Ice Skating Master Blasters

The date: Friday 16th April 2010
The occasion: Michelle's 'low key' RSPCA farewell
The location: Ice World - home to Steven Bradbury - fluke winter olympic gold medal winner
MIA: Rickland (but she had a good excuse)
The temperature: Freakin' freezing

Holy cow it's cold in an ice skating rink. You would think the word "ice" in the title would have given us a clue, but most of us turned up with some very un-cold weather gear. Can you see Mo's goosebumps?





Minne returned to the car and came back wearing every spare item of clothing she found in there. Lucky there wasn't a stray possum in the carpark or I'm sure she would have come in wearing it as a hat.



Michelle bought a special ice-skating hat. Fancy.



Clever me had worn sensible(ish) clothing, but my feet were soooooo cold. And wet.



Lucky I had some emergency socks and put together a very fetching ensemble of sock and shoes that were never meant to be worn together. Not really sure why my jeans look so short either. Great look - very next season.



The skating was underway and everyone was pretty good. Not bad. Just good.




There were really no big stacks of the night (quite disappointing really) Just lots of wall grabbing to stop. Shiny demonstrates for us.






Here's Michelle trying to carve up the ice:



And here is said ice that was carved:



Love this pic - you try to take a nice shot of everyone and the hilarious people in the background get in the shot. Hmphf, I'm sure it's not karma for all the times I've done it or anything....


For some reason the night ended up with a krump-off between Michelle and Briony. Not really sure who won. Or what the prize was. Or why.

Anyhoo a good time was had by all. I think the excitement of the whole night is summed up by the candid shot of Minnie. Sometimes it's just best not to wonder what's going on in her head. Or when she graduated from the 'special' school.

Easter (egg) madness......

Four days off. Lots of chocolate. Lots of TV to watch. A couch that is for sleeping, laying and sitting.



Yes that's right - EASTER HOLIDAYS.

Day 1 - sleep until 2pm on couch. This is new personal best - normally get up for food/drink/bathroom (or all three) and then go back to sleep - but this was a full on coma sleep until waking. Thought should do some exercise at this point, so channel surf (from the couch) and facebook surf (on phone from couch). Bedtime!



Day 2 - sleep until 1pm on couch. Slightly upset did not at least meet or exceed personal best of yesterday. Today have mission. Must get to shops in pursuit of half price Easter eggs. Get to shops. Easter eggs only 25% off. Humpfh. Hardly worth getting off couch. Still purchased them though. Home again. Nana nap. Bedtime!



Day 3 -had to set alarm as going to visit parents in Dayboro. Must arrive in time for home-cooked lunch. Will need Nana nap to recoup precious lost sleep. Ate, sat on couch, watched TV. Home again. Nana nap. Bedtime!



Day 4 - woke this morning in sugar coma and also with slight panic as thought I should have been at work. Off to visit Julie, Simon and "shake her booty" Lola lollie pants. Had fabulous time doing finger-paintings under the pretense of 'helping' Lola. Think painting is pretty impressive and hope mum will put on her fridge.

Then ran around Coles after Lola (while looking for half price Easter eggs - found them - booyeah). Went home and had Nana nap as exhausted from Lola visit. Bedtime!

Summary - all in all, a good four days off - hurry up next long weekend!

Long Time No Blog!

Well the blog excitement wore off pretty quick huh - long time no blog.


I have actually been out having a social life (shocker huh) so here are the highlights of the past couple of weeks.....

Avenue Q

Two words: Freakin' hilarious. Went with the lovely Michelle H and the former crazy cat lady of Rocklea - Cara R. Check it out at http://www.avenueqthemusical.com.au/ - although I'm pretty sure that as I've taken so long to blog about it, the Brisbane run is finished. Sorry about that.

Even funnier than the show though was the dinner that we scoffed down in about 3 minutes when it arrived 10 minutes after we should have left the restaurant. Then we commenced the 6 minute light jog/walk/sprint to the Performing Arts Centre. I still have the stitch in my side from that journey. The worst part was that the food that arrived late was the BEST thing I have ever tasted. Flaky pastry, caramelised onion, goats cheese.....sigh. At least I wasn't poor Michelle who had ordered shoestring chips - I've never seen anyone dip chips in Aioli and shove them in their mouth so quickly. Sad gluten-free girl.

Michelle's Taco/Karaoke Birthday Party

The next night was the celebration of all things Michelle. We started the night at Montezuma's - the most magical Place in the world for celiac Henderson.




Then it was off to Karaoke - so much fun. Highlight of that night had to be MoMan "getting on up" while wearing a curly white wig. Funniest. Thing. Ever. Hurrah for prop boxes...





Also weoall did an amazing version of Thriller (including dance moves!) Good times.






RSPCA Gala Dinner

Next event was the RSPCA Gala Dinner at the Convention Centre. Great night and everyone really dressed up in the 20's theme. Some people went a little too far - the theme was flapper, not slapper ladies!


The fabulous Meredith was in town so she came along and we ate and drank, and ate and drank, and drank and drank and drank. Oooh and we also had a drink. We also got to do lots of photos with our "Juuuuunnnnne" poses:




Briony pretty much stole the show as demonstrated in the picture below. Poor Sophie escorted her from the premises.



And I think the whole night was summed up by the sad shoe heel I found abandoned in the Convention Centre on the scary patterned carpet. Who breaks their heel, but doesn't pick it up to take it home with them? Odd. Things are fixable people!





Roz's Farewell Party


The last event on the social calendar was the bowling party to say "so long" to the wonderful Roz who is going off to spread her magic to the volunteering department of the Mater Hospital (lucky them!) It was so much fun - I was pretty bad at bowling (well it's a sport - duh), but much better at paying out everyone else who was only doing slightly better. Nice work me!




Briony managed to beat us all by forgetting to let go of the ball and shooting herself up the lane. Don't think she knocked any pins over either.





Minne fell in love with the Deal or no Deal machine and got a little over-excited with the NO DEAL part of it:




However we all (Michelle and I) were really excited when she won hundreds of tickets and got to pick a fabulous prize from the cabinet (200 tickets = dollar value 99c)






Not quite sure why she wanted this pen....





We did all get a memento of the night (and Minnie's big deal win) with erasers from the prize cabinet (100 tickets = dollar value 0.02c). Rickland and thong boy were pretty happy.





Shiny topped off the night by winning an enormous stuffed mouse (now a humping friend for Pepe the chi I believe) from those claw machines. Who wins those? Those claws aren't strong enough to pick up a cotton bud! Props to my home girl






Well that's about all.


Oooh I also got a new Microwave. The wattage is so high, what used to take my 20 year old beast 10 minutes takes the new one 3 seconds and I am burning everything.


Peace out.

Flea Market Madness (aka selling our precious homeware)

It's the crack of dawn, pitch-black and raining. It must be flea market day - hurrah! After cancelling due to a potential rainstorm at our last attempt to return to the markets (which actually turned out to be a beautiful sunny day - Weather Channel FAIL!), we tried again today. After waking up at 3.30, I shoved all my stuff in the car and set off for the Henderson Ranch.

It was dark and raining for most of the way there (another Weather Channel FAIL), but just a drizzle when I arrived to three very excited dogs barking their heads off at 4.30am (sorry Michelle's neighbours. And Greg who was probably trying to sleep). We decided to take a chance and filled Michelle's car to the brim with all our stuff. Seriously, we couldn't have fit anything else in - I've never seen a car packed with so much...stuff!

We got to the Ipswich Showgrounds around 5ish to find others setting up (in the dark) and got directed to our area. Luckily the sun was starting to come up so we set up our tables, put our things out and taped up our signs:



Here's Michelle setting up - along with the early birds that seem to turn up an hour before the markets actually start:






We we finished putting everything out we realised we had ALOT of stuff. Lucky we bought two tables this time instead of just the one.

Then we heard what we thought was a herd of elephants and looked up and saw massive amounts of people swarming our table. It was scary. And it was only 6.30am. It was quite overwhelming and thank god Michelle keeps calm as I tend to get a bit frazzled with people pawing through our stuff and trying to bargain us down 50c.

Michelle then commenced her favourite part of selling stuff - PRICE SLASHING! She does enjoy running around with her sharpie and crossing our prices in order the slash them.

That sharpie was also responsible for this sign - luckily Shell caught the obvious issue with 50c each or 2 for $1 and could fix it before the Ipswich residents noticed.

Greg showed up then with Macca's which temporarily revived us.

By about 9.30 most of our stuff had been sold and our table was looking sparse, but the sun was shining:

And then it got grey....and down came the rain. We had to think quick to protect our precious homewares from the elements. Out came the trusty roll of purple plastic that I bought two years ago, carry around in my boot and it has come in handy more times than I can count (in place of an umbrella running to the Def Leppard concert, sitting on, tablecloth at our last flea market and wrapping a squashed possum in.)

As we looked around and realised other stall holders had bought clear plastic to cover their precious stuff we decided to call it a day. We still had an hour and a half until the markets closed and therefore we could leave, but Hendo battered her eyelids at the man in charge....

...and he opened a back gate for us to drive out (after warning us not to hit anyone - twas all good, the only person that nearly got run over was me). We then drove to the charity bin and put most of our unsold stuff in there so we didn't have to take it home again:



Then the fun part - counting the money!!

Lulu helped Shell and Chaddy helped me and lo and behold (and much to our surprise) the total I counted matched exactly the total we sold! Believe me, that's not what I was expecting.

So we divided up our sweet, sweet cash:

And then it was home to bed. So very, very tired, but a little bit richer - hurrah!

RIP Corey Haim

Ah Corey Haim - I will always secretly love you......I hope you are somewhere where it's always 1987.