Chapter 48 - The Epic Hail Storm That I Haven't Told You About Yet

In which our hero is conveniently under cover during an epic storm, she does some arts and crafts with the boys, Coco gets up to mischief, and Glen chills with his hoes ... 

... also Schoolies ... 

So one day, right. Christian says "We haven't hung out in a while, lets get a coffee", which of course for me means hot chocolate or something else that's not coffee. We made a plan to meet at the Westfield around 4, I think. So come 2:30-ish I decided to head down because the sky was looking a bit grey, and I didn't want to get stuck in a storm half way there. Here's a picture of a lovely red flowering tree with the grey skies in the background.

When I arrived at the shopping centre I decided to have a browse through Woolies. I can't remember what I was looking for. I think it was potential camping food, because at the time there was a camping plan for this week, which has since been cancelled. While walking up and down the aisles I overhear two women saying something weather, and that must be the rain they were hearing, which caused me to pause and notice the sort of white noise that was going on in the background. So I went to a door to the outside, and sure enough it was dark grey outside, and absolutely bucketing down.

After watching it for a bit I went back to Woolies to continue browsing. No sooner had I re-entered the store than the white noise suddenly increased in volume rather a lot. So I went back out to look, and it was hail. Lots of hail. Blowing in the doors, which were about 20m away from the edge of the awning. It was ridiculous, and I was thoroughly thankful that I was inside.

Hail blowing in the doors.

Woolies started leaking.  There is a panel of windows just above the store entrance, so that's probably where the water came from.

Just outside, but still under the awning thingies.

Again, just outside. Madness.

Here is a video to demonstrate the sound:

So eventually I met up with Christian, and the storm died down, and we hung out and had dinner. Then, since we were back near Uni, we decided to drop in on my friend Vash, just to say hi, and see if he wanted to go to a movie later. After some sitting around and talking it turned out Christian didn't want to go to a movie, and the other two of us were going to miss the one we wanted to see, because there was about two minutes till it started. So Vash decided he wanted a kebab, and his favourite kebab place was down in Surfer's. When we got there we noticed strangely large amounts of people for a weekday night, and then there was some raucous boys chanting something that sounded sort vaguely school and/or sports related. Then we came to a horrible realisation: Schoolies was on. Now, I don't know much about it, exactly. Atmosphere-wise it's quite similar to "Spring Break", at least, I would imagine, having never been to "Spring Break". Except that instead of college kids it's "School Leavers", aka high school graduates. Apparently the Gold Coast Schoolies is like THE Schoolies to be at, so people come from far and wide. Maybe it's the only real Schoolies. I don't know. Anyway. At first it wasn't that bad, but then, after being there for just about an hour, probably less, I saw two chaps escorted away in handcuffs, one girl fell over on the sidewalk and vomited in no particular order, and just as I was walking past two girls having what seemed like a normal conversation the one head-butted the other in the teeth. Charming. Luckily, that was just as we were leaving.

Surfer's Paradise at night. There's neon lights on the palm trees.

And this is the madness of Schoolies. Absolutely insane.

The pile of hail the next morning outside my room. The kids had built a sort of  hail man, but it melted slightly over night.

The deck the next morning. 

The next day we went down to Pacific Fair to do some shopping. In the JB HiFi, which is basically Best Buy or whatever, I saw this in the "France" section of foreign films. It's Starbuck, starring Patrick Houard. It's about a lovable loser named David Wozniak who donates to a fertility clinic and twenty years later finds out he has 533 kids. Sound familiar? Well, when the previews for Delivery Man starring Vince Vaughn started appearing a little while ago, I thought that story line sounded familiar. It's about a lovable loser named David Wozniak who donates to a fertility clinic and twenty years later finds out he has 533 kids. It sounded familiar because I'd read the synopsis of Starbuck on the TIFF program last year. Also, FYI, it's from Quebec, not France.

Now, as promised, here's Coco:

... climbing out of the dishwasher ... 

... playing in a towel ... 

BUSH TURKEY!

 The local public libraries were doing a thing with activities and whatnot all November for "Doctor Who Month". One of the activities was to make a TARDIS mobile phone sock. So Glen, Christian, and I went to the Nerang library to do that. And here they are with their works in progress:

Christian looks so dashing because he's just come from work, where they have to look good.

And lastly, Glen and his hoes.

Did I say hoes? I meant hose. Tee hee hee.