Katiefoolery

First, before I get to the true point of this post, I would like to glare meaningfully at Vista.

*does so*

I do not like its overwhelming need to cache fail. Yes, you did decide to take away my wireless internet access for five minutes (for no good reason, I'd like to add). Yes, I was logged into msn at the time. But hey, the internet came back, so you can stop living in the past and LET ME LOG BACK IN.

Now that this unpleasantness is behind us, let's move on.

As promised, I abandoned the world of the internet for Canberra from the twenty-ninth of December until the fourth of January. 'Twas splendid. I met rigel_7 and emerald85 at Melbourne airport at an insanely early hour of the morning. After very little sleep, I might add. The bad thing about constantly staying up 'til one and two am is that it can be difficult to feel sleepy at midnight... even when you know you should really get more than five hours' sleep before going away.

And we were away on a jet plane to Canberra, where we were met by Dr. crazedturkey and got to play tetris with our luggage and her car boot again. Splendid fun! We headed off to ambush flippyfrog at her work and then meet the_kaytinator and bathmat for pancakes at Pancake Parlour. To which restaurant we are apparently not to return, according to the good bathmat. And rightly so, too, considering they simultaneously put up their prices and reduced their serving sizes.

But huzzah, for the LorFers were together again for the first time in a year! Much fun was had, along with many card games and so much cheating. So very much. You'd think flippyfrog would learn, but no. We could deal her as many cards as we liked for uno and she would never count them.

Flit: *fanning out cards* How many cards are we meant to have?
Me: *looking completely innocent, despite having dealt at least eleven cards to the Flitness* How many do you have?
Rigel: *attempting to stifle laughter*

Later...

Flit: *fans out eleven cards again, completely oblivious*

We quickly learnt never to leave the room whilst cards were being dealt, lest you end up with all of your good cards mysterioulsy kidnapped, leaving you with a hand full of rubbish.

Here, have some photographic proof that I was in Canberra:

That would be me in the bright pink, for some reason. I'm well and truly over my pink phase... and yet I'm still wearing the cursed colour. Only the one time, I swear!

(There's a rigel_7 in black next to me and in the front are emerald85, the_kaytinator, bathmat and flippfrog.)

ETA: Further proof! This one comes with a bonus parliament house in the background, just to prove it really was Canberra.



Many of us boarded the failboat in Canberra. Barely ten minutes would go by without a chorus of "FAILBOAT!" being directed at an unfortunate one of us. Often accompanied by singing. Actually, a great deal of things are accompanied by singing when we're together.

The main reason we were there was for the new years eve party, of course, since flippyfrog and emerald85 are insisting on leaving us in the belief that Europe will be more interesting than hanging around here. Poor, deluded ones. And the good crazedturkey is off to be a doctor in the middle of nowhere on top of that... so we had to say goodbye to them. It was a splendid party, accompanied by sneezing dogs and lots of beetles.

Random scene:
All: Waaah, it's only ten o' clock!
All LorFers except the good doctor: *dance like loons*
Em: *squishes a beetle while in bare feet*
All: *continue to dance like loons... whilst keeping a look-out for beetles*
Five minutes: *pass*
Time: *is now half past eleven*
Me: Well that went too quickly.

And the seven days went just as quickly. It seemed like we'd only just arrived and all of a sudden we were packing up and rigel_7 was kneeling bodily on her suitcase to squish it shut again. Fun was had by all, many museums and interesting places were visited and far too much time was spent crawling in and out of crazedturkey's adorable little car. You couldn't ask for more, really.

I've been thinking about it today, for some reason, and I've come to the conclusion that I'd like to go on a holiday.  Visits to my parents' place in Beechworth are all very nice, but usually I'm either not with my Timothy or we just sit around, doing nothing.  And while doing nothing certainly has its appeal, I'd like to do nothing somewhere different, just for once.

Apart from the occasional stay in Beechworth, I haven't been on a holiday since I was five.  Way back then, my family used to go on an annual holiday to Port Fairy, on the coastline of Victoria.  It would take us hours to drive there: after all, we were driving from the far eastern suburbs of Melbourne to the west side of the coast, as you can see from the map below.


The red arrow is handily pointing at where you will find Port Fairy, should you be interested in seeking it out.  It's a very popular little town, seeing as it's historical and on the beach.  We used to stay in a little two storey unit with a toilet whose light switch automatically turned on a fan as well.  I hated the sound of that fan and as a result, I dreaded going to the loo in the middle of the night.  But I was little, so we'll overlook this example of silliness.

The last time we went to Port Fairy, I remember waking up after the first night with the sudden fear that the holiday was already over.  I was delighted to be told not to be silly, the holiday had only just begun.

But, as I said, it was the last holiday I've been on.  My mum had this bizarre idea that school camps counted as holidays.  I don't know where she got the idea that spending two nights and three days with people your age, most of whom you don't like, not to mention teachers who made sure we did activities and exercises and had very little actual fun counted as a holiday, but there you are.

There was also the trip to Canberra when I was studying, which might be described as a holiday if you ignore the fact that we spent half of the time on a bus getting there and back again and spent the rest of the time traipsing through museums and libraries.  On the up side, I won fourteen dollars on the way home in the Melbourne Cup sweep.  On the down side, I wouldn't have said my Timothy and I had spent any real amount of time doing nothing together.

I don't want a long holiday - a weekend would do me.  It'd be lovely just to go away; to stay in a motel and go out for all of our meals.  It would be just lovely to forget about responsibilities and the stupid water leak from our mains in the front yard.  We'd just drive away, plonk ourselves down somewhere and relax, preferably by the seaside.  I think that'd be lovely.