the peace of adelaide
~~~~~~UPDATED~~~~~~

i made it home...just. i almost had a missing the flight experience not unlike the last time i was in melbourne but i made it and had time to buy a cherry ripe before boarding.

bonus

but lets start from the beginning, shall we?

at 1:30 i was waiting at the airport still because my flight had been delayed. this gave matt the opportunity to spy a group of people holding guitars. he decided they might well be the shins and approached them. they were actually the waifs but they're still a cool band, so what the hey! i'll just take this time to point out that the girls of the band werent actually hanging around at the time which helped the confusion.
after i boarded the plane and sat down a flipped through the inflight magazine, found out that you dont get snacks on virgin blue flights, not even a glass of water, and promptly fell asleep

while i was doing this, matt was on his way out of the airport where he sees a group of guys with a whole heap of luggage. they have a cool crocodile game where you take turns pushing the teeth down in its mouth until it snaps on your fingers.

it was the shins

and eli played the game with them and matt spoke to them and then got his name on the door, as well as marcs. i need to point out here that matt had spent the earlier part of the week running around trying to get shins tickets. even begging the venue and calling the db prize frenzy line over and over, so bumping into them was a pretty amazing thing to happen to say the least.

i got to melbourne, grabbed my bag, hopped a skybus, hopped a station bus, hopped a tram and kept my eyes open for theresa's street. then i saw it. the huge...immense...fantastical blue and yellowness that is the ikea sign.
can you believe it? you can see ikea from the end of theresas street. wow.
so i hopped it to ikea and wandered around and orgasmed all over the place. it was pretty messy but fun and they're so organised over there they just cleaned it right up. i evn had a red fizzy drink and a muffin at the cafe. oooh. i bought a foldy bear and a notebook for sharyns birthday. i messaged matt and told him we're selling all our furniture, hiring a truck and bringing it back from ikea full.
so then i wandered back to theresas house, inroduced myself to the cat, and settled down on the couch to play nature park and wait for theresa.

she left me a lovely note, and i'd scan it for you but it's in the bag that i left with her but thats a part of the story that comes at the end, so lets move on.

she walked in looking absolutely beautiful and we hugged and squealed like the little piggies we are, got changed and went down the street for some vietnamese dinner. really really yummy. i had chicken with cashews and vegetables, and theresa had beef with garlic and we shared it all and it was lovely. we went to the terminal (the termy) afterwards for a couple of beers, (yes i had beers) and a boy said i looked like a lolly and asked if i smelled like a lolly too. so i let him smell me. he said it wasnt like a lolly, but it was still nice. we have the feeling he was once a very clever boy and somewhere along the way he lost his brain and started wearing his baseball cap a bit crooked and hanging out in bars too much. we ended up playing pool with him and then leaving.

after a big long chat and some more cuddles we retired for the night. i got to sleep with vladimir the puss cat. he is so lovely. even when i smacked him in the face and kicked him in the morning he just laid there and kept sleeping. in the morning theresa went for a run and told me to hop in her bed to keep sleeping. i messaged matt:

im in theresas bed and last night i slept with a boy called vladimir...ok, theresas out and vlad's a cat

he rang back later in the day

'who's this vlad???'
'he's a cat'
'so you said, who is he??'
'he's a cat. like a furry meowing cat'
'...oh...i thought cat was some word you'd picked up for a hot guy or something'

silly boy

theresa had to work so we walked down to bridge road and had a coffee at sass

(sass cafe 142 Bridge Road 9428 0344
Espresso delecatessen. Breakfast, Lunch. Courtyard. Eat In or Take Away. Outside dining . Open 7 days)

and met the lovely ( or so i thought at the time, and still do...explanation later) chris. he charmed us and then theresa went to work and i went along bridge road.

i spent 4 hours shopping on bridge road. i only bought a few things but the fact that i could walk around by myself and look at the things that i wanted and try things on without feeling like i needed to rush, and without having to worry about a child opening the changeroom while im naked....wow...it was amazing. i throughly reccommend it.

i met up with theresa and we went home to get ready to go out. we were invited to a birthday party at a turkish restaurant. it was a really nice atmosphere there, a pokey little place with worn wooden stairs and richly carpetted rooms. and we had a belly dancer! the food was a rip off tho and the baklava! it was not baklava. you dont want to mess with me and baklava cos baby, i know baklava and this wasnt it.
we left the turkish place and decided we needed to go dancing, so we did. first we went to polly. here is a review i found of polly from miettas

Polly

03 9417 0880, Fitzroy 3065

Brunswick St; Open: Tues - Sat 5pm- 1am, Sun 4pm - 11pm, Closed: Mons, Most Public Holidays; Licensed; Seats Inside 57

Review
Set right in the middle of Melbourne's grunge hub, this is a bar for adults. Dimly lit, its windows dressed in swags of velvet, and sunk deep into softness of a velveteen armchair, its a great place for a drink with that special friend or a whole group of them. The low hum of conversation is fuelled by an extensive cocktail menu and a wine list that presents a mostly Victorian selection. There are bar snacks available and hand rolled cigars, if the mood takes you.

it was nice in there but i was in the mood for dancing and that we did! we hot footed it to the night cat and daaaaaanced. theresas version of hot footing it was bending over, lifting up her skirt and showing us how her stockings had fallen down her and were exposing her bum...in a g string...oh how we laughed. so much so that i have no idea how we stayed up right. other than looking at theresas bum, (which we did a lot cos she walked like that for ages AND cos its a very nice one), we made hannah walk in front of us most of the way cos we decided she has the best arse we'd seen. and could we stop touching it? no, no we couldnt.

here is a review of the night cat, form the same place as before

The Night Cat

03 9417 0090, Fitzroy 3065

Johnson St; Open: Thur-Sun 8pm-1am, Closed: Some Public Holidays; Licensed; Seats Inside 220

Review
A huge room that packs them in almost every night at the later end of the week, even Sunday. Each evening a different rythmn, many choose their favourite and keep coming back. Its always dance music however in the fashion that means you have to touch the person you dance with like salsa, or jazz sometimes it get pretty hot on the dance floor. Drinks are at realistic prices and expect a door charge later in the evening.

Other published opinions
The Age, A2, 29/11/03, Melinda Houston,'Still funky after all these years, this spacious venue is a great room for a big group and has live local music on

this place ruled. i cant remember the name of teh band playing but it was funky as and we danced and danced and danced. since we were drunk and the floor was black and white checkered we had to stick to the black. we had fun.

after a long long walk to some other place, we found out there was a cover charge and decided to go home. hannah slept over too and we had lots of giggles then fell asleep

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thats all i can do for one night, thats long enough as it is. when i get my camera back from theresa i'll update with some pics, but i'll keep the writing going tomorrow...its bed time now

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it's now friday. matts gone to a gig, the boys are watching rugrats go wild, and im finally able to sit here for longer than three seconds and continue the tale of my weekend away.

so the night cat. we ran inside and made our way to the bar via the black squares. can i just say how hot we all looked saturday night? we looked hot. anyway, we're hopping through the place and i hop all the way to the bar and end up straddling the corners of two black squares and pressed up against a cute looking boy. hello! i then spin around and land with my feet back on the black squares, look back over my shoulder and exclaim, 'it's like hopscotch!' looking back now i think that this behaviour may have had something to do with the fact that when i later returned, more drunk, to ask the boy if he could pretty please buy me a coke, he said no. silly boy. i even offered him a dance in return, but no. thats ok, i was dancing with theresa and hans and we were having fun.

on sunday we got up and went down bridge road for coffee at chris' cafe again. more scrambled eggs, bacon and spinach on rye. yummo. chris says he was thinking of going to the st kilda festival and we all say, what a coincidence, so are we!
he and theresa secide to meet up later and go together and hannah, krystal and i tram our way to st kilda.

the st kilda festival is the biggest outdoor music festival in the southern hemisphere. acording to some guy who was emcing the event, there were 400 000 people there, thats one in ten people of victoria. so theres no surprise i didnt even catch a glimpse of xavier rudd. i did get to see hot live and dance dance dance in the earthcore cage. all thoder dj beats werent the sort of music i would normally listen to, or by on cd, but it was cool and fun to dance to.

after a long walk/tram home, hannah and i find theresa at home with chris and its time for me to toddle off to bed, but not before chris serenades me with ozzy osbourne, perfomed on acoustic guitar, in an irish accent. it was a weekend of firsts, let me tell you.

i was woken later in the night by kissing sounds but managed to get back to sleep. i recall the words 'she'd kill me' from theresa. i had a little giggle to myself and slept again.

in the morning...well, monday was the day when it all turned a little bit shit. i think we were a tad grumpy from being sleepy, but chris just wouldnt go away. it would have been ok, i think if we hadnt started bitching about it, but theresa and i are girls that need there space and having a boy sleep over and then spend the LAST DAY OF YOUR HOLIDAY with you was a little claustrophobic.
we had breakfast again, walked down bridge road to see hannah, walked back up, escaped chris and walked home. we detoured to the pub for a coke where we discussed ditching chris and why we felt obliged to hang out with him for the day. we decided not to and theresa called him and told him i wanted to go to ikea and he started saying all this crap about why dont i just go to kmart. yeah, that was about when i really got pissed off at him. i managed to keep it in until we got to the beer garden and he had a go at me for not drinking beer.

'im sorry chris, if you would like to buy me a baileys please feel free and go ahead, if not, shut up and leave me alone'

yeah, i felt better after that.

we didnt go to ijea but we did talk about it and how great it is when we got back to the beer garden. on and on we went. they shut up pretty quickly.

it was getting late and i almost missed my tram, managed to leave a bag with theresa and got off at the wrong tram stop, but i made it in the end.

monday was valentines day and matt and i got each other the exact same thing. yep. last valentines we went to see big fish. i dont know what happened. at the end we both just sat there, had a cry and hugged. something happened at the end of that movie. i guess it was enough to make us both remember cos when i got home on monday night and saw the dvd shaped parcel on the coffee table i came right out and said 'i know what it is!' we had both gotten each other a copy of big fish. i dont know whether or not to keep hold of them both as a memory of us actually thinking the same thing for once. i doubt it'll happen again for a while.