After several reschedulings, we finally got to go hot air ballooning at the beginning of August. It was a special treat for our 15th anniversary.
We got up at 5AM and they drove us to Yarra Bend to inflate the balloons. It was exciting! The giant flames were awesome, and warm!
Ready for lift off!
We ballooned west towards the city, over Fitzroy Gardens, nice and low, for some epic pink sky views of the CBD.
And then we went south over the sports district. You can see the MCG, AAMI Park, Olympic Park, all the tennis stadiums like Rod Laver Arena, and more!
Then we went higher and sort of zig zagged back and forth over Richmond.
They had a GoPro hanging off the side of the balloon. It kind of got in the way of some of my shots, but worth it for this epic balloon selfie!
Then we landed in Fawkner Park. The landing was quick!! There really wasn’t a lot of space. We almost tipped over but the ground team managed to push us back upright. The basket left a huge skid mark.
We helped pack up the balloon which was basically like stuffing the worlds biggest sleeping bag.
It was a really cool experience! We were in the air for about an hour, which felt like enough. It was really peaceful up in the air, and not too cold since you don’t feel the wind, and you get the top of your head warmed up by the flame. Rosemarie asked me if it was like Google Maps in real life, and I think that is pretty accurate. The guide said that Melbourne is the biggest city in the world that still lets them balloon over the city.
Delicious Malaysian food at Pappa Laksa for my birthday. We had Beef Rendang Nasi Lemak, Pappa Special Laksa, Ice Cendol and Teh Tarik. I felt like I was back in Malaysia (besides the price, lol). Now that I’m thinking about this meal again I want to go to the restaurant again.
Happy 15th anniversary! We just went out for a casual lunch after pickleball because the real celebration was coming later (I’ll make another post).
Even though I vowed to drive to the Bendigo Wool Show after our experience last year, Ash convinced me to take the train again, with some modifications. We drove to Southern Cross, made sure to allow more time to find the platform, and crossed our fingers there would be no global technology meltdowns on that particular day. It all worked out, we had a very nice day out in the country and saw lots of cool stuff.
Loved these cute lil amigurumi vegetables!
I bought way more stuff this time haha. The yarn stash is plentiful at the moment. I told Scott to tell me off if I try to buy anything more now. I swear I have plans for all of it!! (Just need to quit my job so I have time to knit all of it…)
Lara invited me to go to the Peninsula Hot Springs with her and her mum. Very glad she suggested we pay a little extra to go on the adults only bathing side because we had a really lovely relaxing day in there, despite the weekend crowds. Our spa lunch was yum as well. We stayed for a long time!! My muscles felt very relaxed after that day.
More Critter Kitchen! It really is a cute and fun game. And pretty unique mechanisms compared to our other games, but not too hard either.
Scott has to get glasses. He hasn’t picked a pair yet. Rosemarie thinks this makes him look like that shooter guy from the last Olympics. I see it.
I had to go into the city to see my allergy doctor, finally a chance to try one of the places on my To Eat map that is only open weekday lunch times. I went to Warkop and had the Beef Brisket Rendang and Pickle sandwich which had way more cheese on it than I was expecting, but was really tasty. I would like to go back to try the Satay Chicken sandwich, but I only need to see the allergy doctor once per year!! Long wait.
Finished these stripey socks for Scott. Self striping yarn is very fun and easy.
The start of a hat for Lauren. The brief was “colourful hat”. Hope he likes it!
I am experimenting with crochet again for a commission project, and while I have managed to get my crojo back, I don’t know if I like how the piece is turning out so I might give up on this project. Need to discuss.
Unpictured stuff:
Sally had a crafternoon at her new apartment and cooked us a FEAST!!! There was so much food, and she made pretty much everything lactose free so I could eat it all! My favourite was the lactose free cheesecake. We are truly spoiled. I knitted Lauren’s hat, and Scott ended up playing Magic with da boys.
I started using my fitness passport to go to the pool near my work to swim and use the hot tub after work. If I use my imagination, I can pretend I’m back at the Peninsula Hot Springs. :D
We went to see Jurassic Park as our July #SMAJ. It was very stupid.
Pat turned 70 and the whole family got together for a succulent Chinese meal in Boronia. It’s always nice to have the family together (only missing Michael and Luca), and I think Pat really liked it because he teared up a bit when he thanked us all for coming.
We had the girls over for a sleepover before Ava and Jess’s flight back to Sydney. We played some games and watched a movie and had snacks. I heard a lot of thumping and bumping coming from the living room over night!!
An elder millenial giving up her skinny jeans (for now). Ava is my style inspiration.
Geared up for an excursion into and onto the roof. A lot of the insulation had been thrown around during the renovations so we spent some time nestling them all back in place. It felt like doing every single hip mobility exercise in a row. I think it’s worked though (along with some of our other draft reduction projects) because this winter hasn’t felt quite so miserable as the last few.
Michael and Gina had us over for an excellent lunch. I felt like we were at a Japanese restaurant! We played Critter Kitchen and Nekojima. Critter Kitchen is really fun! Lucky that we won that from Sonika’s raffle.
Dumpling dinner in the city. Scott was very brave wearing his brand new hoodie, I definitely would have dropped something on myself.
Scott organised for us to do a printmaking class in the city for one of his #SMAJ activities. It was fun, although I felt very rushed, but maybe that is good for me, to not try to perfectionize every activity.
Scott and I did a pickleball tournament at Eastern Indoor Centre and managed to come second! The tournament ran very far behind schedule and we had to wait AGES in between games so it was a weird evening of warming up and then getting cold and having to warm up again. We only finished second in our pool to make it into the semi finals, but played very well in the semis to make it into the final! And then we got smashed in the final, haha.
We had a family birthday dinner at Jemma’s. Myles and I made lots of origami shuriken, which he later combined into a ULTIMATE SHURIKEN. Love it.
Tiny bit of progress on the cable knit blanket.
Unpictured stuff:
So much pickleball. Social sessions, drills, and private lessons. I also did a DUPR session at Eastern Indoor with a random old man partner to try and get used to the courts/balls before the tournament. Good thing I did because I was hitting everything out of bounds that day. Sorry partner.
Scott worked hella overtime running exams. Very long days for him. He has a lot of TOIL.
I went to a Discord meetup. Was nice to see everyone again and meet a few new people as well. The highlight was the apple caramel slice that one person brought. Delicious.
I started doing Bodypump classes at the gym near my house. It’s a bit silly and I spend a lot of time flailing around, but it’s also fun and at least I am doing something. Gym motivation is very low these days.
I voted in the Australian Election! Very different than the Canadian ballot, haha. We went in the afternoon and they did not have any democracy cake left.
After six long months, Scott was finally allowed to play sports again! It was very exciting and he managed to come back to pickleball without immediately hurting himself, something I was very worried about. He is now back into everything, and doing well.
The Friday night pickleball crew has started going out for dinner together afterwards sometimes. We actually went out for dinner twice in May! The first time we had DIY hotpot, and the second time we had Korean fried chicken. Delicious and fun. There’s a whole strip of great cheap Asian restaurants nearby which is very handy. Always great to hang out with new friends in a different location and get to know them a bit better.
We went over to Scott’s friend Kerry’s house for dinner and games. We played Azul with Sophie and Wingspan with the grownups. (She started off helping me but lost interest.)
We went to Sonika’s board game charity event that we went to last year as well. It was a very fun and successful afternoon. We played two new games with Bis, Lara, Jen and Robert: Verdant and Micropolis, which were both simple and strategic games. And then Scott and I did very well in the raffle! We ended up getting three of our tickets pulled, including one very close to the beginning, so I got to pick off the best shelf. I picked a game called Critter Kitchen, which we have only had time to play once so far but seems cute and fun. We also got a dexterity game about cats, and a cooperative game (oops, lol).
I went to a big nuclear medicine conference (in Melbourne). It had been about 12 years since I’ve been to a big national nuc med conference (the last one was in Vancouver). I found this one pretty good and useful… sometimes they can spend too much time talking about experimental PET tracers and theranostic stuff that we will never get to see in real life… but this conference had a lot more common day stuff. I learned some new things and got reminded of some things I had forgotten, and caught up with some old pals from other hospitals. The food was pretty good too!
The craziest thing was one morning I was going up the escalators for an early breakfast lecture, half asleep after going to the sponsored event the night before, and I really recognized the person in front of me, but it wasn’t making sense. I was so confused. I followed him into the session and went to the same table and took a peak at his name tag… aha… it was the doctor I worked with in Vancouver!! I told him who I was and asked him what he was doing here and he said he came to visit his daughter who lives here now/come to the conference! We got to have a really nice catch up and he took a picture of us so he could show it to the team back at VGH and it was all really random and cool!
Because I went to a conference on the weekend I got to have two days off work later on (pretty sweet eh). I used one of them to drive to Brunswick to get tailored jeans at Dejour Jeans, and vegan ice cream. I got two pairs of wide leg jeans and the ice cream was toasted almond caramel flavoured from Luthers Scoops. Delicious.
Do you like the onesie that Scott got me?
Knitting Updates:
I finished the mohair fingerless gloves and then realised that mohair gives me the ick. It doesn’t bother Scott though so he has claimed them.
PS I don’t like how it is really obvious where I’ve caught the floats in the middle of the light squares and blocking didn’t really help get rid of it… any tips?
I also finished the drab sweatshirt! I think it’s my favourite piece of clothing I’ve made so far (although Rosemarie’s sweater is also really nice). I’ve been wearing it a lot, it’s nice and warm.
I started a cable knit blanket. It’s going to be couch sized, so this will be a long running project.
Unpictured stuff:
We had a Mothers Day dinner at Brett’s house with erryone.
We signed up for the Fitness Passport program through my work so now we can go to tons of different gyms. I’ve tried a couple metcon classes and Bodypump, and Scott has been dabbling in pilates.
A busy month, but I mostly only took food pics? Oops.
We went out for gnocchi for my friend Jen’s birthday. Our group took up almost the whole restaurant. I had vegan gnocchi and it was a fun and delicious evening.
One of Scott’s #SMAJs was to take us to the Werribee Open Range Zoo. We walked around a lot and saw lots of stuff, like the elephants, hippos, zebras and gorillas… but we didn’t go on the safari bus! Which is apparently like the best part of the zoo!! Because we didn’t know that it was free!!!
(The key part of SMAJ activities is that Scott is supposed to do all of the planning and research and I just get to show up, so I had not talked about the zoo with anyone ahead of time because I didn’t know we were going.)
So a little bit of a SMAJ fail. We still did have a nice enough time, but maybe didn’t see everything there, and definitely not as close. It did make for some funny conversations at work the next day when they told me that the bus was free. I guess we have to go back some other time.
We went to see the Crash Test Dummies! I thought it was funny when they asked “Who listened to us in the 90s??? Who are the adult children of people that listened to us in the 90s???” (Me.) The dude still has a super low voice. They are one of the few bands that I know most of the words to their songs.
I voted in the Canadian Election. At least I think I did. The envelope has one of those Postage Paid printed stamps… I don’t know how high priority that gets sent through the postal system.
I woke up on a Saturday morning desperate for a cold cut sandwich. So we headed to Saul’s Sandwiches for lunch and had a lil picnic in the sun. It hit the spot.
Damien cooked up an epic Easter lunch for the whole family, with lamb and potatoes, and we all brought salads. Jemma made a delicious carrot cake. I feel spoiled.
Another #SMAJ! This time he took us out to try Burmese food, under recommendation from his new Burmese coworker. We just ordered things that we hadn’t heard of before. Everything we tried was tasty!
We had a very spontaneous afternoon games sess with Michael and Gina. Maybe it’s better to do it this way? Short and sweet and no pressure to clean and prepare everything perfectly. We played Finspan.
KNITTING UPDATES:
I started a pair of fingerless gloves because I wanted to try knitting with mohair, and finished the pair of slightly tweedy ribbed socks. I really like how the mohair looks, and how the socks turned out.
I nearly finished the drab sweatshirt, and then ordered a bunch more wool for a blanket and a cardigan and realised that maybe I am always drab.
Unpictured stuff:
Between Scott and I, approximately one million medical appointments. There was some concern that my heart was going too slowly but turns out everything is fine, I am just healthy.
I went to Hawthorn to watch the Oceania weightlifting comp. Enjoyed how supportive (aka LOUD) the Samoan team is of each other. Nice to catch up with a few of my old weightlifting buddies, but they did not manage to convince me to start weightlifting again.
Scott started working!!!!!!!!! He is enjoying the job and they seem really good and organised!
We planted 50 bulbs of garlic. If they grow properly, you may receive garlic as part of your Christmas gift.
I started going to pickleball drill sessions where we just do drills for two hours. Some might find it boring but it’s been really helpful for me and it’s very physically and mentally challenging. Ana is very strict about technique. I now do 2-3 social sessions a week and one drills session.
We went to watch the movie Sinners which I enjoyed quite a bit! I think it was good that I went in blind as well.
