It's All About Balance

So my 365 Project is on Day 5 already and although I'm not sharing the link here with you, I thought I would share some of the cute bunny photo's that haven't made the cut.

I know, there isn't one of Coal here, but she was too busy digging up the garden :P That's where she spends most of her free time. She's crazy like that. Honestly, I think I must get her spayed ... if one of the other two goes near her or her burrow she gets quite agro and fur flies!

Lily was been such a poser last night, usually it's Rex I get the most photos of. I did manage to get one of him playing with the picnic blanket tho. Coal & Lil used to burrow under it but now Lil & Rex just like to push over the corners. It's quite cute :) Oh, and then there's the one of him chewing on the corner of my Smartie box (all part of my red-gift from The Peeb). Such a funny (not-so) little boy.



Not much else has been happening, I've had a rather quiet week at home. But I've learnt to take those when I can and enjoy getting into my pjs at 18h30 and watching series or reading my book. It's going to be a stark contrast to my weekend, after all!

I am off to after-work drinks later for someone's farewell and then it's DJMike's birthday drinks (hopefully with some dinner!) this evening. Tomorrow will be a crazy day of organising and then the first of my six 30th Birthday Parties. This one is a Cheese & Wine with the work crowd (there were too many of them for a sit-down dinner). Am really looking forward to it :) And then on Sunday am off to the Chinese Market with some of the Bookclub Girls. Should be fun :)

And then I realised last night that I had planned to start my new gym routine on Monday (I haven't really been in about 2 months!). But I had planned on a before-work gym-visit and these chilly mornings have really made me question my dedication. I will give it a bash, at least for a week (maybe?) and see how it goes. Maybe it'll be invigorating, but I doubt it.

Post-Birthday Post

So the rest of the birthday was awesome. Even tho I had to work ... and that included an hour & half of over time (was very not impressed at the time!). But the day was filled with wishes from all sorts of friends over all kinds of media (how did we manage without twitter & facebook, let alone a cellphone!).

When I got home I opened my amazingly colour-coded gift from the Peeb (every item was red) with her on the phone. Most of the rest of my gifts have arrived straight into my bank account, which makes sense when you live in a whole different province.

I went to the usual SCM Dinner on Monday evening which was great fun and then still ended up going out again afterwards to Corner House.

Yesterday was a blur of sleeping and series and movies. I'm sure a lot of that was equally due to the weather (cold and damp). Horror of horrors, I ended up falling asleep at 18h15! I know, quite the party animal ;) Although it does all seem to balance out.

I watched Charlie Barlett, which I'm sure I've seen before. Is not Robert Downey Jnr's crowning moment, but seriously, I can NOT wait for Iron Man 2 to come out :)

Otherwise quite a fun movie.

The Big Three-Oh

So, this is it. It's my 30th Birthday today. I am smiling and have a warm fuzzy happy feeling :) I didn't open any gifts this morning. Since the family is so far away and I've mostly been spending so much on furniture lately, I've mostly received cash. Except for The Peeb. I have two parcels waiting for me at home that she got all prepared and sent up with Mom way back in March! (Impressive stuff!) I said I'd wait till I got home before I open them so she can be on the phone with me when I do. Sigh. Another time I wish I had skype and a webcam setup!

So yeah, other than that I had an awesome, awesome weekend! On Friday night I started with drinks at Giles with Loulou, J9-double0blonde and Bert. Was pretty cool, but again I had after-drinks plans so didn't end up staying as long as the others.

From there it was off to Metro Lounge in Benmore for @samanthaperry's birthday drinks. Was great fun to see RubyLetters and so many of my SCM Dinner friend there :) The evening didn't end too late (11pm) although Beukes was trying to convince me that hitting The Hat afterwards with him & DJMike was a good idea, I'm very glad I didn't.

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The next morning was quite miserable and rainy and I didn't get any of the morning stuff done I was planning to do. Instead I went for breakfast with Beukes & DJMike at Europa. Yumyum, must remember to eat there more often ;)

I will say I woke I quite nervous because Saturday was #tattooDay with @beagle_momma, but by the time 1pm rolled around I was more excited than anything else! So I headed off to Jaded Ink where I met up with her and Bert who came along for moral support :) I went first and was amazed at home simple it all was. I mean yes it hurt a little every now & again ... when they went over the same spot and at the top near my veins, but otherwise easy as pie and over pretty fast - okay, to be fair it's no where near very big at all.

And in the end I'm completely thrilled with it :) Completely. I can't stop looking at it! After we were both done, the three of us headed off to Chef & the Fat Man for a late lunch. Wow but the food come in big portions!

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A bit later, in my quest to kill time before 10pm (why oh why do we only go out so late these days? I'm getting too old for this!), I headed off to Capello's for a pre-birthday drink with J9-double0blonde to show off my new ink :)

After that I headed off to RR with Bert & Beukes. Wow did it turn out to just be the most awesome evening. *Everyone* was there! Seriously, I was flitting between so many different groups of people, dancing like a crazy person (even tho I was in flat shoes, I could hardly stand by the time we left!) and just generally having a truly fab pre-birthday party! We got home around 4am. It was fabulous.

Sunday wasn't as much of laziness as I was expecting ... well, at least not the morning half. Went in hunt of a gorgeous ring I saw in December last year at Tinsel. It was still there. But the Bamboo center seems to have almost been vacated? And then went to do admin stuff before heading home to clean the bunny-hutch. Shame, they have been cooped up in there quite a bit lately cause of all this rainy weather :(

And then the rest of the day was spent back in my pjs slothing and watching series in bed. Damn but it's gotten cold quickly this year!

Twas a truly awesome last weekend as a 29 year old!

Last Working Day Before 30

I almost posted yesterday, in fact I wrote4 out a venting post but never hit publish on it. And I'm glad I didn't. It was enough to write it out and register my annoyance. And then I phoned my Mom and she made me feel much better. Like she always does :) Actually yesterday, for the first time, I noticed the value of someone validating ones annoyance. Not to encourage it, but just to have someone tell you that you know what, what the other person did was wrong and rude and you have a right to be upset and annoyed by it.

Anyway, onto better things. On Wednesday evening I watched Whip It, as recommended by The Divine Miss M, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I was kinda surprised I enjoyed it, I didn't quite know what to expect when I heard it was about "Roller-Derby" (I mean wtf is that really?!) but I really did :) I would definitely recommend you watch this if you enjoyed Juno or Little Miss Sunshine or movies like that.

And last night I finally sent out my 30th Birthday Dinner Party invites. Yes, it has taken ages, I realised I was trying to be too accommodating to everyone and that was what had been upsetting me the last few days. So I threw caution to the wind and decided to draw a line in the sand and pick dates and send out the invites. To those who can come, yay and I look forward to seeing you there. To those who can't, sorry for you. It is, after all, *my* birthday.

But yes, having now done that, I have only 1 single weekend sans plans until July. It's going to be a hectic few months, but I am so so looking forward to it :)

Ps. Tattoo day is tomorrow and I'm *really* starting to get nervous about the permanence of the whole thing now. Although I've printed out my logo and sized it to what I want and honestly, it's going to be quite subtle still. So, that said, I am also quite excited :) Another thing I'm nervous about is my Project 365 that I'm starting on Monday, the big Three-Oh. I'm more nervous that the photos will be rubbish and that I'll forget to take one every day or that the pressure to take one every day will have me running around like a headless chicken hunting out "the perfect photo". But I'll see how it goes ;) And no, before you ask, I'm not putting the link on my blog because my Project 365 will be in a personal capacity.

A Faint Cold Fear by Karin Slaughter

Sara Linton, medical examiner in the small town of Heartsdale, is called out to an apparent suicide on the local college campus. The mutilated body provides little in the way of clues - and the college authorities are keen to avoid a scandal - but for Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, things don't add up. Two more suspicious suicides follow, and a young woman is brutally attacked. For Sara, the violence strikes far too close to home. And as Jeffrey pursues the sadistic killer, he discovers that ex-police detective Lena Adams, now a security guard on campus, may be in possession of crucial information. But, bruised and angered by her expulsion from the force, Lena seems to be barely capable of protecting herself, let alone saving the next victim...

Yeah, this was a pretty good book, it took me a while to read tho, and there were definitely some underlying stories that didn't have much relevance in my mind. For a change, this was more about the people that the actual crimes.

Amazing Monday

Wow, if ever there was a good Monday, where things went right, it was yesterday (I know, I'm surprised to be typing that too!). And no, they didn't go 100% according to plan, but by the end of the day, all had worked out swimmingly.

Firstly I sorted out my bill dispute with Telkom (they'd started charging me for my adsl before it was working ... someone had verified the account :P). Here's hoping that the last of my woes with them are over ... at least for a while :)

Secondly I paid my bond registration fees and made an appointment to go and sign the documents today. Yes, I know, it has taken *ages*. First of all it took close to forever to get all the bond approvals by the 4 major banks (although I still went with the first one I got from FNB) and then when I was ready I had to wait again for the seller to sort out that the rates, taxes etc. were all paid up. But now that's all been done and today I sign. And then hopefully things start to speed up a little ...

Thirdly, I found the baby photo I've been looking for to use on my 30th BDay invites :)

And lastly, I finally (it's been at least 3 weeks now!) got the rest of my dining room chairs. Oh lord but that was an effort in patience. Boardmans Design Quarter is now super in my bad books and I won't be back there for a while. First of all it took them 3 weeks to get this all sorted. And there were moments there where I wasn't even sure they'd actually ordered the rest of my chairs from their other branches (seriously, *3 weeks* ?). But then on Saturday I got a call saying they were all there. Fabulous. And did I want them assembled? Yes please! Unfortunately I couldn't make it there on Sunday, so I made an effort to get there after work yesterday. Only to find out that yet again the person who'd organised the chairs for me was not there. So first there was a mad scramble to find out if my chairs were there and then where the hell they were. But they did eventually find them ... in pieces, completely unassembled. To which I was asked if I'd paid for them yet? Well no, but then wtf ask me if I wanted them assembled in the first place. And then they started assembling them and the 2 guys were putting them together differently and I started to have a major freak out. Which of course they did nothing about. Who on earth told service people that soothing noises is all you need to do to appease an irate customer? Sigh.

But, eventually I did make it out of there (did I mention when it came time to pay their systems were offline?!?! Yes, it's amazing that all the Boardmans staff made it home in one piece that day), with my little Citroen C2 stuffed to the brim with chairs (can you believe I fitted all 6 in there!) and are now at home around my dining room table. Yayness. We can forget all about the bad stuff now :)

And the evening was finished off with a truly delish SCM Dinner. Here's hoping next Monday goes just as well, if not better ;)

Something Old and Something New

This time next week, I'll be celebrating my 30th birthday. Wow. Thirty. It's hard to imagine I'm that old already, but I'm in a very good place and not in the least fussed about this momentous birthday, which I think is the most awesome sign of where my life is right now. I mean I could be freaking out about being single at 30, to be honest when I was still dating Varen I thought I would be freaking out if I found myself single at 30, but no, instead I am filled with peace and hope and a lightness of being that I can't remember feeling for a very long time. Life is good these days :)

And it was a good weekend too. Friday was pretty quiet with an extra trip to work (meh, these things always happen right before a project is about to go live and they start really picking up all the problems!!). On Saturday I went to a friend's kitchen tea. I'll be honest and say I've been to very few of these sorts of things in my time (usually I go to weddings of friends in Cape Town and there's a quick weekend jaunt down there for the wedding which definitely doesn't include an additional trip for the bachelorette's or kitchen tea). So I'll be honest and say I don't really get these sorts of things, especially not the game-playing type. Although I understand why they do it (you have a whole bunch of friends and 2 families all of which probably don't know each other all that well and I guess you need to get them interacting somehow ... ?) but honestly, that's not really my idea of a fun time. It was nice to see my friends and the food was delish tho (and there was no talk of babies or baby-poo colour, @beagle_momma, so *definitely* better than the one you went to ;) I'll take the games over that any day!). I am looking forward to the bachelorettes tho.


After that I headed home and Nandocas (I have decided to rename PerfectOnPaper, since that nickname is from about 6 years ago and no longer seems appropriate) came to collect me and the two of us headed off to Maropeng to get a look at the Sediba Fossils on display.

It was pretty cool to see and I know The Peeb is green with envy now ;) We ended up being the last people there because we sat chatting watching the sunset and the beautiful view. It's is such a lovely place, and if you haven't been yet, I really recommend you do.

The evening didn't get any more exciting than that tho, although I really did intend to go out. By the time Beukes got home I'd fallen asleep reading my book ... haha.

And it was just as well because on Sunday I was up and at Louisa's daughter's christening at 9am. And no, clearly I didn't burst into flame upon entering the church (yes, I was a little surprised by that too - haha!). It was quite a surreal experience I must say tho. Not only have I not been in a church for an actual service in probably 10years or more, but I've certainly not been in an Afrikaans church. I spent most of the time giggling in my head whenever they refered to the Holy Geese ... (okay, maybe that one is just me, but seriously, when I see Heilige Gees, all I think of is Holy Geese. That's supposed to be Holy Ghost for those of you who don't praat the taal). Was lovely to see TheSparrow, RubyLetters, Arkwife et al, AngelsMind & Glugster and Doodles & TSC.

After that I had to dash back to work to get some more stuff sorted out before today and then I managed to get back in time to join them again for lunch at The Grill Shop. A very very looong lunch. Louisa, Ruby, TheSparrow and myself (along with Squishy) ended up only leaving there to go join up with more tweet-peeps at Angelo's Kitchen for dinner. Got home around 8pm ... almost a full 12hours after leaving that morning ;) It was a lovely day with plenty of laughs and lovely friends.

The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen

In Boston, there's a killer on the loose. A killer who targets lone women, who breaks into their apartments and performs terrifying ritualistic acts of torture on them before finishing them off. His surgical skills lead police to suspect he is a physician - a physician who, instead of saving lives, takes them. But as homicide detective Thomas Moore and his partner Jane Rizzoli begin their investigation, they make a startling discovery. Closely linked to these killings is Catherine Cordell, a beautiful medic with a mysterious past. Two years ago she was subjected to a horrifying rape and attempted murder but she shot her attacker dead. Now she is being targeted by the new killer who seems to know all about her past, her work, and where she lives. The man she believes she killed seems to be stalking her once again, and this time he knows exactly where to find her.

This was quite a good read ... although I felt like I might've read it before, it didn't actually turn out quite the way I expected. So perhaps I just read something else similar? I will say I prefered Moore to Rizzoli (although from the cover it sounds like Rizzoli is the key detective in Gerritsen's novels).

30th Birthday Wishlist

Okay, I'd say this is probably a far from complete list, but it's what I've thought of so far ...

1. An awesome kick-ass kitchen knife
Boring, I know. But I think one should at least own one awesome kitchen knife and it's one of those household purchases that I just haven't got round to yet ... can anyone say Wusthof? (I don't really know, but apparently that's *the* name in kitchen knives ...?)

2. A Ladder Desk from Mr Price
Yet another thing I haven't yet got round to getting for myself (kinda got distracted with the dining-room table & chairs). I was kinda putting it off until I actually got the internet all sorted out and (miraculously) that has now happened.

3. This boudoir chair from Boardmans that I'm absolutely in love with
I can't explain why I absolutely adore this chair, but I do. I am very upset that the one I used to go and visit in The Design Quarter appears to be sold. (Yes, I like to visit my furniture regularly before I buy it ... I did it with my couch and my ladder desk as well!)

4. More distressed photo frames for my wall
So none of them are actually hung up yet, but that's how it's looking so far laid out on my (hideously blue) floor. Ideally I like to go pick these out myself but will tell you that my favourite place to find them is at the Rosebank Rooftop Market, there's a fabulous stall there where I've bought all of them so far.

5. The Lady of Abu Simbel by Christian Jacq (Book 4 in his Ramses series)
I managed to buy all 4 others in this 5-book series (the Simon & Schuster Edition) but have yet to be able to get my hands on this one ... naturally, being me, I don't just need the book, I need the book that matches the rest of my set ;) More specifically, that exact one in the picture -->

6. A gladtobeagirl necklace from Collect Fine Jewelry
I love these word-necklaces, they are such fun :)

7. One of those giant silver standing cats holding a bowl from Dera Kera
Damn, was kinda hoping they'd have a picture on their site I could use cause I know how confusing that must sound ... but they don't. Oh well, at least I know what I'm talking about, right?

The Internet has been Restored

So I thought it was probably about time to do "The Telkom Rant". Well, it's a lot easier to do it now that the issue has been resolved, I'll be honest. For a while back there I had just about given up hope and given in to tears (by while I mean the weeks on end with practically daily phone calls to their call center!).

Anyway. So, as you may remember I made the call to order my phone line back on the 01 February. And then it was 3 attempts before I had my phone line successfully installed on 01 March. And then I dutifully waited 3 days before ordering my adsl line (they have to wait for the system to be updated to say you have a phone line before you can order the adsl upgrade). And don't even get me started on why I need a phone line ... they all act incredulous when I try explain that no, I don't actually have a phone plugged in. I don't want a phone plugged in, I *just* want internet. Surely in this day and age I should be able to get just a pure adsl line and only pay for that? But that's probably too confusing for them.

About a week & half after I ordered the adsl upgrade I got a message saying my line had been upgraded. Yippee yay and I went about organising a wireless router for myself (thanks again @themba_m) and set up my account with Afrihost. Afrihost got everything sorted within a matter of hours but I still couldn't access the internet and so, my first adsl fault was logged on the 14 March.

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The next few weeks (up until yesterday evening) were grueling and involved 4 official faults, including one that was re-opened, 1 trip to my nearest Telkom Direct store to lodge a formal complaint, 1 bill dispute because (as I learnt on Sunday) someone had verified my line before it was actually working, 3 visits from Telkom technicians (one lasting for 2 & half hours!) and countless calls (from my cellphone!!) to the Telkom call-center.

I will admit I did get my hopes up that I was following some kind of weird date-trend and my adsl would start working on the 01 April, since the technician had been out for 2 & half hours the afternoon before and assured me that once the lightning fault at the exchange had been fixed the next day it would be, but it wasn't.

I even had a technician come out to my house on a Sunday, which I thought was quite impressive ... or I would've if I hadn't already been at my wits end with these so-called service providers. And finally they got the little internet light on my router to switch on. Yayness, right? Not quite. Still couldn't connect to the internet. So I let the technician go on his way thinking the issue must be elsewhere and called Afrihost. Turns out all my details were correct, so I called Telkom again. Only to be told that my router still wasn't synching with the line and he had no idea why the internet light on the router was even on. Great. Dismal dissappointment.

And then strangely, the next day (yesterday), it started working. And I would never have figured it out unless one of the guys from the office hadn't galantly offered to come out and take a look at it for me. I will admit I felt like a bit of an idiot having him pop round only to show him this perfectly working connection :P

Now I've heard worse stories than mine (some people have waited up to 9 months for Telkom to sort their lines out) and I've heard some people who've had no problems at all, but this is my story. I'll say that thru it all the Call Center people were friendly and polite. Sadly I can't really add helpful to that list because they couldn't seem to actually *do* anything and I got different stories on different days when I ended up speaking to different people (which is discouraging to say the least). Their technicians were also friendly and at leats mostly pseudo-helpful. But again there seems to be no communication between the call-center and the technicians. I always let them leave my house thinking they'd solved the problem only to discover that they in fact hadn't. It's a depressing series of events!

And really, what's with only being able to escalate a fault once. That didn't help at all. And their automatically closing of faults was also unhelpful ... I had to keep phoning back and they kept opening new ones. One woman even fought with me about the fact that it must be working because the technician had closed the fault. Hello lady, I was at home looking at it and it wasn't working ... would I be calling you if it was?!

Anyway, I am very happy to announce that I now have internet at home. Plenty of things to get moving on ... like 30th birthday planning and peru-holiday planning ;) I will say that the first thing I did with my new-found connectivity was book my 30th birthday family-celebration weekend in Cape Town. All is right in the world again :)

Let the Games Begin!

Wow, suddenly I realise that this last weekend was quite quiet ... but so much of fun actually :)

On Friday just *just* before I left work I finally worked up the courage to put in my matches from the Speed Dating (I had 4 people hoping to match with me). I honestly think that part was more nerve-wracking than the actual Speed Dating! I ended up only ticking 2 guys. And I got a match with one of them. Now to wait and see if he gets in touch, I guess ...

So after my 2 late week-nights, I decided to have a lazy Friday night at home watching Series, which was just what I needed! And then I had great plans to get all sorts of admin done on Saturday morning ... which went by the way-side when Coal decided she wasn't in the mood to come out and play when the bunnies were let out for their run-around. And then after keeping an eye on her in between showering and what not, and realising she was acting all sleepy and disinterested, I had a minor panic and rushed all 3 off to the vet.

Let me explain, they'd put ant-poison around the house on Thursday afternoon. Not too close to the bunnies, but Coal had been digging and found an ants nest and I was worried she might've eaten some ants with poison in their system or something. Plus after the Bell & Henna experience with the Encephalitozoonosis parasite, I wasn't taking any chances!

Naturally by the time we got to the vet Coal had perked up :P And I'll tell you it was a complete mission to get all 3 of them into the cat box now that they're all fully grown! Anyway, Coal got a mild broad-spectrum anti-biotic and all 3 got dosed up with Panacur (a dewormer) again.



Then I got them home and managed to get to the Telkom shop before it closed. I lodged a formal complaint about my Telkom experience thus far (will have to dedicate a *whole* blog-post to the dreadful experience I'm having, but needless to say I *still* do not have internet at home) and to lodge a dispute about my bill because apparently (I learnt on Sunday) someone already verified my line which means they've started charging me for the adsl I have yet to get working :P Charmed.

I don't remember how the rest of the afternoon was spent but i went grocery shopping and made some delish baked Pasta for dinner :) And then Beukes, DJMike and I headed for Red Room. None of the usual crowd was there, but the 3 of us had an awesome time dancing the night away! (or snoozing on one of the couches in DJMike's case ... in his defense he'd had about 2hrs sleep the night before!) Have I mentioned how fun it is being single. I love the fun of spotting a guy and wondering if he'll speak to you and engineering your group to end up dancing next to theirs etc. Nothing really happened, but I'm having fun :) It's just exciting to have your eye on someone and wonder at the potential and does he like me and all that crap (I feel like I'm back in high school - haha).

We got home about 3am and Sunday was very *very* lazy.

The Fastest Date

Okay so today I am actually tired, my late nights are catching up with me ... so I'm looking forward to a Friday night spent home doing nothing and probably going to be early - haha!

So, last night Loulou, The Principal and I tried out Speed-Dating with SMARTdate! We were a little daunted at first, but the nerves quickly dissipated and the evening turned out to be great fun. It was in an upstairs section of Primi Piatti in Melrose Arch (that I didn't even know existed) and the boys all sat in one spot while the girls rotated every 5 minutes. Although I can assure you I'm convinced it was a variable 5 minutes, it definitely felt like it got shorter about 4 guys in and then got longer again as people were finishing up. There were more girls than boys, but not by an absolutely huge amount. I'll be honest and say I was quite amazed at how many guys were actually there (11 in total).

The interesting thing for me was that they were all guys I doubt I probably would've ever met thru real-life circumstances, and not a single one was even in IT. There were 2 who I thought were quite interesting (one of which has even been to see the Gorilla's as well!) so we'll see what happens (probably nothing ... am not to fussed at this point really). But I will say I think all 3 of us would go to another event.

I think it's a really nice way to meet people actually, it's a stark difference to standing around in a bar with a group of 5+ single ladies and wondering why none of the guys come over to talk to any of you (can you spell daunting?). Here you get to chat to everyone and it's over fast enough. Although there were a few times where I struggled for conversation, but I had the handy fall-back question of "where did you last travel to?".

So, yeah, definitely a fun night out :)

The Tattooism of Phil

Was expecting to be yawning my head off already after last night's late night and practically no sleep from when I got home till my alarm went off ... you know those nights where every time you look at the clock an hour has passed and you think how on earth can I still be awake, I'm exhausted?! Well that was me last night. Hopefully this lack of tiredness right now will last thruout the day because I have plans for this evening as well!!

Anyhoo, so last night I got to meet @beagle_momma for the first time :) We've decided to go and get our wrist tattoos together (so no chickening out!) later this month (because my birthday is on the 26th and hers is the day after, how perfectly timed!). And we're going to Jaded Ink because it's owned by a friend of mine.

So since we'd never actually met before in real life we decided to go to Jaded Ink's First Birthday Body Art Show together last night along with @clairam and a few other friends.

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But first we met for dinner at Co.fi in Cedar Square. It's kinda weird meeting someone you've never *really* met before but actually kinda know quite well. (Try explaining to people that I was going to get my tattoo with someone I'd never met before either?!?). But it was cool, as always :) I think @beagle_momma is the first person I've met thru twitter ... I've met loads thru blogging, but I actually think you kinda know less about people just over twitter.

I had a Haloumi, Avo and Chicken Burger, which was delish! @beagle_momma had steak-on-toast - haha. It was supposed to be a steak sandwich, but they had no Ciabata bread so she got it on plain old toasted white bread. Apparently it tasted quite good, but it was still quite funny!

And then it was off to the Barnyard in Broadacres for the show! The fashion show started at 8pm and was quite fascinating, although we were a bit too far away to see too much detail, there was a screen, but the images didn't show up that well, but when it did you could see the amazing intricacies of some of them! I must say, that the most peculiar one was a guy who had one of those Dutch scenes on his upper thigh, like the windmill & all. I thought it was most peculiar ... I will say that I find it very curious what people decide to get as tattoos. Is it just a pretty picture or does it mean something more to them.

Me, I've always wanted something really personally meaningful to me. Which is why I've never got one till now. I still really liked the whole idea when Varen got his family crest (that I stylised for him), but random Chinese symbols make *no* sense to me ... unless you speak Chinese or have some kind of meaningful connection to it. Which is why I picked my blog logo, since I designed it myself and it has definitely grown to have plenty of meaning to me. Plus I like it's simplicity and femininity.

After the Fashion Show we saw Urban Reign, One Day Remains and Prime Circle. It was a pretty awesome evening, and I managed to get home just before midnight.

Happy Easter

Shoo, that long weekend felt like a decent holiday. Somehow 4 days off felt so much longer than the 3 day weekend we had when Mom was up visiting. I'd suggest that all weekends should be 4-days long, but then I know I'd spend far more than I should and I'd never remember what I was busy with at work by the time I got back ;) Perhaps one 4-day weekend a month, as a nice compromise ... ?

Anyway so what did I keep myself busy with? Well it's going to sound insanely busy (as usual), but I can assure you I also spent plenty of time in my pjs lazing in bed watching Series ... this weekend certainly had the perfect weather for it!

On Thursday evening I headed off to Giles to have an after-work drink with Loulou, J9 and Bert. Some very nice eye-candy, but apparently I left before things got very interesting ;) I went to Cranks to have dinner with The Divine Miss M, who was up visiting from Cape Town for the long weekend, and her friend Shivs. Awesome to catch up and delish Thai food, as always :)

Then I had a very lazy rainy morning on Friday. Until around midday when The Divine Miss M, Shivs and I went to Yamada for a sushi lunch (had to take Miss M to my favourite sushi spot of the moment!). then they came back to my place and we hung out chatting for most of the afternoon. When they left at 4pm it was straight back into the pjs for me and back into bed. I was determined to make the most of that feeling you get when you usually have to work and it's the perfect day to stay in bed ... so for a change, I stayed in bed and relished every second of the rainy gray weather :)

On Saturday I met up with Doodles, Louisa & Squishy and Angel & Glugster at Kitchen Bar for breakfast. Was awesome to catch-up with everyone and most especially to see Squishy again ;) And the breakfast (I had Eggs Florentine) was pretty yummy too. After that I had a browse around The Design Quarter (as if I haven't been there enough lately in the hunt for chairs!) and then decided to visit Greenstone Mall (I know, I'm weird like that ... they are miles away from each other but sometimes I feel the need to go visit a different mall just to see if there is anything interesting to see there, there usually isn't).

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Later on Saturday I headed off to the Southern Sun at Hyde Park for sundowners on their lovely Pool Deck with Me and Mr Jones who was out from the UK. It was awesome to catch up with them and my Blind Date friends who I hadn't seen in absolute ages! And the venue is stunning, will definitely be going back there for a sun-downer sometime.

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After that I popped home to change and then met up with the SCM Dinner crowd at The Red Room. Was quite fun, but I was feeling very under-tattoo-ed for the place, haha!

On Sunday I started to plan my 30th. Sheesh it feels kinda weird typing that and it was certainly weird realising how close it is! I have decided that instead of doing one bog party where everyone is likely to end up grouping themselves with the people they know anyway, I'm going to be doing smaller sit-down dinners with different groups. Gives me a chance to break-in my nice new dining-room table too ;) And at least I will get a chance to spend time with everyone. Really I'd probably be doing the dinners anyway, but the 30th just gives me a good excuse for it.

And then I went to meet PerfectOnPaper for lunch at Cafe Sofia. Was nice to finally see him (we've been trying to find time that suits us both since Feb!) and catch-up again ... it's been over a year! We had a long lazy lunch, drinking sangria and eating tapas, seriously I nearly fell asleep on those couches (in a good, lazy Sunday sorta way!).

After that I met up with Loulou and we went to watch Shutter Island. I don't know if I enjoyed it or not ... I can see what t hey were trying to do, but I don't quite know if they got it right. It was very "I see dead people" in my opinion. And I did wonder if they were going to turn things right-around again at the very end ... but they didn't.

Monday was another lazy day ... aside from cleaning the bunny hutch. After which I cleaned up and got back into bed as t he rain started (perfectly timed, if you ask me!). I only got up again much later to go grab some late-lunch-early-dinner with CollegeInstructor, Miss B and her new boyf at Ghazal's. Yum yum (although I'm almost sure their in-restaurant portions are smaller than their take-aways!). After that I went to the Jolly for a last drink with Miss M and then headed home.

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It was definitely a good long weekend. A perfect balance of friends and relaxation :) Perhaps a little too much eating out tho ;)