One of the things that is very annoying is that I haven't heard back from my ISP yet, so I am sans internets... which is a definite First World Problem, but it's my world and I want my connection to the rest of said world back again.
I'm planning on setting my modem and everything up now that I have all the additional bits I need (more on that later), just to check, a little like I think I did last time... but I'll probably call them on Monday just to see where we're at. Last time it was done by the Friday after the move, but then I was only moving within the same suburb, probably the same exchange, and I'm guessing it was just a matter of them doing something really simple to make it work at the new house.
This is a whole new suburb, nowhere near the old one... but how long can it really take?
But back to today...
I woke up fairly early... partly caused by the trucks going along the road outside, partly because it was essentially the same time I've been getting up all week.
I pottered around a bit, then got ready, and then pottered around a little bit more before Ma arrived. Yeah, clearly that sixth sense I had at the old place for when she's arrive hasn't kicked in yet.
And then it was off to an entirely new supermarket... still a Foodland, same as always, and one owned by the same group as far as I'm aware, but this was Norwood instead of North Park. Now anyone who has been paying attention to my blog for any period of time knows that I don't like change. Me, change, not a fan.
But as I said, it's owned by the same group, so they have maybe 95% the same stuff as my old supermarket did... they just lay it out in a completely different arrangement. Which, academically, seems weird to me... hopefully it's not arbitrary, and there actually is a reason why you'd put the baking goods in the same aisle with the chocolate bars... and why you'd move the wafer biscuits I really love from the biscuit aisle to the last aisle next to the jam for no apparent reason that I can see. To be honest you would think that a chain of supermarkets would arrange everything in the same way in different stores... surely people's shopping habits works the same way in different stores, plus it would aid people coming to your store when they're familiar with other stores.
We also spent a lot more money than usual, though we skipped a week last weekend, so it was kind of a two week shop.
There wasn't much else to do beyond the supermarket, no Red Circle Boutique to wander around... no nothing. It might be worth having a little look around and exploring what The Parade has to offer, since we haven't even visited since god knows when... mostly because they don't have anything that I need or can't get elsewhere. But now they're my nearest Foodland, so I'll need to workshop the other possibilities.
It also means we need to train a whole new check-out chick... the girl today was passable, but not great, so I think we'll be trialling most of them before we find one that works for us. It is a shame since we had the perfect check-out chick at the old supermarket, but it doesn't make any sense to keep going to the old one, as it would add a bunch of time to our travel.
We came back here, I unpacked everything and tried to find appropriate places to put it all away, most of which worked out pretty easily given the pantry shelves I bought last weekend.
And then we were off to IKEA to find a solution for my lack of kitchen prep space and my lack of space to put my socks, underwear and general papers and whatnot.
I had a vague list in my head, and I pretty much went through everything and got it all (it was a short list).
My main area of indecision was the chest of drawers for the bedroom. There were a few reasonable choices... including one that I would have needed to paint/stain like I did with the bedside cabinet I bought for the old house. In the end I got one that was the same price as the one I would have had to do things to, and it was bigger as well.
The main disappointment was a solution for turning one half of my sink into a draining board. I got something, but while IKEA has a number of solutions for that problem they don't have any for my particular model of sink. Grrrr.
After IKEA we stopped at Bunning so I could pick up some additional telephone cable for the modem and then headed into the city to grab an ADSL line splitter from a little computer shop on Currie Street. I could have picked a splitter up at Bunnings, but why would I pay $30 when they had perfectly functional ones (I hope) for $7.
Unfortunately this is the moment that the wheels slightly fell off the day, although neither of us realised it until much later.
We came back here, I walked the boxes up the stairs (and managed to almost completely mangle one corner of the chest of drawers because I was physically unable to pick the box up and carry it), we got changed and then headed off to the Festival Theatre to see our first Fringe show of the season.
However I can say right here and now that I'm not a fan of the person responsible for this year's Fringe... if for no other reason (and there are other reasons) than the fact that she moved the Fringe Parade from Friday night to Saturday night... and of course that means that they close off streets much, much earlier. Then on top of that the council had decided to close all the carparks on Victoria Drive so that they could do something to the trees. So, you're going to close off part of Victoria Drive because of the Fringe anyway, then you're not going to allow anyone to park on the rest of it because of trees.
Fine... whatever... we detoured around and went to go the long way around to get to the Festival Centre car park. But because Ma was somewhat annoyed by this stage, she wasn't willing to wait around for a light to turn green, so she went into a different car park. And normally it would be a quick elevator ride and we'd be in the right place. No, not this time... because of the Riverbank redevelopments they've closed off every possible avenue between where we were and where we wanted to get to. So we ended up having to walk all the way around the casino (we maybe could have cut through, but we didn't) and got to the theatre around five minutes late.
I thought it was weird that when we got there everybody was seated and the show was already in full swing... more on the actual show later. But when we came out I looked at my phone and realised that the show had actually started at 2pm, not 2:30pm like I had in my head for some unknown reason. So we essentially missed the whole first half of the show. I'm actually surprised they even let us in to be honest... and we ended up sitting in the "late people" seats (the ones easiest for the ushers to ferry latecomers to).
So that was a whole world of frustration and annoyance... I will say that it was a show I wasn't really that bothered about, so missing half of it wasn't a huge drama like it would have been with some other shows. And it will make me double, triple, quadruple check the times of everything for the remainder of the Fringe.
We headed back here, then took a quick detour over to the Village to find something to eat since we hadn't had all that much to eat at that point (or at least that wasn't entirely carbs) and came back to eat it (full disclosure, I had carbs again anyway).
After food, Ma settled into folding up the garbage bag full of newspapers I hadn't gotten around to sorting out at that point while I started putting together the kitchen trolley I bought at IKEA. As I mentioned later on Instagram I have a fifth dan black belt in putting together IKEA products at this stage, and I don't understand how and why people complain about doing it so much... most of it sticks to the same formula and except for when I need an extra person (very rarely to be honest) to assist me, I've put a bed, a bedside table, a small bookcase, two large bookcases and three skinny bookcases, two barstools, a bar table, a TV table and a coffee table together all by myself... and you can now add to that list a kitchen trolley and a chest of drawers.
After I finished the trolley there was still a fair whack of time until we needed to head off... enough, as it turns out, to put together a four drawer chest of drawers. And even enough time when I was clearing the spot for the drawers to sit to put a couple of pieces of artwork on the walls using existing hooks. Just... as in we wanted to leave here at around 8pm, I finished at 7:55.
And then we had to head back into the city to try and find a car park and then get to the Garden of Unearthly Delights, have something to eat and still be in time to line up for the 9:30 (and yes, I did double check the time, a number of times) show.
See the aforementioned annoyance about moving the Fringe Parade. Doubly so because I'd learned my lesson on that in the past and would never normally schedule anything even remotely related to that end of the city on the day of the parade. In fact I actively avoid the night of the parade/the first Friday of the Fringe... it's just that this time I had no idea they'd moved it.
We ended up discovering a whole new multi-story carpark that I've never actually seen before, and that I had no idea existed. And while it took some annoyance for us to get there we did do everything we needed to do and got to the show just before the girl with the megaphone suggested everybody start lining up... so we were the very front of the line.
And who should we run into on the way from dinner to the show but H-San and Mrs H-San... small world and all, given that I think they're only going to a very small number of things.
So, yeah, while I got a number of productive things done today (a good solid shopping excursion. construction of two IKEA items), it was also marred by the fact that the shopping was in a totally different supermarket and in a world where I never moved house, I would never have needed the two items.
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