Chapter 36 - A Grand Day Off

In which our hero takes a break from her exhausting holiday adventures about which she'll explain later ...

So yes. I've been on lots of adventures. Don't worry, you didn't miss a post or anything, and there hasn't been any folds in the space time continuum. I just haven't told you about them yet.

Suffice it to say they made me tired, so I decided to take today off. I got up at noon. Let the chickens out. Ate my brekkie. Watched a disc of Shaun the Sheep while I finished my tea. Then did some important things in my room, like Blu-Tacking my postcards to the wall (previously they were on my magnet board, but I was running out of space) and I also fixed my umbrella again, in the exact same way as last time, but in a different place. After feeling like I'd accomplished something with the postcards and the umbrella, I decided to reward myself with another disc of Shaun the Sheep. Those things are seriously hilarious. You should watch them, if you haven't.

So basically it was a whole day spent vegging in front of the telly, but it didn't feel wasted. It felt restful. I also, at some point, looked through all the DVDs to see which ones were discs with no cases and which were cases with no discs. They very disappointingly didn't work out evenly. It offends my sense of symmetry and order, and also boggles my mind, like how you put two socks in the dryer and only one comes out.

At some point during the day I spent some time watching our three new chickens being all chicken-y and getting windblown and ruffled. They're quite pretty. From a distance they're black, but up close there's dark green on their backs and bits of brown on their chests. We now have five chickens. But how, you say. That doesn't add up! I could swear there used to be eleven! Well, I'll tell you. No, it's too long. I will sum up: Way back when there were two. That's when I first got here. Then Sarah bought three more. Then we got four more from Sarah's friend who was moving house and could no longer accommodate them. So far they're all brown chickens. #1 had names for the first five, and she could tell them apart. I could only tell one because it was lighter. Then we got two more, which were black and dark brown. (#3 used to go out and be like "Where my black one?" -- It was cute.) Then two wandered off when Sarah was hanging out washing and they came in the door by the line and went out the garage door and never came back. Then two more wandered off, but they showed up again the next day. Then on the Saturday of my last exam five got eaten/scared away. We later discovered it was the puppies next door who had squeezed through a whole in the fence and terrorised the poor chooks. Maybe that was actually on the Friday, or Thursday? I don't remember. My mind, needless to say, was otherwise occupied. So there were two brown ones left. Now there's a total of five, because we got three new ones. See?

Anyway. Here's a picture of the three new ones:

 Right. Never mind. Those pictures seem to have decided to save themselves in my phone memory, not on the memory card, and I don't know how to get them off the phone. So here's one of the sheep next door:

It's Shaun the Sheep!

And here's some random pictures of fruits (It's just the one picture, really...):

Oh ho! And you thought cherries were expensive at home!

And here's a lovely one from my walk along the beach the other day, which, as I said, I'll explain later. (Or not. Instead, here's one from the other day at the park near the Arts Centre. Some of the buildings of Surfer's Paradise reflecting in the little man-made lake.)

I'm quite proud of this one. I actually like noticed a particular thing, and took time to frame it and stuff, which doesn't normally happen, and it turned out how I wanted it to, which also doesn't normally happen. Content wise it's quite like a postcard or calendar or advert saying "Come have your business convention on the Gold Coast", but still. I like it. There's nothing wrong with commercial art, right? It's totally valid.

And also, look at these DVDs that they have at the library:

p.s. I totally fully intended to do blogs all day, but then I didn't.

Chapter 35 - The Front Fell Off

In which our her ..  "Oh, look! A balloon!"

So yesterday:  Woke up, brekkie of egg and vegemite and cheese sandwich and a banana, grocery shop, bit of drawing pictures, nachos for lunch, some more mandarins after that.  Something, something, bit of packing away of all the nonsense that was strewn about the floor (that was a group effort).  You'll be happy to hear that #1 and #2 have watched "The Princess Bride" like four times since Saturday evening.  So far I've gotten them onto both Doctor Who and The Princess Bride.  I think my work here is done.

Anyway.  Then we went down to Nana & Grandpa's house for afternoon tea with the neighbours to celebrate Sarah's birthday.  I gave #3 a piggy back down, and as we approached the house Nana was hanging balloons by the front door, and #3 said "Oh no look! Balloons!".  I don't know why she said "Oh no", because she loves balloons.  Maybe she didn't. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.  Oh well.  It was a good time.  There was cheese and crackers and chips and chocolate cupcakes and choc-chip muffins.  I also made another interesting discovery to add to Christine's Australian Culinary Odyssey: Fairy Bread.  Observe:

It's white bread with sprinkles.  Possibly butter or something as well to hold the sprinkles on.  It's a staple of kids' parties here.  They can be coloured sprinkles or chocolate or whatever, apparently.  It's good stuff.

And also, as promised, I finally remembered to take a pic of Nana & Grandpa's amazingly coincidental door jam keeper opener boot remover thingy:

I kid you not.  Of all the families in all of Australia to live with, what are the chances their grandparents have one of these too?

So we returned to the house after a couple hours, and I dealt with my washing, and had some tasty potato and leek soup that Sarah had made earlier, and then got ready to go out, because I was going to see The Great Gatsby with a couple of guys.  Not the same couple of guys that convinced me it was a good idea to see The Hangover Part III, though.  Luckily.  (Talk about a waste of time.  Blurg.)  Anyway.  This was the back-up plan for Friday, when there wasn't time for the movie.  They were two new friends of mine from the Skeptics Club.  Glen, who's also in engineering and his lifetime goal is to go to space, and Christian, who is trying to find himself.  (In the blog, I mean.)  He was disappointed that he hasn't shown up yet.  So there he is.  He decided it was a good idea to go the the cinema in Robina, which is far if you're driving, sort of, but only like 10 minutes by train, so we had a train adventure to get there.

But wait.  I'm getting ahead of myself.  As I was getting ready to leave on my bike #3 came into the garage eating something and asking where I was going.  I didn't really pay attention to what she was eating because I was trying to get my bike lights sorted out and stuff.  She was telling me about it, though, and she said something about "it got some cheese inside it", but again I didn't give it much thought.  Like a minute later I happened to actually look, and what she had was a Mini Babybell, with the wax still on, and a bite out of it, and she was chewing on something, which I quickly realised was wax.  So I showed her how to unwrap it properly, and convinced her it was a good idea to spit out the wax in her mouth.  I don't know if she swallowed any.  Hopefully not, I guess?  I don't know what happens when people eat cheese wax.  Hopefully it just passes through.

Anyway.  Then I took off.  I tried to switch into 3rd gear in the front, but the chain started slipping furiously.  Like, it would engage for a bit then slip, like half the sprocket had no teeth or something.  It was dark, though, and I didn't want to stop and mess around with it, so I just continued in 2nd.  When I got down to the straight flat part by the shopping centre I had another go at 3rd, and the same slipping thing happened, but this time I could kind of look at what was going on.  There's a bit, at the front, that keeps the chain from going over the edge when it's in 3rd.  On my bike it's made of plastic.  And apparently it was cracked.  And then it fell off.  In bits. As I was riding and trying to figure out what was going on.  So there you go.  The front fell off.  Now I can't use 3rd gear, because the chain just tips over the edge, and the bike looks like this:

When I got home later I just took off all the remaining pieces with a screwdriver because they were all loose and making clicky noises, and when I'm riding with clicky noises I always think my bike's about to fall apart.

So now back to the movie.  Christian met me at the station, because he just lives not too far away.  Then we trained it down to Robina.  We sat backward on the train, and I couldn't tell we were moving backward, which I thought was because it was dark out, but he said it was because I'd gone down a hill recently, so my sense of things was all messed up, but after the movie when I'd been sitting still for a while and then if we sat backward again I'd definitely notice it.  We did, after, and I didn't.  I don't think.

Anyway.  The cinema in Robina is very nice, but it's also expensive, and you have to specify which seat you want, which I've never encountered in a movie theatre before.  It was a bit weird cuz the boys had bought their tickets online and already picked their seats, but then when I got mine at the box office the girl had to rearrange theirs so we were all together.  So my review of The Great Gatsby is that I didn't like it.  It had all the normal magic of a Baz Lurhmann film, but I didn't like the story.  I can see why you didn't like the book, Annie.  I don't think I'll bother reading it now.  But I blame F. Scott Fitzgerald for that, not Baz Lurhmann.  My personal opinion is that unhappy endings can take a flying leap.

Glen had met us at Robina Station and driven us to the cinema, then back to the station after.  We missed one train because we were talking about interesting things like space elevators and Doctor Who and how to find out where and when exams were.  Eventually we got on the home-bound train, then back to Helensvale, then I got my bike, and we headed to the ATM so Christian could get some cab fare.  On the way back to the taxi stand there was a random balloon stuck under a bit of shrubbery and I was seriously like "Oooh look! A balloon!", at which point I kind of chuckled to myself because it was not the first time I'd been distracted by an actual balloon.  I started telling Christian about Tony's thing about thinking Therese is all easily distracted, and then there was that one time there was actually balloons, and it was hilarious, but then I got distracted and didn't finish.  Which I think rather proves the point, doesn't it.

On my way home I collected the bits of bike that had fallen off earlier, and put them in the bin at home with the other pieces that I removed with a screw driver.  Then I was hungry, so I had some WeatBix with honey, then shower and bed and too tired to write anything and was asleep in like five minutes and slept till like noon.  It was good.  But my back still hurts from that little trampoline stunt, and I felt like I could have slept all day.

Also, now I have "Killer Queen" stuck in my head because in The Great Gatsby they were drinking Moet champagne.

Chapter 34 - Two Chickens to Paralise

In which our hero does a lot of climbing and jumping and has various chicken related adventures...

Yesterday, Friday, was my last day of classes.  Fridays are also my latest start day - on odd weeks I have a lab that starts at 12:00.  On even weeks I start at 3:00.  Seriously.  So yesterday we had a lab.  The family got up and left, and I heard them leave, at around 7:30. I think my alarm was set for 8:00.  I was very tired, so I turned it off and kept dozing.  At some point I heard a loud knocking noise from the direction of the kitchen, so I thought maybe Sarah had stayed home to do report cards or something - working from home, that is.

Then I dozed some more, and got up around 9:00.  The first thing I noticed was that the verandah door was wide open, which was a bit weird because Sarah usually locks things up before leaving.  Then I noticed that the light in the play room was on.  Then I heard a chicken noise.  The natural assumption was that it was coming from outside, but I couldn't see any outside.  I heard it a couple more times, but I couldn't quite place it location wise.  It occurred to me that one had wandered into the house and maybe gone upstairs or something, but I couldn't see it or specifically hear it anywhere.

I carried on with my morning things ...  organizing brekkie, chucking leftover toast crusts to the chickens in the back, etc.  On my way back in, though, I distinctly heard that chicken noise again, from very close on my left.  I looked over into the play room, and there was a chicken on the cabinet thingy. So naturally I took a picture before trying to get it out of the house.

Here's one from far away to show context.  That cabinet is full of puzzles and games and things.

And up close.  Yes, that's a real chicken. A really very silly chicken.

I had no idea how to get it from there to where it should be, which was out in the back.  I'd seen people pick up chickens before, but I'd never tried it.  I'd also seen, in movies mostly, where someone attempts to pick up a chicken and it turns into some kind of feathers and claws and flapping grandma's good china off the shelves situation, so naturally I didn't want that to happen either.  What happened in the end was I basically threatened to pick up the chicken, but she decided she's rather sort of jump/fly down to the floor and allow herself to be herded out the back door.  Interesting morning's adventure.

Later that day was an event hosted by the Skeptics Club that was a sort of open debate forum deal, where any topic was allowed, as long as it was discussed in a civilized manner.  There was also pizza included in the ticket price, and pop and Tim Tams and lolly snakes (gummy snakes) (not really bigger than gummy worms).  So it was interesting.  There was a sort of a plan to go to see The Great Gatsby afterward, but it didn't really work out because the event didn't end till about 9:00, and there was no showtimes after 9:15, so we wouldn't have made it.  We're going tomorrow night instead.  I spent the evening just hanging out with people and listening to interesting discussions.  Well, mostly interesting.  One was about politics, and although I know I should care about such things I really just don't.  I took a bathroom break during that one.

So today I woke up at a reasonable hour (again alarm set for 8:00, got up at like 9:30.)  Had my breakfast,  played a bit with the kids.   Drew a picture with large rectangular crayons.  Ate several mandarins and an orange with #2 and #3.  Helped catch an escaping guinea pig and return it to it's cage.  (They make really cute little squeaky noises.) (Rather like tribbles, actually .... )  Anyway.  At some point #3 and I were outside, and we decided the game was for me to hit little toy footballs with the cricket bat and then she'd go get them.  One of them went on the roof.  So after asking Sarah if it was OK, I climbed up there to get it.  On my way down #2 convinced me it was a good idea to jump off onto the trampoline rather than climb down, so I did.  I landed kind of strangely.  I think my knees didn't bend as much as they should have .. . or maybe they bent as if I'd been landing on a hard surface .. . anyway my right knee sort of smashed into my right elbow, and I felt this sort of jamming feeling all the way up my back and into my head, and my right shoulder blade kind of hurt.  So I went inside to sit down and have a glass of water and watch The Magnificent Seven, which is due back at the library shortly.

I think after that came the mandarin eating.  Not that it matters that much.  Then I think Sarah went for a nap, and #2 and I started doing some physics experiments.  There was some lenses and some reflecty things and a torch (flashlight), and some attempts at creating a sort of complicated system of lasers and mirrors, except that we didn't have any real mirrors, or a laser.  And I didn't really feel like trying to explain the difference between reflection and refraction, and nonsense like that, so needless to say we never really got to the stage of like "secret agent laser pizza" or anything, but it was fun.  Then we got tired and hungry, so we went for some snacko and watched the Princess Bride.  Or started it, anyway.  We got as far as escaping from the lightning sand when we were informed that we had a dinner reservation at a tasty Japanese place in Surfer's Paradise.  So off we went, after a quick bath/shower for the little ones, and after Sarah's Canadian friend turned up because half the point was to do something with her to celebrate Sarah's birthday which was yesterday.  Yes, I know that was a run-on sentence, and frankly I don't care.  I'm tired and I want to got to bed, but not before finishing the story.

If you'll remember a couple days ago I mentioned that we planned to go to the Outback Spectacular tonight.  Well, it turns out the ticket deals we were hoping to take advantage of don't apply  on weekends, so we're going to wait for a weekday night during the holidays, which are coming up shortly.  So obviously there's nothing to report on that front, because it didn't happen.

We did get to the restaurant eventually, though, and despite it being a Saturday night in Party Central we somehow managed to find a park (parking spot).  It was an interesting culinary adventure, in the best way.  People tried things they hadn't before.  I ate some eggplant and didn't gag.  The munchkins behaved for the most part.

After dinner we decided to walk to McDonalds to get a 30 cent ice cream cone, but on the way we encountered a place called Yoghurt City, which is basically Yo Yo's.  I decided to try nearly every flavour, and not add any toppings.  Of course the kids went slightly nuts on the toppings.  Anyway.  There was pomegranate, choco-coconut swirl, strawberry-mango swirl, banana-passion fruit swirl, and possibly something else.  They were all delicious.  Then we went home.  It was a good night.  But basically what happened, and also what the title is alluding to, is I spent another evening in Surfer's Paradise.  I think I still haven't seen the place in the day light.

Mmm... Yoghurt City .... It's the blurry arch of letters there in the centre, which you can't see clearly because my phone doesn't really do night pics.

The other thing the title is alluding to is the chickens.  We had ten.  One wandered off.  Then we got two more.  Then four wandered off.  Today, when I went to pack them away in their shed, there was only five.  I seriously don't know what's going on.  And three of the five decided they'd rather sleep on the bench outside my room then go back down to the chook shed, so Sarah and I carried them down.  I finally carried a chicken, and nothing disastrous happened.  I carried the black one, which, I'm pretty sure, doesn't lay black eggs.  They're probably just brown eggs like the brown chickens do.  I don't think black eggs are a thing, unless it's those Chinese "hundred year old eggs" or something.

Oh, and also, about the climbing.  There was the climbing onto the roof, and then there was climbing in and out of the back seat with #1 because my normal seat in the car was occupied by Sarah's friend, and the back seat can only be accessed by climbing through the trunk because the normal ease of access mechanism of moving one of the middle seats forward is blocked by the fact that there's two child car seats on the middle seats.  Again, don't care about the run-on sentence.  Also, if you read this within the next few hours then tough nuts to you because I'm not going to proof read it until tomorrow.