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We did a lil weekend away on Phillip Island to see the penguins.

We had a traditional bakery lunch of pies and vanilla slices in Cowes. Then we went for a stroll on a short boardwalk in Rhyll to kill time before checking into our Airbnb. We saw wallabies and birds and interesting fish, all within one kilometer!

Then we drove out to the Nobbies. As usual it was very windy. We saw one penguin hiding underneath the stairs. Then it started to rain so we ran back to the car.

We took an alternate route from the Nobbies back to the Penguin Parade that was actually great. A winding dirt road along the coast with sweeping vistas and tons and tons of Cape Barren Geese.

Picture from the Penguin Parade website.

You’re not allowed to take pictures at the Penguin Parade so I don’t have any of my own to share from that part. But it was so cool!!

Paul picked for us to do the Guided Ranger Tour option. When we arrived we got taken to a special room where we got headsets and binoculars, and the ranger started giving us information. Then we slowly walked out to a special viewing area where we watched the penguins come in out of the water, and then we walked back along the Penguin Highway where you can see them up close, all while getting even more information.

I think only 20% of the penguins come out of the water near the general viewing area, and 5% came up right to us, and the other 75% came out near the Penguins Plus grandstand that was near where we were.

I thought we were going to see maybe like 200 penguins but we saw 2000!!! (1999 on the beach plus the one under the stairs at The Nobbies.) There were penguins everywhere. They were very cute. We especially liked watching and listening to them slap slap slap across puddles. They also make lots of weird noises.

If you think we look over-dressed… it was forecasted to rain a lot!! And it was freezing. So we wore a lot of layers. But we got super lucky and it didn’t rain at all! #blessed

Pretty pleased with my sweet new t-shirt as well. It’s a two penguin moon!! :D

Then we had Vietnamese food for dinner in Cowes, watched a bit of footy on TV, and went to bed. The next morning we had a lovely breakfast in Rhyll and then headed back to Melbourne so we could make it back in time for pickleball.

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The flooring got done! You’ll see a bit here, but I think I’ll save the actual pictures for its own post.

Breakfast of champions: Chiko roll (like a giant Australian spring roll) that Scott chucked in his parents air fryer for me before I got up, tropical juice with creatine, magensium and Telfast. Lol.

Sanding and wiping between coats of paint. The worst.

This is just like the cottage photo album… mom often took pictures while Rosemarie or I were actually doing work so it looks like we did everything.

We managed to get the baseboards painted in one weekend and then we were finally able to put our furniture and stuff back to normal. Felt great.

Snooping on the auction next door. It ended up getting passed in but it’s sold now and we have neighbours again.

We hosted Mothers Day brunch at our house. Terrible picture but it was a feast. Especially because we incorrectly thought Brett’s family was coming, so we had tons of extra food. We made cinnamon buns, bacon, a hashbrown egg casserole thing, and fruit.

Then MEP and Paul arrived! They stayed with us off and on in between various side trips to Sydney, Great Ocean Road, and the Rotary conference.

I took a day off work and we went to the new spa on the Mornington Peninsula, and then had Red Gum BBQ for lunch. A pretty good way to spend a wintery Melbourne day.

We went to Philip Island one weekend, which I will make into its own post as well.

Met up with some more distant family for a meal at China Red. I think everyone enjoyed the Melbourne dumpling experience. We got to order on a touch screen!

Of course we played games. We taught them Wingspan, Azul, and Agricola. I had been weary to teach people Agricola for a while but actually it was totally fine and they picked it up quickly.

Post-pickleball tourist stop at the Brighton Beach Boxes. We were not dressed properly. I think a group photo exists, but I do not have it.

I think they had a nice time however I don’t think they liked the temperature of our house, haha.

Finished a pair of Halfsies socks. They work up pretty quickly! However they’re not super comfortable tbh. Inside socks, I guess.

Unpictured stuff:

  • I poisoned myself with a soy milk bubble tea. I think I can add soy milk to the list of things that give me hayfever mouth and face symptoms (along with raw apples, carrots, stone fruits.)
  • Got our 5th covid jabs.

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April mostly revolved around painting our house.

We used to have this big crack in our living room ceiling, and the whole ceiling was sagging down quite a bit. Apparently the drywall was too old and damaged to push back up any more so Scott arranged for some plasterers to come and replace the whole ceiling in the living room area right before Easter. The plan was to buckle down and get tons of painting done over the long weekend after the ceiling was fixed up.

Unfortunately once they pulled the old plaster down they found that the ceiling joists were all coming apart. Some of them were only held on by the last centimeter of nail. Terrifying.

So the plasterers left and we had to find someone to help us push our ceiling back together whilst living in an extremely drafty, dirty, scary house. Thankfully Serge, our bathroom builder, was free on Easter Monday and thankfully the beams were able to bend back into the right place. Finally the plasterers came back and finished the job the following week.

After that whole ceiling debacle it felt like we spent every single spare moment of the rest of the month catching up on painting. I did a lot of the prep and cutting in, Scott did all of the rolling, including the living room ceiling, which took I think 4 coats all together and nearly killed him.

It was not the best time.. but we were trying to finish before the flooring people were booked to come.

Grey hair or paint? Who can tell?

The trim was the worst part. Hopefully it doesn’t all peel off.

We managed to get everything done in time. Well we still have to do the bedrooms. But all the main areas are done.

Still managed to fit in lots of knitting time. So many WIP pictures… but no pictures of the finished pieces. Will work on that.

Takeaway momo meal from Momo Shop in Hughesdale. Everything was delicious!!! We had four different types of momos (brisket, pork, chicken, and mushroom) and a really tasty side salad (sprouts and fermented greens). Would totally order this again.

Finally it was time for the flooring people to come. We moved all the furniture into the garage and bedrooms, and then headed out to Boronia for a few nights at Hotel Jorna.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Still keeping up with the usual stuff like knitting club, pickleball, trivia.
  • We went out for a friends birthday dinner at B’Churrasco, one of those Brazillian restaurants with unlimited meat. It was overwhelming, fun, and pretty delicious. I definitely had enough protein that night.
  • Met up with old work friends for dinner and comedy. We saw Wil Anderson. He talks very fast! We got good value out of our tickets, haha.

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I started going to the local knitting club at the library on Wednesdays. Wednesdays are my day off and the house was full of builders so I was trying to find ways to kill time outside the house. Knitting club is great. I’m not even the youngest one! There is a mix of ages and everyone is extremely nice. It’s also cool to talk to people that are extremely local and know all the stuff that is going on in the neighbourhood.

One of my coworkers moved to England so we had a good bye dinner for her at Pizza Religion. It was good. Funny, no one wanted to try my vegan cheese pizza…

Picture by Tristan

Scott and I went up to Bendigo for a day to go to the Lost Trades Fair with some Discord friends. The fair was huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge!!!! I don’t think we even saw everything. There was blacksmithing, wagon wheel making, wood turning, rocking chair making, weaving, watch making, lots more… all sorts of stuff. It was pretty cool. We didn’t end up buying anything from there, although I was tempted by a forged metal bottle opener.

We did buy stuff from Bendigo Woolen Mills though!! Scott got wool to make his crochet cardigan, which he is nearly finished now, and I got wool to match the speckly orange-red wool I bought during lockdown to make a knitted cardigan some day.

Nearly done, just needed paint.

The bathroom and laundry renos wrapped up. We had to spend a few nights in Boronia while they re-did the toilet, and had some minor dramas with a faulty laundry mixer tap. The painter came. And then done! I’ll post some before and after shots in a separate post.

Scott had a blood donation appointment in the city with free parking during Moomba, and I had just seen a targeted Instagram ad that said there was dairy-free soft serve vendor so I hopped in the car and went with him. I power-walked and people-dodged and got a cup of mango soft serve. It was nice! Especially for dairy-free!

Finished the infuriating socks. 1. They are too small once I stand up. I didn’t realise how much bigger your feet get when you stand up. 2. The colour changes!! I don’t mind the line on the right foot, because that’s just how the pattern works when you knit around the heel and then rejoin to the ankle part. But the left foot line is just because the yarn decided to suddenly change colour with no gradient!! WHY!!! All the other colour changes are nice and gradual. So it really annoys me that there is another harsh line at a different spot, and why did the entire foot part end up being boring grey. Argh.

If anyone is approximately size 7-7.5 womens.. you can have these.

I helped out at a special weightlifting comp. Not sure why I am grinning so much in this picture, maybe because Michael forgot what my name is during introductions and I was extremely uncomfortable.

My job was Loaders Assistant. Or World’s Laziest Loader. Basically George was extremely stressed out about being able to load fast enough (they were trying to make it a fast-paced competition) and wanted me to use the app and tell them what plates they were going to have to put on next and double check that they were doing everything right. I think I was helpful.

It was cool to see some high quality international lifting from up close. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone lift over 200kg in real life before. And the Samoan team did a fun screamy shouty war dance thingy that was awesome! So many abs!!

Bis had us over for wood-fire pizza and relaxed games. I made myself a mostly cheeseless pizza (I did put a bit of parmesan) and got taught how to cook it myself. Yum!! My second one was a bit more burnt. We played a bit of Project L, a simple puzzle-y type game.

Couple more tasty meals. Swedish meatballs and quick pickle cucumber. And miso glazed roasted eggplant, with soba and smashed cucumber from Recipe Tin Eats cookbook.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Pickleball pretty much every Sunday. I am improving!!
  • Holiday planning with MEP and Paul. They are coming in May. Love having visitors!!
  • We got our car back, with a fresh new radiator and bumper.
  • We picked out flooring for the house. Next we paint, then get the floors done. Then done!

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The main event in February was the start of our renovations. I thought it was very interesting to see the guts of our house. Note the complete lack of insulation!

We were pretty lucky to only have a few hiccups. The biggest one was that after they laid the new tile in the toilet I realised I hated it. To me it looked dirty and water stained… except it wasn’t. After a lot of anguish we decided to make them rip it up and switch it for a different tile. Thankfully they had only tiled that small section, the tile store took the ugly tile back (minus a %), the designer helped me pick a better one, and Serge didn’t end up charging us anything extra. They did end up accidentally breaking the new toilet while taking it back up because it had been so well silicon’d to the floor, so I had to buy another base… but ah well. I am muuuuuch happier with the new tile and am definitely glad we decided to switch it.

Multi-purpose bumper plates.

We had some success in the garden this summer. Lots of roma tomatoes, with less butt-rot than previous years. We also got a lot more Chinese eggplants than before, however they were quite small. Lebanese cucumber grew pretty well, and salad greens were all fine too. We did not have much success with zucchini this year and we don’t know why.

February #SMAJ was dinner at Parcs, a restaurant that ferments lots of stuff and makes their food out of scraps. It was pretty nice.

I went out for Filipino food with some Discord friends and was suuuper excited to order taho after having such delicious taho at Serai last year. However I should have not gone in with such high expectations because this one wasn’t nearly as good. Sigh. The fancy one made the tofu into a soft serve consistency which had great temperature contrast with the hot tapioca pearls. The cheaper (probably more typical!) one just had blobs of plain silken tofu and the whole thing was warm and kind of bland.

Recipe Tin Eats quick ramen from her cookbook, with marinated eggs. Was kinda proud of this meal!

Sock progress. These socks ended up making me quite angry. Will post the finished project later.

Unpictured stuff:

  • We finally got to have our car fixed after The Wombat Incident. The timing was terrible. We had to stay in an Airbnb for a few days because at one point we had no toilet, no car, and no train.
  • Thankfully I have a great coworker who ended up lending us his car that he wasn’t using so we could get around a bit again.
  • We’re not having great success negotiating our new EBA at work so we’ve had a few strikes. It was kind of fun getting people to honk their horns in support although I’m not really sure it accomplished anything.
  • Jess came to Melbourne for her 40th birthday. She had a ladies dinner out in the hills that was nice.. I shoulda got more dressed up.
  • Still training. Still trying to help with Phoenix… with the committee and helping out with competitions.