Tuesday was Melbourne Cup Day, which is a public holiday in much of Victoria. Lots of people take the Monday off as well, including some of the schools.
The weather was lovely.
Lindsey wasn't available to play on Saturday. She and Ian took Emily to the airport as she began her journey back to Canada. I couldn't be bothered going far, didn't bother with the Bridge Mall market and did some tidying in the garden.
On Sunday I went to Geelong, to Irene's house, where Gillie, Chris and John also gathered. Chris and John report that the foreshore was very busy with lots of activities and lots of people engaging with the activities. We stayed inside and ate asparagus soufflés, roast pork, and rhubarb cake. We caught up on all the chatter and generally whiled away a very pleasant late spring afternoon. And played ball with Flora 😀
On Monday, a bloke turned up at 7:45 to install my new dishwasher. I was expecting him early, if not quite that early, so I was up and dressed. I am usually up early, but not necessarily dressed for the day. By 8:30 he had finished, cleared up and gone away, taking the old dishwasher with him. The new dishwasher is white and seems to make the kitchen much brighter. The sun was shining brightly on Monday morning and the solar light in the kitchen was also shining brightly. The light was reflecting off the white door of the dishwasher and rebounding around. I hadn't realised how much the silver door of the old dishwasher was absorbing the light. (Looks speculatively at the (silver) fridge/freezer, then decides against replacing it Just Because!)
On Tuesday, the actual public holiday, Lindsey and I went out to find a pop up Christmas shop, which was advertising itself on Facebook. We found the address but couldn't see any signs of Christmas Festivity. Just an ordinary house with an ordinary driveway and an unadorned gate. So we went away. Lindsey sent the person a message to say we had been but couldn't see a pop up shop. Apparently it was around the back in a shed, decorated with elves and Santas. I don't know about you, but I am not wandering around people's gardens searching for elves and Santas. I feel that at the very least some sort of festive decoration on the front gate might have been encouraging.
Anyway, we went to the Stockland shopping complex and pottered around there. We went to Kmart and House. Lindsey had a quick haircut. Then we went to Bunnings. We went out to the mushroom farm. I visited Stella. It ended up being quite a busy day.
And the weather broke overnight. There were 20 ml of rain in my little rain gauge when I looked yesterday morning.
The traffic around Melbourne was cray-cray-crazy yesterday morning. Pretty much everything was crazy. One of the main mobile phone companies had gone down, nationwide. Around 10 million people's mobile phones, internet and internet-based equipment were out of action. So too, in Melbourne, were the trains, hospital telephony, EFTpos machines, bluetooth equipment. Chaos and mayhem all around. I managed to get to work more or less on time, where our machines and internet were unimpeded by the outage. We use a different company.
I left at 2pm and went to East Ivanhoe to see Jane the Optometrist. I had somehow managed to destroy the lenses of my computer/reading glasses by smearing them with alcohol solution or hand sanitiser or something that the lenses didn't like. Fortunately her EFTpos machine and other equipment were also unaffected. I now have new glasses on their way. The traffic was also crazy on the way home. The trains were running again but, of course, all the people who had gone into work by car instead of by train in the morning were now going home again by car. Plus there were random intense rain storms.
I got home eventually. And went early to bed.
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