While I wait in between interminable reloads on this silly web-based CMS, let me regale you with a tale!
journey2master and I flew up to Sydney on Friday night as it has been 20 whole years since I left high school. Strange but true.
Unbeknownst to us, there was a huge electrical storm raging in Sydney town and so our plane was delayed for a while. We filled in the time chatting with thorfinn who was coincidentally on the same plane. Finally they opened up one runway in Sydney, and all of the planes that had been waiting took off with 10 minutes each between them, aiming to beat the curfew into Sydney. We arrived in Sydney only an hour late, aided by 75kmh tail-winds (we’d left an hour and a half late). Mum was already circling the airport waiting to pick us up.
We went to the baggage claim carousel and lo! The number of our flight appeared on a carousel. But no baggage emerged. After a long time, I went and sat down and did some marking while Doug waited. Eventually, there was an announcement that all flights from Melbourne, including cancelled flights to Melbourne, would be on carousel 3, all for Adelaide on 2, Brisbane on 1 etc. What a nightmare! Told Mum to go park somewhere. At a quarter to one in the morning, we finally got our bags, almost three *hours* after we were supposed to land.
Next day, Mum, Doug and I trooped off, somewhat exhausted, to the Walk Against Warming March. That was quite good. Bumped into murphus and chatted, which was terrific.
The school reunion that night was actually superb. Doug went out and caught up with anthonybaxter , because it was a "no partners allowed" event. There were many, many women I really enjoyed catching up with, many more pregnant women than I expected, and the food was just fantastic — they’d gone to enormous effort to cater to my food restrictions, event to the point of making me a samosa out of chickpea flour and having gluten-free dark chocolate thingies for dessert. I even networked a little… one of my former classmates is now a human rights lawyer working with a big human rights organisation and we had a good chat about some future projects with her current workplace.
Sunday, Doug and I went to Glebe Fair and discovered some awesome new sources for all-natural baby clothes and other stuff (must send out notes to everyone soon about gifts — we love the fact that people are starting to gve us things, but we’re embarrassed about wanting to give back the polyester things, and the PVC things and the things Doug is allergic to). Then we had a big picnic near the water with family and friends, dinner with the sister that couldn’t make it to the picnic and then plane home.
Exhausted, we slept in the van, because every item of furniture we own is currently in the kitchen so the floors can be done. Monday, the carpet puller-upperer came and pulled up the carpet, then the concrete-leveller came and levelled the concrete. Slept at fizit‘s. Today, the floorboard-layer was supposed to come and lay the floorboards but he was sick! So we have an extra, unplanned night either staying with the lovely fizit , assuming she doesn’t kick us out… or sleeping in the van.