ma's birthday adventures

I love a Saturday birthday adventure that's calm, all comes together and don't necessarily consume ten hours... whether it's mine or someone else's.

When I got up this morning I did the usual thing of tidying away all my clutter and got all inspired to wrap Ma's presents there and then.

Once I got it all together it looked like more than the list I had in my head, especially since I did the cross-stitch by hand:

• Wee Little Stitches Doctor Who cross-stitch
• Harajuku Lovers - G of the Sea
• Tick Tock Type typewriter earrings
• Lovelinks bracelet safety chain
• Rebecca Murphy print
• Seahorse card
• Haigh's Coffee Pastilles

Because I wanted to protect the Rebecca Murphy print I put it inside a sheet of tissue paper, but then thought that I should put a note on it to make sure that Ma knew to lift up the tissue paper carefully... and one thing led to another and before I knew where I was I was putting little cryptic notes on all of the parcels.

Things like "snap me" for the  safety chain, "eat me" for the pastilles... although the one that got the biggest reaction from Ma was the "remember me (and run you clever girl)" one I did for the cross-stitch.

Which she absolutely loved, which was good.

And she really liked the card too, which was a relief.

But I'm kind of getting ahead of myself... I wrapped up everything, and had to take photos in the doorway because there wasn't enough light inside even with all the lights on.

The whole thing did delay the start of my morning somewhat, so I didn't actually get to the supermarket until after 9am... which is positively criminal!

I'm also glad that we don't regularly shop at 9am... mostly because there was an extra woman working at Bakers Delight and she was far too perky to be allowed to live.

I did my shopping in record time and after a quick detour to see the Honey Man, who turned out to be closed, which was annoying and disappointing, I still made it home before 9:45.

And I had plenty of time to unpack everything, put it away, read the paper and actually sit down to read some more of the Lego Minifigure Character Encyclopaedia before Ma got here.

Naturally the first thing that happened when she got here was the present thing...

I'd also printed out the menus from The Highway and tucked those in the box too so we could decide whether or not we wanted to go to the bistro or the lounge bar... the lounge won out, although we may need to go back to visit the bistro at some stage.

Once we were done with present time, we jumped in the car and headed down to check out Ghostpatrol's show. We didn't spend too long there, but it was good to see it all again.

Next up we headed into the city to check out the KAB101 show.

I'm actually really glad that I didn't go last night... we spoke to a guy who I think was the gallery owner, and he was saying that they'd had about 1000 people through last night... and I know that part of that would have been due to how long they were open, but the fact that we went today meant that there was pretty much only people connected with the gallery there.

And some cute little dogs who were running around like crazy. But that's okay because it's essentially all concrete, an old mechanics or something.

There were some great pieces in the exhibition, although once again larger than I have room for and more expensive than my budget. There were a couple of smaller pieces, but they weren't necessarily some of KAB's better work... I'm guessing that given the price they were, if they'd been in different colours they would have sold last night.

And then we headed down to The Highway for lunch.

I've kind of had the thought in the back of my head to find a reason to head to Hwy for lunch for a while, but it was actually due to the fact H-San and I went there for a work thing and they gave us some of the fried pickles and some great dips that really made me go, "yeah... that's so happening".

We ended up with a small mountain of food... we ordered a serve of the fried pickles and a serve of the potato skins as well as a burger for me and the roast pork for Ma.

I though that the pickles and potatoes were going to come out first, but it all ended up coming out at the same time... I guess that could have been a good thing, given that we couldn't just plow through the entrees and not leave any room for mains.

Of the two entrees, the potato skins were definitely my favourite.

The burger was pretty good... a good size, not stacked so full of stuff that it was impossible to eat and tasty. But I think I've been spoiled so badly by Burger Theory's burger patties that I need to stop ordering burgers from anywhere else. I always end up comparing the patties unfavourably to BT burgers.

It wasn't that it was bad... it was just more of a solid patty.

And I think because of all the entree goodies, I just couldn't finish it. I didn't even try to finish the fries that came with it, but I got to a certain point and just didn't want any more burger.

All in all though, I'll definitely go back... mostly because I want to sample some of the other things on the menu... plus I wouldn't mind trying the bistro.

Now normally at this time of year, and given that it was Ma's birthday celebration, this post could have been finished off with some reference to going to an Adelaide Cabaret Festival show... but to be honest since David Campbell stood down as the Festival Director it's been reverting to more traditional cabaret shows and there's been much less stuff that we're interested in going to see. There were a couple this year, but nothing that got either of us excited enough to really worry about.

It's kind of disappointing, but it does leave more money in the kitty for next year's Fringe.

So that was Ma's birthday celebrations... a good, if slightly compact day.

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