Rummikub

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DAY 526-527


My week shaped up very differently to Andy’s, it was quiet but a busy one. It started with a Skype call to Mum and Dad on Monday morning it was Mum’s birthday on the Sunday back in England so on our Monday morning it was still Sunday over there.

This week gave me good opportunity to get a few things sorted out such as going through our cases and sorting out our clothes, sorting out some paperwork and various other things that always seem to get put to the bottom of the pile. The one thing I had been doing is making sure I walked for at least half hour to an hour everyday to get some exercise now that we don’t have the swimming pool to rely on and of course that got to cold to swim in recently anyway.

Saturday morning brings another Skype call, I cannot stress enough how much Skype has helped us on our journey and how easy it is to keep in touch with friends and family from around the world.

At 7.30 I have a cup of tea in hand the laptop is booted up and I await my incoming call from some of my girlfriends back in England. Yes they are having another Friday night get together and the opportunity to have a brief catch up with all of them, the only problem is it never seems long enough, with so many conversations to be had and of course they also need to get on and party. As usual they all looked well and exceptionally glamorous, I miss our nights out/in and I don’t have them handy for a night out at the cinema, especially when the new Sex and the City movie is released this winter (summer for some).

I did not think we were going to have a busy weekend as Andy has been struggling with his man flu, and by now I know that I am going down with a cold, but the important thing is that Andy actually really does need a haircut, his “surf dude” look has really come on in recent months but it is time for shearing!

We head into town and on the way in we decide that we should go to the cinema tomorrow night so we have a quick look and see what’s on, deciding on Beneath Hill 60, we book our tickets, as we are regular cinema goers so the great thing is that we are now Dendy Members which means that we only pay $11.00 per ticket and every 4th ticket will be a free one.

Fortunately Andy was fitted in straight away for a haircut, so I sat and watched while an abundance of curls just fell to the floor and before I knew it, I could not see the man I have spent the last 18 months travelling with.

Andy is in need of some more clothes however does not feel up to shopping so we head to Borders and grab a skinny latte each and read some magazines, we then headed to Woolworths for our weekly grocery shop, on the way we work out the menu for the week ahead so we know what to buy when we get there.

Back in England we had become so wasteful with food, our busy lives had a lot to do with it but of course we took everything for granted, and sometimes when it would have been more sensible to eat up left over’s it was just too easy to pop a pizza in the oven or just because you fancied eating something in particular the left overs were overlooked again, thus we became wasteful. One of my friends who has an equally busy life always used to work out her menu on a Sunday, shopped on Sunday afternoon and knew exactly what she was going to cook for the week ahead, so we have adopted this method and so far it seems to be working and for several weeks now, we have not wasted food.

Saturday night we headed down the road to one of Andy’s colleagues, who invited us round to dinner, they are so close we walked. Rob and Sarah and Children made us feel very welcome, along with Robs mum and Dad and Sarah’s mum.
We had an early dinner with lots of chatter and then it was time for a challenge, the Rummikub gauntlet had been thrown down, because there were too many of us we teamed up in pairs for the challenge. Andy and I being very competitive we won two games out of four, however we perhaps had a slightly unfair advantage as we have played many times before.

Time ticked by and after a thoroughly enjoyable evening we wandered back down the road and to bed, it was well after midnight and we were both exhausted.

Sunday morning brings with it a streaming cold for me and for Andy for the first time in a good few days was back on top of the game.

After a few chores and a bacon sandwich for breakfast (well it is Sunday) we headed out to Pierces Forest out past the Cotter Dam, and where we did some of our 4wd training a few weeks ago. It was not long before we were in 4wd and heading up a very bumpy track that curved its way up a steep side of a hill.

We stopped at the top to admire the surrounding views that look toward the city of Canberra, Tuggeranong and of course we can see the huge satellite dishes at Tidbinbilla. We drove on in our exploration trip looking for Wombat clues which is invariably large blocks of square p**, plenty of that but not a wombat in sight.

We explore the dirt roads and identify a couple of walks that would be good to do in the future, neither of us are really up to walking today, however eventually we get back on the bitumen just by the Cotter Dam and head back home for a restful afternoon.

We got ourselves ready for the cinema and did something that I never thought we would do and that was to grab the cool bag with a couple of bottles of beer in it and off we set to the cinema.

The cinema was not so busy tonight, there were plenty of vacant seats in our session, the movie was excellent, and well worth watching, the thing that struck me most was that even as soon as the credits rolled everyone stayed put, except the girl sat near me, was getting ready to stand up and then when she realised that no one was moving sat back in her seat again, everyone in the cinema remained motionless for at least 5 minutes while the credits rolled and then in a blink of an eye the cinema emptied.

Of course for Andy he has to head to work in the morning, fortunately I am not working this week and as my cold is getting its grip into me I am thankful that I don’t have to get up early in the morning.

We also hear this week that Mirjam and Dave, the Dutch couple that we met way back in April last year, on blog day 167, are back at home in the Netherlands, they actually left Australia a few weeks ago and have been in Indonesia and Hong Kong. We shared some of our adventure with them for a couple of days and then we had the luck to meet up with them again while we were in Darwin a couple of months later. We wish them both well for the future and hope that settling down again is not too hard.

We have since heard from Mirjam who tells us that they day after they arrived back European airports had closed down due to the Icelandic volcano ash that was littering the skies, they got back home just in the nick of time.

KJ

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Photos

Rummikub Grand Finals
A nihjt at the Hanleys,eating and playing Rummikub