too much shopping and semaphore kites

I'm a dick! I'm a dick! I'm a dick! I'm a dick! I'm a dick! I'm a dick! I'm a dick! I'm a dick! I'm a dick! I'm a dick! I'm a dick!

But more on that later...

This morning was the first time in three weeks that I've actually been able to do a proper shop... first there was the pre-Sydney shop, so not much point getting too much stuff... then there was the post-Sydney shop where it was just too hot and too soon after Sydney for me to even think about what I might need, so I didn't end up getting much of anything... so today was a bumper, bumper shop...

My kitchen counter still looks like there's been some sort of supermarket explosion happen on it...

Then we kind of wandered around looking for bargains of an Easter Egg nature... and due to Ma being, well, Ma... we had to go to three different shops before we came back to the first shop we looked in (Target) and bought things there.

After we came back here and I'd unpacked everything and Ma had taken ten minutes to read like six pages of the paper (whereas I can usually read the whole thing in about that time), we hopping in the car and headed down to Semaphore...

The 11th Adelaide International Kite Festival was on down there... so, like last year, we had to go and have a look (actually I've had it in my Outlook diary and my phone calendar since after last year's trip).

It was a seemingly perfect day for it too... clear blue skies, not too hot (a total of 22°C according to the news earlier), the wind picked up not long after we arrived, and although they didn't get EVERYTHING into the air, there were a lot of the big floaty, flying things up (as proved by the small selection in the photo to the left), including some nipple showing mermaids, a couple of cute owl, various sea creatures, three cupids of various sizes and much to Ma's delight, a big pink and purple seahorse (sadly it never got that far off the ground because it was on the same line as the owls and the whole thing kept crashing, but it did look pretty good when it was up).

However, THIS is the point where the phrase "I'm a dick!" becomes relevant...

After all the photos I took on the last day we were in Sydney, I never recharged my camera battery. Yes, after the debacle on the third day, you would have thought that I would have learned my lesson... but, sadly, I didn't...

So as we were driving down the road towards the beach I suddenly realised I might be working on low battery and turned on my camera... yep, the little "one third of battery power left" icon was on. But that might not have been too bad... I did pretty much a whole day in Sydney before the battery finally conked out late in the afternoon... I could do this...

Errr.. not so much...

I managed 21 photos before the camera fell on it's ass... bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger...

It wasn't a complete disaster though, I just took charge of Ma's camera (at her insistence) and used it like I would have used mine... so I just have to get the photos from her on Tuesday. It does mean no Montage Monday though... at least not this week.

Other than that it was a pretty good day... we got down there at around 11:30 or so... we watched the kites for a while, I took photos, then we went and moved the car, came back, watched more kites and then went off and had some fish and chips for lunch (well, what else are you going to have beside the seaside?), then wandered a bit more before we went into the Kite Shop tent and I bought this cool little black "super sled" kite with a flame design and long red streamers (and interestingly, I seemed to be the only person on the whole beach who was flying one of that particular style... either officially in the Festival or out of it)... then we went back down onto the "public" end of the beach (ie not where all the official kite flyers were) and I flew it for ages. It was fun actually... although it's one of those things that once you get it up in the air, you don't really have to do very much to it.

Except that is, if you happened to have my kite. Somewhat like it's owner, my kite was equal parts suicidal and homicidal... it either wanted to keep crashing into the ground or else it looked like it was going to fall out of the sky and take the top of somebody's head off.

After she'd watched me for a while Ma decided she wanted a kite too, so she ended up getting this smaller kind that was actually shaped like a little bird, and we headed out onto one of the grassy areas to fly both of them. Poor Ma, she had all kinds of problems with her line snagging, and not being able to get it up in the air... although I think she was just being wussy about it... when I swapped kites with her briefly, I got hers up really easily and it was flying quite well until I gave it back to her (hehehe).

We hung out for ages just flying the kites and having fun... well, I was having fun because my kite was flying quite well and really high (if a little erratically from time to time), but poor Ma... her birdie kept doing spiral nosedives.

Anyway, I think it was about 4:30 or so by the time we'd had enough and we decided to leave... so we'd been there for about six hours...

Which would have been fine, had it not been for the fact that we only applied some sunscreen before we left my house, and hadn't taken any with us. Fortunately we were both wearing our hats... but my arms are all pink and slightly crispy... and so are the backs of my hands, oddly enough... which I think is a result of the kite flying... it's actually some really oddly orientated sunburn... weird.

Thank all appropriate deities for After Sun Gel... I'll be applying it all evening, and probably for large chunks of tomorrow too.

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