As you may or may not have been aware, Rach and I went to Victoria for five days. We were going to see our old friend, Elissa Shelling, get married to one Mr Andrew Dowling. (Who we hadn't met, but to all accounts is a great bloke.) Here's the rough diary sketch. (I'm sure you can leave a comment and complain if you didn't think there was enough detail.)
Tuesday, Jan 25
Stayed at work till 6.30. Came home, Rach picked me up from the station. We ran some errands, and Rachel suddenly remembered that she'd left eggs boiling on the stove.
Too late. Six nervous Asian neighbours and two firetrucks later, our house was still smelling like smoke. (No flames, however, so you can relax.)
We packed for the trip.
Wednesday, Jan 26
Drove from Sydney to Victoria. It's quite amusing the things country towns will do to get people to stop and have a look. They all have some novelty they try to push on you.
Goulburn - Giant Sheep
Holbrook - Giant Submarine
Gundagai - Dog on Tuckerbox
Place that starts with a "T" - claims to be the halfway point along the Hume Highway (contents: one service station and some crappy looking buildings)
After passing through Albury/Wodonga (which at least has people living there, and thus doesn't need to have a giant novelty item), we drove another half an hour to Yackandandah. Novelty - the movie
Strange Bedfellows with Paul Hogan and Michael Caton was filmed here. Haven't seen SB, so can't say whether this was good for tourism or not.
I met Granny Mac, an elderly lady that Rach used to know from Bourke. She was very glad to see us and showed us all round her garden. (She's a mad keen gardener.) I'd heard on the radio playing in the local bakery that there was going to be a flag-lowering ceremony for Australia Day, so we trotted up to the local park and joined in the fun. Had a barbecue from the local Lions Club, listened to some speeches from politicians we didn't know, and Granny caught up with a 97-year-old man who'd come back for a visit and actually remembered half the people she remembered from when she used to live at Yack in her younger days.
Stayed the night at Granny's place. Suddenly realised why I'm too cowardly to live in the country: the wildlife. The toilet was haunted by both a frog and a big spider and the bathroom was home to a wasp.
Thursday, Jan 27
Hung around Granny's place and did next to nothing. At night, watched her video of
Oliver Twist (review will be posted soon on Matt's Arts page)
Friday, Jan 28
Left Yack, and stopped at Beechworth - Novelty: yummy bakery. (Actually, it
is a yummy bakery. They could start up a chain of them, and I wouldn't complain.)
Stopped at Glenrowan. Novelty - Ned Kelly's last stand took place here. Now, there's not too much to see of the pub where the stand took place, because the Victorian Police, true to form, burned the place to the ground after they captured Ned. Where the pub once stood, there's now only an empty corner block of land with a pony grazing on it.
There's actually not much else there at Glenrowan, so one guy has tried to cash in on that by creating an "Animated Theatre". This consists of several rooms and locations where you have computer-controlled animatronic robots, enacting out various scenes from Ned's last stand. Only catch with this (apart from the $18 price tag) is that the guy has a puerile sense of humour. He's into grossing people out, scaring people, and toilet humour.
So not only do you get to see Ned hang, in the pub where the siege was taking place, there were no less than two urinating robots (one of them a man, and the other a dog) and a vomiting robot, which squired water (meant to be vomit) out of his mouth all over the table where he was sitting. However, I will reiterate, this is the LEAST tacky of Glenrowan's exhibits.
Hit the road and arrived an hour later in Mansfield. No real novelty in Mansfield, so we just had a swim in the motel pool, went to a Swiss-Italian restaurant for dinner (do you like getting your fish served head and eyeballs intact? Rachel objected to my trout's eyeballs.) Watched
True Lies on tele that night. This is a first for me, because I've never seen TL before (review coming soon on Matt's Arts) and it's been a long time since I've watched a movie on television with commercials. It's not winning me over.
Saturday, Jan 29
We quickly figured out that everybody else staying in this motel (the cheapest in town) were Elissa's Jewish relatives. We suspected they were on the Friday. When they came out Saturday morning wearing ties and jackets, we knew they were. We started to follow them up the road to the Shelling farm, which is just outside of town. Rach said, "Try to look unobtrusive." For some reason, my internal dictionary failed me, and I told her that I didn't believe there was such a word as "unobtrusive" and that, frankly, it had come from her internal dictionary which has produced such gems as "stickynose". She stuck to her guns, however.
Wedding took place outside in the Shelling's newly made "bush chapel" (which looked surprisingly like a carport and was conveniently located outside their house). To the sound of
The Man From Snowy River theme, Andrew and groomsmen arrived on a tractor.
To the sound of
Clancy's Theme, also from TMFSR, Elissa and bridesmaids arrived from the back porch of the house. (This just reminds me . . . Mansfield
does have a novelty, and that is that TMFSR was shot near hear and had its premiere in the town cinema. So, while I would normally consider this music a bit on the cliched side to have for a wedding, I couldn't think of a better choice for a Mansfield wedding.)
Service was very nice, and it refrained from raining during the service. As soon as it was over, however, it bucketed down, thus ruining all chances of photographs out in the paddock.
Reception was held at a reception place in town. Very nice, with a lot of Jewish dancing thrown in. The one where they pick the bride and groom up on chairs and carry them around is very nice, but I'm guessing the reception management were getting nervous wondering who pays insurance if either the bride of the groom (especially the groom, because Andrew was fairly tall) clock their head on the roof.
We then headed back to Yack to spend another night with Granny Mac. (Yes, it does rhyme.) At Granny Mac's, Rach pointed out to me in dictionary the word "unobtrusive".
Sunday, Jan 30
Drove home, both feeling tired and blah about getting back to Sydney. We're back here now and still feeling tired and blah. So that's why I'm writing this up. Now I'm going to go get some sleep.
Granny Mac, thanks for putting us up. It was great.
Andrew and Elissa, God bless.
Rachel, I'm sorry. There is such a word as "unobtrusive". You were right and I was . . . wrong.
Everyone else, look after yourselves and I'll talk to you soon, I'm sure.
BROMLEY: 'Allo, 'allo, 'allo . . . Just thought I'd get on 'ere and have a little talk about what's been goin' on in the Hodge household the last week . . .
Frankly, it's been a bit on the borin' side . . . Rachel's been watching "SeaChange" . . . a show with NO BEARS!! . . . I mean, for crying out loud, when are they going to break out the GOOD shows?? Whatever 'appened to "Grizzly Adams", eh? eh?? (I'd do a rendition of "Take Me 'Ome", but I might murder it . . .)
Or Ben the Bear? Yeah . . . that takes me back . . .
Anyway . . . in other news . . . Quark has decided that he is the Phantom of the Opera . . .
QUARK: yeah im the fantom cos i can wear my eer on my face lik a mask. and i can sing songs like nitetime hi tens shar pens each train station. well i think its like that. i dont know what hi tens are . . . is it like hi 5?? i like hi 5 but matt and rach dont watch tv so i never get to . . .
BROMLEY: Yeah, you get the level of culture around 'ere, eh? eh? To top it off, Matt's pulled out his record player and started assaulting our ears with the complete works of Mr Franz Liszt (otherwise known as Mr Wooly Warts) and the complete works of Brahms (otherwise known as Smoking Santa). Growl if you hate pianos!!! GROWL!! GROWL!! GROWL!!!
QUARK: i like peeanos if i get to play stuf on them but i dont because i cant reech the keys...
BROMLEY: It gets worse . . . Matt and Rach have been . . . SOPPY THIS WEEK!!!
QUARK: Yeah!! reely reely soppy!!!
BROMLEY: They've been talking . . . cuddling . . .
QUARK: gross!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BROMLEY: Worst of all . . . Matt's been watching "SeaChange" too!!
QUARK: yeah cos thats gro . . . i lik divr dan tho. he makes me laf
BROMLEY: What?? David "Stubbly As a Bear's Bum" Wenham?? He's a joke, mate!!!
QUARK: yeah but it makes me laf . . .
BROMLEY: Shh . . . Matt and Rach are home . . . we've got to go hide . . . I'll just hit Post . . .
QUARK: byebyebye hehehehehe
Hi, all!
My wonderful, darling, lovely sister spent last night making up several new pages for our website. Some are still "under construction" but some are "open to the public". The first link is to the left of this post and is labelled
How We Met. Check it out! You'll then have the option of reading
The Proposal and viewing a few wedding photos (which are coming).
So, take a look and post a comment...or two! :)
Knocked over the PYC stuff last night and I've got more of a grasp on 2 Peter, so I'm starting to relax a little.
Also, I went for a walk this morning, so my IGM feels pretty good.
Actually, the weekend might not be so bad.
We'll see how it goes. At this stage, I'm planning to see "Phantom of the Opera" again on the weekend. And thus ends a fairly boring blog entry . . .
After just over a year of going for walks in the mornings, I came to the conclusion this morning that I have developed an Internal Guild Mechanism (or IGM). It's like a little voice that waits till I wake up in the morning and then says, "You need to go for a walk."
I can say things like, "But I slept in. I'm tired."
But the voice will just respond with things like, "You'll get fat. You skipped a walk three days ago as well. You'll die from lack of exercise."
On top of that, the voice was also reminding me of all the things I'm doing at the moment:
1) Getting ready for youth group to start up again.
2) Preparing stuff for Presbyterian Youth Committee (PYC)
3) Preparing a sermon for February
4) Thinking about how to get down to Victoria at the end of the month for a wedding.
5) Writing an advertising letter as part of the copywriting course
6) Working through what I want to do with myself this year
7) And, somewhere in there is going to work
On the whole, I didn't really feel like getting out of bed this morning.
But, going on the assumption that you can only do one thing at a time, I picked option 7, and tonight I'll be working on option 2.
But I'm getting tired writing about it, so I think I'll leave it there . . .
How about the rest of you? Are you still in holiday mode or did January try to mug you as well?
King Kong
Matt & I watched this last night. I know it's listed in the Top 100 but why?? It is not a bad way to spend an hour and 40 minutes but it isn't my ideal way to spend that time. The story line is a little bit tacky and all those monsters and dinosaurs consuming people. FUN! :-S Anyway, all in all I'm feeling more "cultured" for having seen it considering it IS on the Top 100 and I have a LONG way to go to saying I have seen them all but I'm not that sold. And also, it weirded me out watching people who I know can't possibly be alive so in otherwords are d-e-a-d! Lol....yes I'm morbid but it is what was running through my head while we watched it.
Wholemeal Spaghetti
Different. We had it tonight with our Chicken Cacciatore and I didn't notice a big difference in flavour. It was slightly more chewy than white spag so I think I could've boiled it a bit longer but it wasn't bad. Al dente really. Worth a look if you like spaghetti bolonaise and need to up your fiber intake. Just remember to boil the living daylights out of it!!! :)
and now the hammock!
Gowings (a male, outdoor, adventure supply store) is on the list of stores that participates in the Super Voucher that Matt gave me for my B'day. So, I have about $50 to spend. I was throwing around the idea of getting the complete Anne of Green Gables set but wasn't sold on that idea. Then I thought of getting some Little Women books but nah that's not that exciting. What's something that I wouldn't normally think of getting but is something I would LOVE?! A HAMMOCK! This is something I've wanted for AGES but haven't gotten coz a) we can't drill holes in walls and don't have the space to hang it on our balcony and b) see reason a. Anyway, I thought I'd check them out. Gowings online doesn't sell free-standing ones so I thought I'd just double check their 3-4 story store in the city and see if they did stock them in store...and they did!! They cost $130 but I worked it out and I can save 3/4 of my "mad" money over the next 2 months and have enough to buy it! I haven't found out delivery charges yet so am trying to do that but I'm pretty sold on this idea so hopefully by the beginning of March I will be the proud owner of a free standing hammock!!!! Good-bye old crummy couch that's sitting on our balcony rotting and HELLO! comfy hammock! :-D Can ya tell I'm a little excited by this idea??
Well, am going to be off. I have a book to read. (The Guardian by Dee Henderson)
