October was a pretty routine month… lots of pickleball, trivia, a lot of appointments. We had two catch up #smaj events, one was a wine tasting evening at Scott’s bowls club, and the other was writing wills, lol. I didn’t take pictures of either.
Scott and I signed up for three successive pickleball tournaments. The first one was in October and we did… fine. We won two games, and lost three games including getting pickled in one. We didn’t make the finals. Some fun was had.
We went to a pen convention with high hopes of seeing cute stationary and picking up some Christmas gifts. In reality we barely saw anything because it was sooooooooooooooooo crowded. And Scott battled through the crowds to finish the stamp rally but they had already run out of prizes, like an hour after it opened. Then we got heavily rained on. Not the most successful outing.
I started knitting a tank top. It’s a 4-ply blend of merino wool, alpaca, and silk. Rosemarie thinks a wool tank top is funny but it’s actually very light feeling!
I finished the neon barf hat. This one is hand-dyed merino wool and it’s super soft and cozy.
My first time cooking with jackfruit. I made a jackfruit bulgogi bibimbap, which would have been vegan if I didn’t plop a fried egg on top haha. It was delicious!
My work held a Halloween Bake Off and this was my entry. It had a brownie base and spiced butter cookie tombstones, with Oreo dirt and coconut grass. I thought it turned out pretty good! I got a lot of compliments but didn’t win any prizes.
I went to a birding outing to Cranbourne Botanic Gardens. My first time there. It is quite an elaborate place.
There were plenty of birds around, including tons and tons of New Holland Honeyeaters, but again I didn’t get any fantastic pictures. Still feeling a bit rusty after not really using my camera much over the last winter.
I like the background and perch of that New Holland Honeyeater picture but why does he only have one eye??! And this galah picture really made me laugh… you want as much foreground as possible in a bird picture, yes? I submitted it to Crap Bird Photography on Facebook and got a pretty good response, hehe.
I do like this picture though.
After a pleasant morning of wandering around looking for birds I headed over to Ash’s house, who moved out to the boonies over a year ago and I hadn’t visited yet. After chatting for a few minutes I looked up how long it would take to get to my pickleball drills session and realised it started half an hour earlier than I thought it did and I only had ten more minutes to visit. OOPS. Well it was enough time for a tour and a cookie. My bad.
We played Critter Kitchen with Nick and Lara. Nick made chilli and Scott made lemon tart. We also played Wayfarers of the South Tigris which was a little bit confusing, and took us most of the game to figure out what was going on, but then was ok, but we’ll probably never play again because there are always new games to try, lol.
We watched the AFL Grand Final in Boronia with Vicky and Brett. It was a good game, extremely even until half time for excitement, and then Scott’s team (Brisbane) dominated the second half and won convincingly.
I got some new ear plugs made and spent the hour waiting time at Bonbeach. Was pleasant until it started pouring.
Post Pickleball Pizza Party. Our usual Friday night pickleball sessions at Ashburton have come to an end, so we had one last dinner out together. Fun group. Hoping they migrate over to the new session at the venue right around the corner from our house.
Good lunch, bad lunch. Diane brought me Kraft Dinner powder!! Happy Katrina. Another day I completely forgot I was cooking a gozleme on the stove until I smelled a lot of smoke… oops… Sad Katrina.
This is probably only interesting to me but whatever. My pickleball coach kept telling me that the handle of my pickleball paddle was too thick for me, but I also needed to put overgrip on it because I am so sweaty. So I took a risk and peeled off the factory grip that it came with, and added overgrip directly over the bare handle…. and it’s ok!! It took a session to get used to it again but now I feel One With My Paddle.
Finished budgie paint by numbers. I kinda want to add a little speech bubble… what should it say? Something short.
I started making a hat with the neon hand-dyed yarn I got at the Wool Show. I had to split the ball into two balls and learn how to do alternating skeins to avoid colour pooling.
Unpictured things:
We also had a games day with Michael and Gina but I guess I took no pictures! Scott made pulled pork for lunch and we played Crokinole and Empires End.
Scott came to pickleball drills sessions a couple times because they were in the evenings during school holidays.
We saw One Battle After Another at the theatre as a #SMAJ activity and I did not like it. Three hours of bad people and someone banging on the top keys of a piano… it gave me a headache.
After years of talking about it, dad finally came to Australia! They spent a week with us in Melbourne, in between visiting Sydney and Cairns. Here are some of the things we got up to, in jumbled order.
We wandered around some alleyways. I took them to the Sofitel toilets, obviously, and we walked all around the CBD.
Hot jam doughnuts at the Queen Vic Market. The market looks so different to the last time I was there!! We found my old workplace, Green Leaf Produce, but it has different owners now and I didn’t recognize anyone working. The signs still look the exact same though.
It would be fun to go to the deli with $200 of someone else’s money and make the most delicious picnic lunch.
Diane found our house too cold. It wasn’t even as bad as when MEP and Paul visited. :D
Perhaps our future visitors should visit in Daylight Savings Time only.
We went to the Healesville Sanctuary. We got to listen to a few rangers talks, and the bird show was fun as well. The echidnas were extremely active.
After the zoo we did a tasting session at Four Pillars. Gin is not my favourite but it was still interesting. We also went to a bakery for lunch, the chocolate shop, and Yarra Valley Dairy, so that was a delicious day overall.
This has got to be one of the most satisfying victories of my entire life.
We had lots of nice family dinners at home.
I made a RTE Middle Eastern roasted lamb shoulder with couscous and garlic sauce and it took 4 hours but it was sooooo good.
We checked out the Brighton Beach boxes. Cute.
Dad’s CPAP machine broke so Classic Dad he took the whole thing apart to try and fix it. We found the problem eventually but it would need a replacement part, so I guess he just didn’t breathe while sleeping after that.
Scott brought us to play bowls. Dad found it interesting. We also brought him to pickleball.
It was nice to have a week off work and spend a quality week with Dad and Diane. There were lots of good chats, good food, relax time, shoulder rubs from Diane (was she just warming up her hands?), and plenty of games of Wizard. I think they found Australia too expensive but hopefully they can visit again somehow.
August was a busy month. Scott worked his first graduations days, and we went to Vietnam for a week, and in between we squeezed in lots of activities and some tasty meals.
We went hot air ballooning, and then went out for breakfast at Warung Coffee. We got a beef rendang toastie and a mie goreng toastie and they were ridiculous and salty and delicious. Yes that is a sandwich full of noodles.
I made Scott come with me to a birding photography outing to Muckleford and Newstead Cemetery. It was a cold but pleasant day. We saw a few new birds, but I didn’t get any particularly great pictures. At least now I know where to come back to try to see the rainbow bee-eaters this summer though.
Australian Pipit
We knew the steam train would be passing through around noon so everyone stopped birdwatching and changed their camera settings and got into position to best photograph the train… and then waited… and waited… and then finally fifteen minutes later it slooooooooooooooooooowly came around the corner. I think you could walk faster than this train haha.
Trivia. It was so loud. We didn’t do well.
Malaysian food all day every day. We went to Pappa Laksa again and had Pappa Special Laksa and Beef Rendang Nasi Lemak. Delicious.
RTE Pork Adobo and cucumber salad. Tasty, and affordable!
Trying out different methods of Brain Off time. Paint by numbers was pretty fun. Good ol’ Kmart.
Tiny bit of progress on the cable knit blanket.
Slow progress on Lauren’s hat. I only manage to get a couple rounds done at a time on my lunch breaks at work. And the pink thing was a project for Lara which I have now abandoned. Knitting it was going way too slowly, and crocheting was turning out way too heavy. I think a sleeve scarf would be a better project for someone with a knitting machine. (Can I buy a knitting machine??)
Unpictured stuff:
We took my whole work team to play pickleball at Pickle Play. Almost everyone came! We had to rent three courts! It was chaotic at first trying to teach them all how to play, but once they got the hang of it it was very fun. And no one hurt themselves. Success.
Scott took Beau to open day at UniMelb. They went to a bunch of science lectures and had KFC and had a good day together.
I’ve still been going to Bodypump pretty regularly. It is kind of stupid but at least it’s something.
And of course, still pickleballing. I usually do one drills session, and two social sessions per week. Still loving it.
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.
