7th MAR 08 – 10th MAR 08 (Labour Day Long Weekend)
Friday 7th March
Got home from work and was pumped for the weekend. At work it felt like it was a Tuesday or something, so the fact that it was a Friday was bonza! Sarah came around shortly after I had a piece of pizza (I was still full from lunch), and decided she was hungry – but didn’t want pizza. So we went on a driving adventure to Silvers Fish’n’Chip shop off Ruhamah St. They have really good fish and chips, but it was pretty busy in there (being Friday night and all, I suppose) so it took a little while. Sarah got her Fish’n’Chips and then we were out of there! I was flying down the back streets and had just passed under bluestone bridge, when Tom called to say he was at my house. Ready to jam!
Still amped up, I flew in the driveway, putting the car sideways.
I saw Tom’s legs behind the halfway up shed roller door. He was behind it trying to put it up, but as usual it was getting jammed. So I thought it would be funny to drive up to it and put the nose of the car under the door (there was enough room!). So I drove up and the slowly drove the nose of the car under the door until it was almost touching him and then… he jumped as high as the sky! Then proceeded to go troppo, in a state of confusion, it would seem.
“Is that the stupidest thing you’ve ever done!?”
Sarah was in tears from the laughter. Both because he jumped so high, and just the thought of putting a door up and then looking down to see a car coming at your legs… and we continued laughing.
Later that night we got into some jams, and mainly played:
- Muse – Supermassive Black Hole
- Arctic Monkeys – I Bet That You Look Good On The Dance Floor
- Silverchair – Tomorrow
- Blur – Song 2
- Faker – Hurricane
Sarah sat on the floor and listened, and Cody sat on the couch and listened (with his new JayJays glasses). It was actually getting pretty hot and sweaty in there – trademark of a good show hopefully. Hoping for a singer next week!
And mucked around with other stuff, we were making up. We later were deciding on a name for the band and came up with:
- Improper Fractions
- Punces with Glasses
- The Fifth Corner of Hell
- The 6/2th Degree
..and that’s about it. The names are poor for the most part…. don’t know how all the fractions came about.
Went to bed later on and slept straight away – jammin’ is hard work.
Saturday 8th March
Sarah got up fairly early to get ready to go to work. Had a shower, had breakfast.
After she left I stayed up (in the morning) and watched some jTV to see Little Red steal some stuff out of The Vasco Era’s rider. There wasn’t much Vasco, so I turned the program off after a while anyway. At about 11 something I went back to bed, and it was good – woke up at about 2pm after some crazy dreams. One of which was me returning to a street-ball game, to save the team and doing some awesome moves. I spent the first hour after waking up in a confused daze between my room and the kitchen cupboard and trying to find something to eat. The next hour was spent playing some of my beloved ‘Pac Man’ on Playstation (I’m on the last set of levels now!)
I got a bit bored after that so I decided to fit a lock to my door. I had had the blister pack from ‘Go-Lo’ or equivalent, but had just never got around to putting it on my door. The main reason I never undertook it was because the hole was just a couple of millimeters to small. On this day I did summon the effort to file it down a bit for the handley mechanism bits to fit through. Tight fit! I also had to take a bit out of the side of the door for the latch plate to sit flush with the door. People that know me, know I’m not really a handy-man as such – so it did take a while, but it works and looks alright! No more people going shopping in my room, and I tend to lock it when I sleep too. So many times people just open the door and I sit up in terror from my sleep, then a “Sorry, didn’t know you were sleeping!” usually follows. (I do sleep at usual times though)
I had a shower and got myself ready for the night and soon after my beautiful crew arrived – we were headed to ‘Hudges 20th – Goodbye to the Teenage Years’ party out at Scottish Chiefs. But first there was some pre-party-drinks to be had! A Canadian Club on the house, Yeager, and I dipped into my good times favorite Vodka and Breakfast Juice. I’m telling you kids the Breakfast Juice makes even the strongest drinks go down with ease (maybe because breakfast juices are designed to make things go down with ease – normally breakfast I’d assume!) So chugging away at the bottle, going this is great. And it was. It was evident that it was all taking effect when I had to reach for the seat belt in the taxi, and for some reason seat belts are designed to have the side seat belt you want on the other side of the middle seat belt – so you have to cross them over. It became a Seinfeld routine along the lines of “What’s with seat belts?? Why is the one you want always on the other side…” you get the point. The taxi driver was good as gold, he was the owner of a taxi that the guy we usually know drives. That guy had the night off, so the owner was driving the cab. He was really kool and didn’t run the meter, and just charged a flat fee. And it was a good one!
We walked into Chiefs, the bouncers still remembered us, although we hadn’t been there in a while. I could say we were definitely regulars there though. It’s like what Cheers was to those guys, Scottish Chiefs is to us. It’s a place where everyone knows your name! (Haha, get it!?)
Anyway, walked in to the tunes of a reduced (and we think better) Planet Mojo. Although, they probably aren’t called that now because the bass player was packing the majority of the mojo of the group. Maybe they can just be called ‘Planet’. Saw all those friendly faces Al and Ag Strom, lil’ Rick, Muddihy Hayes, and of course the man of the hour Hudge looking damn fine. All wearing black armbands for the death of Hudge’s teenage years – Allister in particular who had one for every teenage year on his left arm.
On my first visit to the urination station, I heard the all to familiar tones of Big Hudge in a bad state. The night was young, but he was in a crippled state over a toilet. Some momentary seconds of faux support, and I was off again. Out the back it was absolutely buzzing. Usually only that amount of people are out back when there is a private function being held out there. Drinks flowed, and gave something called ‘Baron Yeager’ shots a go. They taste like honey and are delightful – at least that’s how I remember them. After that I stepped outside and met many that remembered my name, which was an honor as I wasn’t remembering theirs at that point. Muddihy Hayes and Emily were hanging out together. Collectively I called them “Snoop and Garbage”. Explanation: Muddihy was pimpin’ it up with a hat and and attitude to match. He didn’t even look at me when I shook his hand. Emily (you know Stewie’s girlfriend!) had short hair and really blonde. She told me she hates being know as Stewie’s girlfriend as she isn’t going out with him any more due to some series of events, which surprisingly I can’t recall, he gave her concussion. I believe I then proceeded to tell her of a rumor that he once put her in a bass drum and banged her (and not talking about the kick pedal). I don’t think anyone really believed it at the time anyhow, but it’s one of those ‘spread it because it’s funny’ rumors. So, she’s doing well these days and good on her.
From that point on, people were saying “Hi Reece!” and I didn’t know who there were:
- Terri-Anne and her Robert Plant boyfriend – I talked to her about KFC and how good cracked pepper mayonnaise is, and talked to him about thinking about buying a double bass.
- Muddihy Hayes’ sister, Michelle – who I thought Muddihy was trying to tap at the time because of the amount they were hanging around together. The last time I had seen her she was much younger and little. So it was kind of awkward when I asked, “Was Muddihy trying to tap you, or what!?” and she said “No! I’m his sister!”. Although, at that point in the night I was feeling no remorse for my words. We reminisced about the time Daniel let their dog out and it got run over by a car and killed. Ah sweet memories.
Unsung hero of the night: Allister Lee.
It is sort of ironic that I use the term unsung, considering the picture left of screen. I deliberately made this picture larger, because it was taken with my 2.0 megapixel phone camera, yet the picture is somehow phenomenal. I believe the radiance of the performance provided the extra light needed to make the shot crystal clear. Alister is my nominated unsung hero of the night as he had a drink ready for me as soon as I walked in there, and later bought a round of shots for everyone. Like every good hero he faced adversity and hardship, when denied access to the Bended Elbow because he was wearing shorts. Whatever. We just hang around outside and talked about life. From that point on the night dissipated. Ag Strom disappeared, Glenn and Katherine disappeared. We lost Al. After an adventure to KFC with a lady of interest of Tom’s, Tom and I found ourselves alone and back at Bended Elbow.
He wanted to continue partying, but I was over it and decided I was going to go for a walk. I walked down to the waterfront initially and sat there for a while. I just tend to think of Sarah any time I walk down there – and that’s kind of what I wanted to do. After that I decided to walk down to Mercer St in hope of flagging down a taxi. None stopped. I gave up on flagging down taxi’s when I was about halfway home (approx. 6km). They say home never seems that far away when you’ve been drinking, at least in Geelong. In the end I had walked about 12kms home, on what was most definitely not the shortest route between the waterfront and my house in Lovely Banks. Along the way I had obtained a large metal bar with handles. At the time, my mindset is that I would need it if any of the wild dogs came to attack me. I would have confidently won any battle with that in my hands.
I arrived home at about 5.15am. Washed my hands, and went to bed.
Happy Birthday Hudge! (no one does heating or cooling better)
Sunday 9th March
I woke up with a sore head – probably to be expected. So I spent most of the day sitting around, not moving my head much. In the early hours of the afternoon, I ended up watching ‘Beethoven II’ (the dog) with Dad and Cody. We were thoroughly entertained by the outrageousness of his adventures. For example, bringing down an entire balcony and side of a house into a river (being partied on by jerks of course – Beethoven always brings down the jerks).
I ended up going back to sleep in the afternoon after that and waking up an hour before I had to catch a train to Melbourne, to see my Sarah. Caught the train up and Sarah was waiting for me at Southern Cross station… …with Fruit Candy! What a girlfriend!
It was a bit crazy because the station monitors were going crazy and we caught a train to Flinders St then back through Southern Cross to get to Glen Iris station. The trains were delayed due to signal trouble anyway, so we effectively didn’t lose any time in the end.
We spent most of that night at Brooke and Tim’s house, after Sarah raced the car back to her house to get changed out of work clothes. We had some really good pizza and played with their dogs. They were funny, they would slide their head under your hand if it was hanging over the end of the couch. They wanted scratches.
We said goodbye to Tim and Brooke, and they are off to Thailand on Tuesday!
Got home and Sarah was exhausted. We konked big time, she had been working hard and I had been partying hard!
Monday 10th March
Woke up to the sweet (grr) sounds of an alarm and had a shower. Sarah and I caught the train into the city. It was a nice morning train trip, just sitting with her. Nice sun. A day off work (for me).
We went into Sapore and I had a burger, whilst watching the crazy antics of the Sapore crew. I then had to say goodbye to Sarah and leave her to work with the crew, and I caught the midday train home. Just before boarding the train I bought some Rocky Road for Dad and all of his organising of train tickets and dropping off and picking up.
The day was really heating up. The train pulled up at North Geelong and I walked across the road to a public phone, called home and got picked up by Dad. The car was air conditioned real good! And Shania Twain playing of course… it’s Dad’s car after all!
When I got home I got a call from Tom, who was bored. So he came over and we spent the afternoon in the pool. I did get a little burnt, but I was lapping up the sun on a Monday – I no complain! We just floated around and discussed endless shite. It was a great day.
VOX Mar 8, 2008