Monday, April 21, 2008

A Warm House

What a weekend. Friday started with some lovely outside time with Bell & Henna :) They seem to be getting on really nicely now and were officially moved out of the bathroom and back into the (cleaned) hutch on Friday evening.

And there was an amazing sunset :) Varen & I spent the evening catching up on some series and watching Smokin' Aces.

The film involves an intricate plot to kill Las Vegas showman and mafia wannabe Buddy "Aces" Israel (Piven), in part because he is considered the FBI's key witness to bringing down some of the final vestiges of La Cosa Nostra in the U.S., and because he has effectively split the family of Don Primo Sparazza into two competing factions. With his health failing, Sparazza puts a $1 million bounty on Israel and included a demand for Israel's heart. Two of Sparazza's crew, Underboss Sidney Serna and Capo Victor Padich conspire to hire a cadre of assassins to take care of the Buddy Israel problem, collect on the $1 million bounty themselves, and make a play to take control of the family from the ailing Sparazza. Being the key to the Justice Department's case against La Cosa Nostra, the FBI is intent on keeping Israel alive.

This was a pretty decent film, aside from the fact that they seemed to have an awful lot of irrelevant stuff happening ... you know, things that by the end of the movie didn't really tie-in to the primary plot. Now usually this might be okay. But then again, usually they'd have some sort of connection with the main story line. Sigh. Oh well. Still a fun flick to watch :)

Saturday was rather crazy. The morning started out with a trip to Makro to purchase additional wine for the evening's house warming. For some reason Varen suggested we cater at least 2 bottles per person (needless to say a mere 10 of 26 bottles were drunk that night ... hey, and at least wine keeps!) .We followed that up with a trip to The Cheese Shop (owned & run by Varen's uncle & aunt). If you can't tell yet, we'd planned a Cheese & Wine for the house warming :) We didn't do much else for the rest of day but prepare the house & food for the evening's event.

23Apr08 Quick Update: For more information on The Cheese Shop, call Costa or Rita on 071 218 0000. Their opening hours are Mon - Fri: 08h00 - 17h30 and Sat & Sun: 08h00 - 15h00 (these two don't seem to ever stop working!)

The evening went really well ... aside from 2 people who didn't end up arriving and my general dismay at my friend's lack of commitment (not you JofH & YogaCherryl, I mean the ones who didn't even bother to show up! Yes, I'm still bitter) In our usual style, we completely over-catered. <-- See the spread in the pic. And thanks to everyone who did come and make it a memorable evening :) We eventually got to bed at around 02h30 on Sunday morning. The house still looks like a bomb hit, but Sunday was more a day for lazing around than dealing with the state. On Sunday we popped by GalleryGirl's for brunch ... and for Varen to sort out their computer. We followed this up with *nothing*. It was fabulous. We let the bunnies run around and tried (unsuccessfully) building them a portable hutch (for when we go to the farm or they have to stay over at Varen's folks while we're off gallivanting on holiday!). There are improvement plans for the hutch. But we gave up on it for the day and vegged around watching some Bones, eating far too many leftovers :) BFL ceased to exist this weekend!

That evening we headed to Pianogirl's piano (surprise!) recital. Which was pretty impressive skill-wise ... but I'm just not that into the classical music or the general sound of a piano. Sigh. Uncultured or what ;)

And that was that. It is now less than a week till my 28th birthday and until The Mom arrives in Jhb for a week long visit :) Yay!

6 comments:

The Jackson Files said...

omg...would you just look at all that wine! And cheese. My idea of heaven.

Where is the cheese shop? I've only ever seen cheese at the Rosebank Market.

Anonymous said...

It sounds like so much fun!! Glad it went well!

phillygirl said...

@tjf - The Cheese Shop is a tiny little out of the way place, run by two of the loveliest people (Varen's aunt & uncle) and visited by folk like Tokyo Sexwale even!

Drive down William Nichol towards Pretoria, continue past the N14 nearly all the way to Erasmia. Pretty much just keep driving till you see "The Cheese Shop" in big red capitals on a little white block-like building on your right. Well worth the drive!

phillygirl said...

@jane - it definitely was :)

The Jackson Files said...

btw...thanks for this. I am definitely going to check it out.

Mmmmmmm...cheese.

phillygirl said...

@tjf - you really should. The cheese is awesome and *very* well priced :) My absolute fav is their chili gouda :)

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