The Cassandra Complex

An entire week and a bit off work and I didn’t manage to update my blog even once. Slack? Yes.

M. and I went to Melbourne for the wedding of two friends, K. (the bride) and J. (the groom). Well, we thought we were going to Melbourne; that’s where the flight landed. It turns out, however, that we were really going to Healesville, which is in the Yarra Valley, an area that can only be called part of Melbourne in the sense that it appears in the Melbourne street directory. In the upper right hand corner. If it were one square further north it would be off the map. There be dragons.

Actually, there were no dragons. It’s a beautiful area. Lots of very green hills. I have never seen farmland so green in Australia; around here, it tends to be all golden brown and flammable-looking. And all of the main roads have the names of the two suburbs/towns that they connect as their name, which I thought was awesome. For example, Eltham Yarra Glen Rd or Healesville Yarra Glen Rd.

We stayed at a 3 ½ star hotel/motor inn style thingy called Sanctuary House. Our room was small and I didn’t have much of a sense of privacy, but the nearby restaurant was nice. I did wish that they’d provided those little bottles of shampoo and conditioner though; it was lucky that I’d had a hairdresser appointment made for the Saturday afternoon before the wedding or I would have gone nuts.

The wedding was beautiful. The bride and groom swore to "love, honour and amuse you", which I absolutely love. :D And the reception was fun. M. persuaded a five year old boy sitting at our table to ask me to dance after dinner, because he didn’t want to. Nice. I can’t dance to save myself!

I had bought myself a new dress (the first one in years) and had my hair curled at the hairdresser. The dress is black and ankle length, and has a gold fabric over the top so the overall effect is a dusky dark gold colour. It was fun to dress up for a change.

I also caught the bouquet – which is ironic given that the only thing I can usually successfully catch is a cold. Two of the other "single" (ie with a partner but not married) women in the small crowd used me as a meat shield so they wouldn’t catch it. I distinctly recall being pushed! Anyway, I did a quick, footballer style pass to a teenage girl standing next to me. I figured that given she was a local she’d appreciate the flowers more; I would’ve had to leave them in the hotel room when we flew home.

M. came up to me afterwards and the first thing he said was, “I am so fucked”. I love you too! :P

The next day we went to the Healesville Sanctuary. Everyone had told us how awesome the bird of prey show was, and they were right. A series of handlers came out with different birds of prey, who were free-flying. We were under strict orders to remain seated while the show was on and I can see why; if you'd stood up suddenly you might have copped a falcon in the back of the head. A feathery one, not a car.

The coolest bird was the black breasted buzzard, which instinctively uses rocks to crack hard-shelled eggs like those of emus. I got some awesome photos of that. Some of the other birds I couldn’t capture because the damn things moved so fast! :P The peregrine falcon took off when they released it and didn't come back for about 10 minutes; it must've been off having a perv at a lady falcon or something. And they couldn't show us the wedge-tailed eagle because there was a wild one hovering overhead waiting for it to appear so it could presumably try and eat its face off. Don't you love spring? :)

It was good to get home. Our dogs were happy to see us too.

The rest of the week was pretty much spent playing Warcraft. It was my sister's birthday on the 3rd, so I took her shopping and bought her a nice knitted jacket thing and a top to go under it. She is gorgeous which makes her fun to shop for. A few days later we also bough her a copy of WoW after she played it a bit at our house and thought it looked like fun. The game is reduced to $30 at the moment because the supplement is about to come out (yay!) so it was pretty cheap. Shame the bimonthly subscription cards are so expensive! :(

She made herself a gnome rogue with pink hair. Very cute and appropriately manic; she has a tendency to run off without looking to pick a flower or something! I bought her a pet bunny rabbit. It seemed appropriate at the time.

I got a couple of new items for my main character on WoW, which was sweet. You can see her gear profile here … though I am not sure anyone reads this that would know what they are looking at! (Hint: Purple means it's good.) The two new items are the Wild Growth Spaulders and the Choker of Enlightenment. Go me!

And that's pretty much it. Back at work this week, which makes me a sad panda. But the mortgage has to get paid somehow I guess. :|

PS I didn't manage to stay up till 5am to click the button on that Cities game. I think I am too old to pull an all-nighter these days; by 1am I was exhausted. So I am not sure if I will be playing that game anymore unless I can come up with some other way of doing it.