pre-birthday birthday adventures

*sigh*

What a day!

I'm tired, sore, sunburned, fed, and much more contented than I was first thing this morning...

Ma came down not long after I finished my Monday Montage post, along with the seemingly 400 metric tons of presents...

Although it kind of looks like I got spoiled all to hell... okay, I kinda DID get spoiled all to hell... but the DVD's are things that Ma has been putting away since before Christmas in some cases (the Futurama ones in particular)... and every time we've been somewhere (okay, Target mostly) and there's been DVD's on special we usually walk away with something...

That being said, there are actually MORE here in my birthday haul than the pile of DVD's I got at Christmas... 27 actual physical cases, 20 "titles" if you count Futurama as one title...

So what exactly did I get... well...

• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
• Blade II
• Clueless
• Daredevil
• Death Becomes Her
• Die Another Day
• Empire Records
• Footloose
• Futurama, Seasons 2 & 4
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• Joe's Apartment
• Lifeboat
• Plunkett & Macleane
• Robin Hood: Men in Tights
• Spy Kids
• Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
• Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
• Starship Troopers
• The Pirate Movie

And then there are the books... the Terry Pratchett ones I remembered, and Memoirs of a Geisha (which I'm dying to read again after seeing the movie), but I'd forgotten about the other two...

• The Light Fantastic and Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
• Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha
• Kate Remembered by A. Scott Berg
• and Seven Ancient Wonders from Matthew Reilly (the American version is called 7 Deadly Wonders for some unknown reason)

Plus socks... I have no idea why... but you can never have too many pairs of plain white athletic socks from Target... especially since I keep putting holes in the ones I do have...

After the orgy of unwrapping, Ma and I did our world famous double-act, entitled "Where Are We Going To Go And Eat?".... *rolls eyes at us*

Like I said this morning, I had no freakin idea where I wanted to go or even what type of food I was in the mood for or anything... other than a few vague ideas that I didn't want to do the same things that we'd done in other years... and knowing what you don't want is sometimes half the battle... after some collective song and dance between the two of us, we decided to just drive down to Glenelg (again), to at least give us a place to start.

We did pretty well most of the way down there, then suddenly, for no apparent reason there was a million billion cars... which didn't make sense to either of us... but the further down the road we managed to get, the more it dawned on us... obviously the Adelaide Cup Carnival (hence the reason for today being a public holiday) was being run, not at Victoria Park Racecourse on the other side of the city, but Morphettville Racecourse, right smack bang next to Anzac Highway, our route from my place to Glenelg... which meant big traffic... fortunately there were enough pretty or at least vaguely interesting people wandering along the road on their way to the Racecourse to keep us amused until we got past the worst of it.

One of the down sides of today being a public holiday, and the large chain stores in town not being open was that everyone took off for places that did have a lot of shops that were open... like Glenelg... it was absolute chaos down there... the main redeeming feature of which was beach = wet, half naked guys in boardshorts and floppy hair...

We only got an hour long carpark, so wandered around for an hour looking at places we might have considered going to eat at (the one place that I was thinking about, the organic pizza place, who's name escapes me, wasn't actually open), but in the end we used up the hour and decided that rather than driving around trying to find another park, we should take off for places unknown and eat there...

In the end, we went down to Brighton (since we always go up the coast from Glenelg, we decided this time to go down the coast)... most recently visited for the Camera Club Beach Shoot... which turned out to be a good idea. We wandered down Jetty Road at Brighton, checking out all the shops and the restaurants, and ended up settling for the cute and funky little cafe place right down at the very end (or start... it was the furthest point away from the beach), called Edge.

Edge had what Lownee and I would have classed as a perfect set up back in our Rundle Street Lunch Days... cute and funky decor, interesting and tasty sounding menu items and waiting staff that were as cute as all hell... with no actual exceptions (well, except maybe the girl... but she was cute... you know, for a girl...)

Which was good, because collectively they were as dumb as a box of rubber hammers...

But they looked terribly stylish doing it...

And I have to officially apologise to the waiter boy with the board shorts and the yellow Livestrong bracelet... dude, I'm so very sorry, when we first came into the store and I saw you behind the counter, I thought you were a lesbian... I have no idea why, I just did... when I got a proper look at you, you could not have looked LESS like a lesbian... again... very sorry...

The food turned out to be quite nice, not mindblowing, but nice...

I had this Tuna Cake/Patty thing, which was quite nice, even if it tasted more of potato than it did of tuna, and Ma had this thing with a tomato sauce (the kind of you have on pasta... not the ketchup kind) and eggplant... which was actually tastier than mine, mostly due to the tomato sauce. I had intended to take a shot of our lunches before we started them, but of course, I forgot until we were both like halfway through...

You can see the remaining bits of lettuce on my plate in the bottom of the photo up there... I sneaked the shot after I had finished eating... and I also tried to sneak a shot of the absolutely STUNNING guy behind the counter who took our order... but the little bugger wouldn't stand still long enough.

As we left, I think the couple sitting by the door had seen me taking photos because they both gave me the strangest look...

After wandering back down Jetty Road, we got back in the car and just drove... and drove... and drove... and drove...

Because we never tend to do anything "down south" it was all kind of new to the pair of us, so we ended up driving all the way down to Port Noarlunga... which is a pretty fair way out... it wasn't a completely unpleasant drive though, and I did spot a couple of places that I may need to go back with a camera, either just to shoot random things, or else as a location for a shoot with a model...

On the way back towards Glenelg we decided to stop off again and go to Bracegirdle's House of Fine Chocolate (and I was sure that Bracegirdle was the name of a Hobbit family... turns out I was right... scary). Because they were kind of packed when we got there we went down to the other lolly shop with has all the import brands from England and America, and Ma bought me a big bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups... the "miniature" kind... mmmmmm Reeses...

Anyway, we came back to Bracegirdle's and were going to have some of their melted chocolate product but there was a wait of ten minutes and by that time we were already bored and over it without waiting another ten minutes, so we gave up the idea of eating in and got a few of their different flavoured truffley-chocolates (well, Ma did... I just got a little block of their plain chocolate to try) and we also got two marshmallow dippers... marshmallows dipped into their melted chocolate...

It was wrong in 153 languages... but sooooooo nice... mmmmm

Then we came back here and watched The Pirate Movie... god, it's so very 1982... but holy crap... Christopher Atkins is just adorable in every single scene... particularly the itty bitty little pirate loincloth modeled, I think from his Blue Lagoon loincloth).

On the downside, I now have a sunburned arm from hanging it out the window during the drive... on the upside it was a kickass pre-Birthday Birthday...

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