Chapter 51 - An Interesting Exchange with Munchkin #1

In which our hero is made to feel old ... 

So the other night we were sitting at the dinner table, and Munchkin #1 (who's 9 now) engages me in the following discussion:

M#1: "Christine, have you ever had a 7-11 Slurpee?"

Me: "Yes. When I was a kid there used to be a 7-11 essentially across the street from my house .. well, we could walk there in like two minutes .. and my sisters and I used to go there and get Slurpees all the time."

M#1: "Yeah, but like, nowadays Slurpees?"

Me: "They really haven't changed that much."

Since there's no picture that really goes with this story, you can enjoy this picture of some Pineapple Things:

I think they're candied pineapple covered in chocolate.

I took that picture while waiting at the local pharmacy and listening to a massive rain storm outside.

Since we're telling interesting anecdotes, though, here's another one. A lorikeet tried to fly into my room last night. It was about 12:30 a.m., and I was just getting into bed. I had my lamp on, and the window/door things open, and the screen was down, as in it was covering the window. All of a sudden there was a sort of crash and flapping and things, which was extremely startling when I had previously been enjoying some silent pre-sleep contemplation. My first thought was that it was a bat, but it stopped moving and just sat attached to the screen, hanging on with it's claws, and I saw that it was in fact a rainbow lorikeet. I think perhaps it was confused, and it though it was inside a dark building and my room was daytime outside. I don't know. So I turned off my lamp and after a bit more flapping and scrabbling there was silence. It had gone away. Unfortunately in its startlement at crashing into the fly-screen (that's what they call screens here) it pooped all down it (the fly screen) so I had to clean that up this morning.

May I also say thank you to all my friends and relations for not calling me early this morning. I wouldn't have answered anyway because my phone was on silent. I was really tired yesterday from an early morning call from Trez, after which I didn't go back to sleep. So today I was able to sleep in. Then I had an awesome brekkie with curry flavoured scrambled eggs and fried tomatoes. It was delicious.

And now here are some more pictures that are unrelated:

This is some rainbow lorikeets in a tree at uni. You can just see the orangey breast, and if you look closely there's a green head attached to it.

This is a pair of cockatoos I passed on my street eating pine cones.

This is a family of pylons I encountered near uni. There's Papa Pylon, Mama Pylon, and four kids, two of which are fraternal twins. Over here they call traffic cones 'witch's hats'. I don't know what they call the pole shaped ones. I just call them all pylons.

This is an interesting sunset effect that I spotted while walking down the street. This is looking east, so the sun is behind me and the ocean is ahead below the darkening clouds.

This is the Wheel of Brisbane. It costs something like $15 to go on it. I haven't been yet, but it's on the list of things to do before I leave.

This is a little moth that landed on my hand while I was on the bus. It crawled around a bit, then flew off to explore somewhere else.