What happened to eating in to save money?

Ok, this is not really very significant, but I've just realised that we didn't eat one single meal at home over the weekend. Not one. Not even a breakfast. (I don't think the cup of tea before yoga on Saturday morning counts, right?) Is that bad? I'm trying hard to budget after the overseas cash splash that was my four weeks in Turkey, but my money disappears on food and drinks without me even realising it! Friday night - Korean, Saturday lunch - Japanese, Saturday dinner - pizza, Sunday brunch - non cuisine specific breakfast food, Sunday dinner - Szechwan. And I think we're going out for Pho for dinner tonight. Ai.
On the upside, all this food has been incredibly tasty and I enjoyed every last bite (except for maybe the slightly odd corn tea at KimChi Grandma, but that was a sip rather than a bite) so I guess it's not all bad.
Maybe I should copy Emily and do a restaurant review. Hmm...

Oh, BTW, I'm back, if that wasn't already obvious. Will post pics of the epic adventure sometime soon :-)

How's this for an awesome pic?!

Everyone, I'd like you to meet my Dad. All say: "Hello, John!"


He's really a very clever fellow. I guess that's where I get it from :-P

Halloween!

So, I realise that it's ridiculously late for a Halloween party post, but I can't be bothered writing an update, so I thought I would share these terribly flattering pics:

Kati in Wonderland, Star Fleet officer Steve, TinkerMolly:

Erm...

I have no idea what we're doing:

Party People! (check out my competition for prettiest fairy :-P )

That is all. I'm off to take some more Codral. See you later!

Moonlight Cinema

Last weekend I made the annual Moonlight Cinema trip, just before the Melbourne season ended. It was my first Melbourne Moonlight experience, and I have to say, on the whole Melbourne was more picturesque and far less crowded than Adelaide. But Melbourne had bats that totally freaked me out. *shudder*

Anyway, Shelly and I walked to the Botanical Gardens from work

and scored an awesome possie:

Shelly reclined with rose in plastic cup:

We ate,


we drank,

(Shelly took a thousand random photos of me)

And then we watched Marie Antoinette.
I loved it, Shelly hated it.
I'd be interested to see what other people think. It seems to have appealed to girly and / or arty girls, but not to a single straight guy. I thought it was just gorgeous. It's very much character driven and visually amazing. It's not a documentary, or a film about the French Revolution (although it shows the Royal's perspective) so if that's what you want I recommend you go to see Le Miserables or buy a BBC doco. If you want a totally lavish film with amazing costume and set and characters you empathise with despite their flaws, then I think you'll be a fan.
I'm buying the DVD :o)

Girls just wanna have fu-un!

Here's the re-cap:

I flew back to Adelaide for the weekend. Many fun things happened, including going out for dinner on Gouger st followed by cocktails at Lotus with the girls. It was an awesome night. I am still paying for it.

Here are some photographic highlights:

Emily thought that me trying to operate my new lipgloss was the funniest thing she had ever laid eyes on:

and after a minute I saw the funny side too:

Elli and Margie managed to keep it together:

But it was really so funny they ended up breaking down in giggles too:

The end :o)

Max Brenner

Since I moved to Melbourne people have been telling me about this place called Max Brenner, a chocolate restaurant. A chocolate restaurant. A whole restaurant devoted to chocolate. I'm quite surprised it's taken me this long to check it out.
So, on Saturday night I had my first expedition to Max Brenner.

What do you do while you're waiting for your chocolate goodies? Take photos, of course!
Tom had Jamaican (I think...) dark choclate with orange peel. Mmm mmm. This pic wasn't even posed!

But this one sure was

Belgian waffles with strawberries and Trinidad white hot chocolate. Arm num num.

So tasty. So decadent. SO totally unnecessary. I am a total Max Brenner fan. Must go back soon :o)  

I heart yoga

So, I went to my first formal yoga class in over 12 months on Saturday morning.
It was so, so good.
It's a school of yoga I hadn't heard much about before, called Yoga In Daily Life. I checked out their website and thought it seemed interesting and definitely worth a try. I nearly piked at the last minute when I started thinking: I won't be as flexible as I was, and I don't want to be the new person in the class, which is just dumb, because how will I ever start anything if I'm not the new person occasionally, and the clear way to develop flexibility again is going back to yoga of course!
So I went.
And I am so, so glad.
The teacher for that day was a lady of about 40 or so with steely grey hair in a long plait, wearing embroidered fisherman pants, which was a good sign (fisherman pants seem to be strange indicator of whether I will get along with someone). The class space was gorgeous! We were on the first floor of a converted shop/house with big windows along the north facing wall letting beautiful morning light fall in on us *sigh* and birds in the trees outside singing away (I swear I am not making this up). And that's all before the actual class! Which was amazing! So perfectly, exactly what I needed. Some new poses that I enjoyed learning, and some old favourites that were good to gauge where my standard has dropped to. I was happily surprised to find I am still quite flexible. My balance is completely shocking tho. I could barely manage a decent tree pose. And forget shutting my eyes. But now I have something to work towards, which is great! I really, really pushed myself and pulled focus from somewhere I thought I had lost and found lots of long forgotten muscles. And it felt so good. So totally, wonderfully fantastic.
There is nothing quite like rediscovering something you once loved but drifted away from, only to find you love it just as much as before, if not a little more this time around :-)
Happy, happy, happy. I will definitely be going back next Saturday morning :-)