montage monday: eateries

Today's Monday Montage might not be the most artistic or creative so far, but it was inspired by Eddy... after I did the postcode post last week he complained because I had 80 different "food outlets" in my postcode, whereas he only had a more modest 56 (which was still way above the national average of 23 and a bit).

So yesterday I took a wander up and down O'Connell Street in North Adelaide and took snaps of 25 of those 80 eateries... 7 Italian-style cafes, 3 Thai restaurants, 3 other miscellaneous Asian food outlets, 3 sandwich shops, 3 random establishments with delusions of grandeur, 2 pubs that also serve meals, 2 Indian restaurants, 1 burger joint... and a pink pig...

And I've dined, eaten or purchased food from 15 out of those 25...

So there you go Eddy... take your pick...

One thing I forgot to mention in yesterday's secondhand book post, I was so impressed by the bookcases at the first place I went, I actually asked the woman where she'd gotten them from. Turns out she had had them custom made, but she did give me the guy's name. Whether or not I ever use it remains to be seen, but at least I have it.

Going back in time to Friday briefly... I mentioned last Monday that I had been invited for drinks with my former workmates... and that I probably wasn't going to go... and, not surprisingly, I didn't... I made that decision first thing Friday morning (although my mind was already made up on Monday more or less), and then promptly forgot about it... which is unusual... because normally I would be very aware of the time an event was starting, even though I hadn't planned to be there... probably my inner guilt fairy whispering in my ear... but on Friday, nothing... the guilt fairy took a holiday and I totally forgot about the fact that there were even drinks happening... until about 11pm for some reason, when I realised that it had snuck past me, shrugged, and went to bed.

Another piece of news from Friday... I spoke to J... he and Monkey are no longer... they reached a mutual decision that because they "weren't in the same place in their lives" and split. When J told me, my first reaction was to ask him what he'd done... then later I told him that he was a fucking tool... although not exactly because he'd broken up with Monkey... but that was part of it. On the plus side, he might end up on this side of the world again (J that is, not Monkey), so at least I would get to see him more often. I do have half a mind to tell J to give Monkey my MSN, so that just in case he wants to use it he can. It does seem like my track record with J's boyfriends holds though... when I hate them they stay around forever... when I really like them they seem to be very short lived (although Monkey wasn't actually that short lived, boyfriend-wise, just that it seems to be a very short space of time between me meeting him and the two of them breaking up). Obviously I'm just not supposed to like anyone he dates...

I hate when things seem to be in the Universe's global brain... Steven posted about finding white hairs on Friday his time (which I didn't actually read until Sunday my time)... but when I was doing my hair on Saturday morning I happened to notice that there seemed to be a lot of white hairs sprinkled through the sides of my do... the lovely but docile girls who cut my hair have been telling me that they really aren't white hairs... but they so are... it's fine though, I'll just keep colouring my hair... Denial, it's not just a very long river in Egypt...

Ma and I got a little crazed during retail therapy this week... too many DVD's (half of which are going to go away for Christmas... already), plus way too many cleaning product related items (buckets, dustpans and brushes, window squeegee, special cleaning mitts, rubber gloves, etc)... a rather disturbing yet fruitful jaunt around Cheap as Chips (that was where we got the cleaning mitts and the squeegee)... followed by our usual tour around Red Circle Boutique were I had to take a look and see if they had actually added any decent summer clothes yet...

Alas, not really... but I did decide to try on a pair of jeans with very gay rainbow stitching detail on the back pockets, a pair of the ubergay dress pants I've mentioned before that I don't like, but that seem to be the only flat fronted dress pant that I can find in the right size, and a random teeshirt. On my way to the fitting room I went back past a rack of random sales items, and on an impulse grabbed a pair of jeans that I'd looked at on my way through the first time, but disregarded because they were yet again a size smaller than the jeans I got a couple of weeks ago... which would make them four sizes smaller than the jeans I was wearing at about this time last year.

The rainbow-butt pants were fine, but they were a little bland (other than the stitching), so I didn't bother with them... the ubergay dress pants are still ugly in shitty unnatural fibers, and, more importantly, look crap on me, so I decided against them... the teeshirt was quite cute, all baby blue with a dragon and random text and numbers on it, so I kept that... and the "too small" jeans, well... they actually fit... granted they were tight, even standing up, but I managed to do them up without sucking everything in and holding my breath... so they'll be going away for Christmas too, probably as my actual "Christmas jeans", since at this rate, by December they should actually fit me.

*does the Snoopy Happy Dance*

I also managed to snag a couple of cards from the supermarket (don't ask me why they were at the supermarket, I have no idea) that will give Ma and I cheap entry (adults at child's prices or $10 instead of $18) to the Zoo, since we want to go and see the gorillas that are on loan from Taronga Zoo before they go off to their new homes overseas.

When we got back to my place after all the retail therapy I somehow managed to bruise the inside edge of my right thumb while lugging bags in from the car... I must have squeezed it between two of the handles, but I honestly don't remember doing it. Oddly enough, when I first noticed it, it was all red and actually hurt... then it was a livid purple and didn't really hurt... then it faded back to red and did hurt a bit... now it's mostly gone and I can't feel it... unlike the bruise I managed to give myself when I smacked myself in the face with one of Ma's canvas bags that had a clothing catalogue in it... *SMACK*... right on the bridge of my nose... that's still tender... and a little bit purple...

After buying all those cleaning products, Yanihouse Cleanfest 2006 continued unabated this week... I'll spare you all the blow-by-blow details, but we finished off the kitchen (namely the stove, the top of the fridge and microwave, and then mopping the floor) and then called it a day... the incredible grease fighting chemical spray that ate into the paint of my shelves last week got brought out again to help me with the microwave and fridge, and although it cleaned the top of the fridge like a dream, unfortunately it seems to have done the same thing to part of the microwave that it did to the shelves... I think it ate through the painted metal case a little bit... that's some scary ass kitchen cleaning spray right there.

We also did a kind of random lunch thing that was somewhere between the bruschetta we have had in the past and the antipasto feast we had last week and the leftovers I had last Sunday... but there was octopus again, and it was all very enjoyable... and then, because it was around dinner time when we finished (even though we started pretty early, we did do quite a bit of shopping which ate up a lot of the day), we decided to wander down and get burgers again like we did last week. Burger It actually appears in the Montage too... fourth row, second from the end... and it was during our walk down there that I got the idea to do the eatery montage.

Unfortunately as part of Cleanfest, we may have had a couple of casualties... stuck onto the side of my microwave for the longest time have been this plush magnetic lion and cow that I think Ma bought me ages and ages and ages ago (for reasons that I honestly no longer remember, except that she's a scary woman)... and because they've been basically right in the firing line for all the associated muck being produced by the stove, when I took them down to clean the microwave, not only was there a clean spot on the top in the exact shape of the lion's body where he had been, but both he and the cow were hideously filthy...

So Ma dumped them into sink along with some hot soapy water and gave them both a little bath (which was kind of scary to watch, especially when she soaped up the lion's mane and he looked like some sort of crazy punk lion)... then after we were done with everything and they had been rinsed out and squished as dry as I could manage, she propped them up on the taps to dry out... but because my house isn't that warm at present, they were kind of just sitting there... damp... so last night I stuck them to the end panel of my oil heater (since it's metal and warm) and kept turning them around trying to dry them off. They both seem pretty dry this morning, although the lion's mane is still a little icky...

Current Mood: