This year we made a last minute decision to head up to Mt Coot-tha to watch the fireworks from up there. They are fairly distant so we figured that it might not be as busy as the city. So off we went, roads extremely clear, no delays to find that every man, woman, child and a few dogs as well were up there as well even on the lower reaches. We managed to find an illegal park and caught the end of the early display in the city at which time, most people started heading off. We hung around to see a few more of the more distant displays starting up. An hour later, we had provided enough food to the local mosquito population and we just headed off home again on even clearer roads and not a single police officer to be seen.

All the lights made the night time view a little special, even if you could sometimes barely make out the fireworks in the distance.

Happy New Year, welcome 2012!

So back to reality it is. Only to be reminded that this Friday night is our annual Christmas party come combined birthday party for a few of my co-workers who are celebrating the big 5-0 this year. It should be a real blast but there is one major issue slight problem.

I have to wear something pink. :O

Seriously, this is a disaster. I do not own anything pink. The closest thing I have is maroon and I’m SOL on that account because I wore it to work today and the party is Friday. Enter problem solving mode for which I am famous – I will just accessorise with pink! No sweat, this will be EASY.

Except it’s also Pink for October and the only thing remotely acceptable is a weird looking “pendant scarf” purchased at a ridiculously cheap price. I figure I will just wear it as a belt given it is far too hot to wear a scarf now. I have visions of looking something like this.

Image courtesy of Grace N Glamour

Only my stupid jeans don’t have belt loops. Curse the twits who decided that women don’t need front pockets or belt loops on their jeans but sadly my favourite jeans have neither. Thanks for that clothing manufacturers! No problem, I’ll just get one of those belt buckle thingies that I see girlie girls wearing and hopefully that will keep it in place.

Do you think I can find one of those thingies anywhere? Or even what it is called? So I can’t even Google it effectively to come up with a list of retailers that might stock it. It’s just all too bloody hard so I will just tie the stupid scarf around my waist and hope that it doesn’t look completely stupid. May the force be with me.

I hate crowds so anywhere in the city wasn’t going to be in the running. And Surfers Paradise is pretty notorious for crowds going wild and cops having to go in for crowd control. So instead we decided to go to one of the “community” fireworks shows armed with a box of pizza and a bottle of fizzy stuff. We found the park where the fireworks were going to be set off only to find that a heap of other people had the same idea. Meh.

Then we remembered that there was a nice grassy park on the other side of the river which looked fairly abandoned so we decided to head there instead. A couple of other people had the same idea but still not remotely crowded. Pizza pretty soon got polished off and we sat and waited for the crackers to go off.

I was fairly under-whelmed by the whole experience. Perhaps it was just because it was the 9pm show but it just wasn’t that spectacular….consequently we headed home not long afterwards and didn’t bother hanging around for the midnight showing. Cue some movies and falling asleep on the couch, waking up just before midnight to hear the neighbours (who had actually stayed awake long enough) yelling out Happy New Year.

I know you’re meant to start a year how you mean to finish it, so of course there was croissants and pain au chocolat for breakfast. No I didn’t make them. Why would anyone make their own when they’re freely available from any bakery? Heated up the oven and kept them in there long enough for the chocolate to go just that little bit gooey. Noice!

The rest of the day was pretty much a lazy one….rained plenty so not much to be said for it. I’m all for having a forced rest due to inclement weather but after a few weeks of rain already, it does get a little bit old. The boys were happy because they got about 10 minutes of RC Chopper flying in before the rain set back in. I played more Wii games than is generally considered healthy. And as for the cats? Meh, it was just a day like any other really with plenty of napping to be had.

This year is a little different in that we’ve had the rains around for a few weeks with only the odd day of sunshine in between. The outcome is that everyone seems to be pretty miserable – particularly if they are of the opinion that water does not have the same physical properties as the rest of us know it does (but that is another story for another day). There are no Christmas carols playing on the radio, the stores don’t have their usual festive appeal and most people I have encountered have been pretty bah humbug. That in itself is awesome, it would have been perfectly acceptable to wear my Bah Humbug tee to work today because I was the ONLY person in the whole department wearing a Christmas shirt! Ordinarily I’d be the only one in business wear.

The big man is on his way tonight and so that means a day of celebrating with family tomorrow. I’m extra lucky this year with two family Christmas celebrations a day apart. So if I don’t eat myself into a small bowel obstruction tomorrow, I can always have another crack at it on Boxing Day.

"I'm dreaming of a turkey dinner...just like the humans have each year"

Usually I don’t bother going to the Ekka. I hear people whining about how much it costs, how food is hideously expensive and how it just saps money out of your wallet from the minute you go through the gates. The last show I went to was the regional one in Rockhampton, probably around 1997. I went with the standard $120 and went home when I was broke. That was a lot of money in 1997 – not so much in the sense that you could buy two licorice straps from the corner store for $1 (which you could) but because it represented about a week’s  worth of my pay as a student. I’d try to ration it out so I could at least spend the day there….usually I’d have enough to see me through till 5pm. By that time I’d had enough sugar and silliness for another year.

So I assumed that it would be the same process, only my money just wouldn’t last half as long.  But after today’s experience, I’m hard pressed to think of how I could possibly have spent $120 at the show. I went with around the same amount of money and surprisingly came home with more than half of it still in my wallet. That included lunch and ice cream for two and two Darryl Lea show bags. Of course, we’re now in our 30s and not willing to part with good money in order to feel nauseated so we didn’t bother with any of the rides. Therein lies the secret of having a fairly frugal Ekka experience. We could have saved even more money by taking our own food for lunch – but surely half the experience of the Ekka is having a rib fillet burger with all the trimmings for lunch – right?

Overall we had a good time, soaked up a bit of the sunshine and got to see the dirt bikes and precision driving team put on a good show in the main arena. Best of all, since we had gotten there so early in the morning, we were able to head home just as the crowds were starting to build and get that little bit crazy. And courtesy of Darryl Lea, we even had something to nibble on during the drive home.

Such a beautiful day and not a cloud in the sky!

“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning

We will remember them.

Lest we forget.”

So I can pinpoint my mental time warping into geriatric years to being the interval between the conclusion of his set and the start of Kelly Clarkson’s time on the stage. I don’t know what they did to the sound mixing in the interval but there was something distinctly not good about the balance during her performances with full production (i.e. synthesisers, guitars, drums, keyboards and the works). My head felt like it was about to explode and I couldn’t hear her clearly. I couldn’t even understand what she was singing. She could have been singing a Chinese traditional song to the backing music and I would have been none the wiser because the band’s volume was that loud. The only time I felt they got the balance between backing music and vocals right was during the acoustic or almost acoustic songs she sang.

When I could hear her, I was reminded of why I went in the first place because I do enjoy her music. It’s just a shame that  whoever was responsible for the sound mixing thought that all the audience wanted to hear was maximum volume noise I momentarily turned into a geriatric last night.

Thankfully, the time of the Christmas tree is nearly over

Mojo and Rosie would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas! If you have cats, I hope you have got plenty of tinsel on the tree for them to pull off and chew to bits. It may make a huge mess but at least it distracts them from the food cooking in the kitchen.

I remember when I was a kid, I would get excited about Christmas. Sure it meant that we got some presents but also because we got to catch up with the rest of the extended family. I don’t remember it being as stressful, trying to accommodate everyone’s gatherings on the one day. Perhaps it was because as a child, I didn’t have to think of such things because I simply went wherever my parents did.

I don’t remember stressful shopping experiences….certainly don’t remember traffic jams within car parks just to get to the petrol station. I do remember people lighting their houses to celebrate the occasion but I don’t remember the sense of competition that goes along with it today. I don’t remember my mum getting stressed about whether she had the right table cloth or whether the napkins matched the table cloth.

What I do remember is my grandpa falling asleep on the lounge downstairs after a belly full of food. Playing board games with my sister and sometimes my cousins as well while the adults chatted. I remember it raining most Christmas Days and not caring because what does it matter if it does? Going to the shopping centres and hearing Australian Christmas carols played over the speaker, often sung by unknown artists and delighting in it nonetheless. People smiling, wishing each other merry Christmas without the fear that the other person may not celebrate Christmas because if they didn’t, they simply said merry Christmas in return and did not get offended. The shops shut for more than 2 days and somehow no one complained about the inconvenience of it all. If you forgot something, then you simply did without or went to the “rip off merchants” at the corner store.

Mostly I remember that there was a true spirit of Christmas when I was a child. There was magic in it. Somehow as an adult, that feeling of anticipation is somewhat diminished. I do wonder whether that’s how my parents felt about it as well, even though that time of year was always memorable to me.

Have a very merry Christmas, no matter where you are or what you are doing and may 2010 be even better than the year before.

]]> http://www.eucalyptuscountry.com.au/trying-to-find-the-christmas-spirit/feed/ 0 http://www.eucalyptuscountry.com.au/phoney-photo-pile-6/ http://www.eucalyptuscountry.com.au/phoney-photo-pile-6/#comments Sun, 17 May 2009 08:14:57 +0000 admin http://moggie-madness.com/?p=488 Continue reading →]]> Woohoo! May has finally rocked around which means I’m nearly halfway through this photo a day madness! And it IS madness because when I work for 9hrs each week day, my photo opportunities of things outside the absolutely mundane is pretty limited. Once the new house starts getting built, I might have a few more stimulating photos….maybe I could throw in a phoney photo pile which is exclusively of construction photos to bore your socks off.

Today was the Million Paws Walk for 2009, so I figured I would take the 365 photo I took today  of our canine companions and make it a more prominent feature in the mosaic. And what a great day out it was! I think we saw every dog breed from A to Z, from the diminutive to the monstrous and everything in between. We attended the Cleveland walk as we did last year and we couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather. Rock on MPW 2010!