first is Rock Band which has finally reached our shores after being released in America over a year ago, even spawning a sequel which we won't see down under till next year most likely (grr). The second game was Guitar Hero 4: World Tour, the next progression in the series which introduces some interesting new additions.

I remember saying the first time I saw Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania connected in an arcade that a full band music game would be absolutely brilliant. Rock Band came out last year and aimed to give us exactly that experience. Assuming you get the full pack and an extra guitar, you and three friends can make up a band complement of vocalist, guitarist, bassist and drummer. Of course the game can be played solo using any of the instruments but it really shines when playing through a song that everyone knows and loves. *cough* Living on a Prayer perhaps.

Not wanting to lose out to their music game rivals, the developers behind Guitar Hero decided to follow in Rock Band's foot steps and released a full band experience with their latest offering as well. After much consideration I decided I absolutely needed both games to provide the largest set list possible. I'd picked up Rock Band and a guitar last week, followed that up with the Rock Band drums for the weekend and finally received my pre-ordered full instrument pack of Guitar Hero 4, with yet another set of drums, a second guitar and a karaoke like microphone.

Now fully equipped we just needed two friends to rock out with so Kath and Andrew were happy to oblige (even though they were supposed to be packing for a very exciting trip to Europe on Monday). It's amazing how much fun the games are even though our fingers and throats are now fairly sore from the long play session. The biggest surprise was how fun the singing turned out to be as the general consensus initially was it would be too embarrassing to have a good time. Thankfully the microphone volume is configurable so the vocalist can hide behind the audio of the original artist need not feel quite so self conscious (unless they try to free style eh Kath?).



While I enjoy both games, I can't help but feel that Rock Band is a slightly better package overall. Once Rock Band 2 comes out to bring the full set list close to 200 songs (replacing quite a few offerings from Guitar Hero 4 in fact) I'd say that will be the party game of choice. It's nice to have options though.

New Leadership

It was announced today at work that our team has a new team leader. Sparkey, our old TL, left the company under unfortunate circumstances which was a shame because he was a good guy. The new chap they've decided to appoint seems a little suspicious to me. He's always jabbering on about gadgets and stuff he wants to buy regardless of how you roll your eyes and try to ignore him. I'm not usually one to judge a book by its cover but just look at him...



The project's in dire straights now. Hope the rest of the team can prevent him from doing too much damage.

Green lawns

We've been so busy setting up the house and enjoying it that we haven't had the time to put up photos. Still haven't got anything to put up really but we did have a little excitement in the yard today when John and Sheena brought down a hand-me-down lawn mower for us to use. Probably a good thing too as the front yard had turned into a thriving ecosystem of weeds and wild grass.



The first attempts at starting the mower were comically concerning, though I knew that Peter must have done a bang up job of getting the old girl running for us. After the toxic cloud had cleared we were on our way with a quick lesson in lawn maintenance from John. It's a lot harder than it looks I must say, my early patches look more like crop circles than rolled cricket pitch.

We spent most of the morning weeding and pottering around the garden getting to know the new tools, which also included a whipper-snipper. Didn't get much of a chance to try out the new couch we've received courtesy of James and Dora though we'll get to show mum and dad a little more hospitality next week when they come down for the night.



The lounge room now has the temporary camping chairs removed and is shaping up nicely. Things are slowly coming together on the renovation front too with our fly screens hopefully coming in next week. We ordered some retractables from here which should finally keep those crazy bugs out of our house.