It took four days, five peo­ple, two cars, a bot­tle of Rose and six Vic­to­ria Bit­ter stub­bies but we did it. Ange and I have finally moved into the new house.

Day one began with a quick trip to the mechanic to fix a hole in the car exhaust that really couldn’t have come at a worse time. Once that was done I started shift­ing a few basic items across to the new house.

Being the food­ies that we are, we spent day two set­ting up was the kitchen. I do have to say that the nov­elty wore thing once we got to the fourth box of bowls and plat­ters. Because really, there’s only so much ceramic you can see in one day.

On day three we received the first of many deliv­er­ies. We quickly dubbed the refrig­er­a­tor “Disco Fridge” in hon­our of the two blue neon lights run­ning down inside of it.

Day four, Sun­day, was the big one. My par­ents came up from the home­town to help us move the bed, com­puter desk, wardrobe and the other var­i­ous detri­tus I tend to accu­mu­late.
Both sets of par­ents met, and much to Ange’s delight, they got along just fine. Of course it doesn’t hurt that most of the bond­ing was done over that fan­tas­tic com­bi­na­tion of wine, beer and food.

There’s a bit more to do around the house yet. We’re still unpack­ing boxes, and wait­ing for the final deliv­er­ies to come. But once that’s over we can finally relax enjoy our adven­ture in rental housing.

High­light of the ordeal would have to be the fol­low­ing con­ver­sa­tion I had with my mum. To set the scene, we’re all down­stairs ready to leave the house. Mum is in the upstairs bathroom:

Mum: “I can’t fig­ure out how to turn this bath­room light off.”
Trav: “Just flip all the switches.”
M: “I have, but it still won’t turn off.”

At this point I walk upstairs to find out what’s going on.

M: “That light.” Mum points to a round sky­light in the ceil­ing.
T: “That is a sky­light. You can­not turn it off because you can­not turn off the sun.”

I come from good stock.

I recently read that the best thing you could do on St Valen­tines Day is stay inside and cook your loved one a meal. it’s cer­tainly full of roman­tic over­tones, but the main thrust of the arti­cle was how stress­ful it is for a restau­rant to man­age that con­stant influx of din­ers arriv­ing two at a time.

Of course if every­thing went to plan then Ange and I would be in our own house, sit­ting around a table eat­ing some sort of roman­tic can­dlelit din­ner I’d made for her. But, fate being what it is, I’ve had to brace myself and put every­thing in the hands of one of the bet­ter cafe/restaurants north of the city: Coco­Inc. It also helps that their fixed menu is a bar­gain at $40 per head.

We’ve eaten there before, so we know the food is bril­liant. Although every time we’ve been there in the past the place has been mostly empty, with no real pres­sure on the kitchen.

For Valen­tines day the guys at Coco­Inc have imple­mented fixed seat­ing times. So I’m sure they do have some expe­ri­ence in han­dling the demands of a full room, even if they are only a few months old. We’re hit­ting them at the tail end of the night, 8:30 to be exact, so it’ll be inter­est­ing to see how they’ve been coping.

I’ve always con­sid­ered my birth­day less a sin­gle cel­e­bra­tion and more as a series of events. To this end I give you a run down of Trav’s 28th birthday.

My birth­day started off badly, with work for­get­ting to organ­ise a lunch. By the time they got around to it only two peo­ple had responded in the affir­ma­tive. Not want­ing to look like a sad case I asked them to move it to the next Friday.

Things picked up that night though. Ange and I headed out to SOS. As one present she’d organ­ised for me. Another being the copy of War­i­oware she’d given me two weeks ear­lier. It was our third time at the restau­rant, but with a rotat­ing menu based on sea­sonal pro­duce we were always going to be sur­prised.
To keep a bit of con­ti­nu­ity we started off with a bot­tle of Car­lei Green Vine­yard Pinot Gris 2006. The same wine we had the last time we dined there, only slightly younger.
Unfor­tu­nately SOS haven’t updated the menu on their web­site, so I’m only able to give vague descrip­tions of our meals.
Ange started off with a entree seafood spaghetti and then moved on to a banded snap­per fil­let for main.
I grabbed the three mush­room risotto for entree and a serve of scampi tails with red wine vine­garette for main.
We’d dis­cussed get­ting gelati on the way home as a dessert, but as soon as we saw the home­made hon­ey­comb with choco­late and blood orange syrup we just had to have some. It was a wise decision.

After a bit of con­fu­sion Ange and I met up with Mike and Jus­tine out at Lygon Street the fol­low­ing night. They handed me a bot­tle of Mount Gay rum and an iTunes card, which I really wasn’t expect­ing (but thanks again, guys!)
After push­ing into the crowd to begin the search for a place to eat we soon dis­cov­ered the added bonus car­ry­ing around a bot­tle firmly wrapped in a brown paper bag con­fers. Every hawker on the street would offer out­landish incen­tives if we would eat at their estab­lish­ment. They’d soon back down once I point out that bot­tle con­tained rum and not a wine vari­etal. Except for one enter­pris­ing chap, who offered me a bot­tle of rum twice the value of the one I was car­ry­ing. You could only imag­ine the qual­ity of the food at that par­tic­u­lar eatery.

After we had enough of squeez­ing past the throngs of peo­ple we picked a restau­rant (as with Mike I don’t remem­ber what it was called) and made our­selves com­fort­able at one of the out­side table. Though we quickly moved inside once the smoke from nearby din­ers started to choke Jus­tine and Ange.
After re-settling our­selves in the rel­a­tively noise free, but 100% cigarette-free upstairs area we set about ordering.

Ange ordered the Fet­tucine Mari­nara, then quickly changed to a risotto. I grabbed the Riga­toni con Sal­ci­cia (ordered in flaw­less Ital­ian no less. Mike went for a risotto with mus­sels, while Jus­tine opted for the Veg­e­tar­ian Risotto.
The restau­rant also gave us a free bot­tle of Sav Blanc Semi­l­lon, which was nowhere near as sweet as it should’ve been for some­thing with Semi­l­lon in the blend. Ange and Jus­tine gave up after half a glass each, leav­ing Mike and I to power through the rest of the bottle.

The meals weren’t spec­tac­u­lar, hav­ing sat for some time under a heat lamp. My riga­toni had actu­ally begun to cool around edges. A quick stir soon redis­trib­uted the heat through­out the plate. I should men­tion that Ange let it be known that I can cook a bet­ter Ital­ian meal than they could. Pos­si­bly the best com­pli­ment ever.
Once we’d cleaned our plates we wan­dered over to the oppo­site side of Lygon Street for ice­cream. Not long after that we went our sep­a­rate ways. It wasn’t that late, but the meals weighed heavily.

Sun­day after­noon Ange and I headed out to the Bel­gium Beer Cafe on St Kilda Road to meet up with a few of the ZGeeks. The meals were good, if a lit­tle too pricey for what they were, but it was a nice way to spend a lazy, sunny after­noon. Espe­cially as we ended up back in Lygon Street for another round of icecream.

About a month ago I men­tioned how Ange and I had dri­ven down to Wilson’s Prom to cel­e­brate new years. I’d snapped a few shots, but wasn’t really happy with the results. Apart from an evening of pho­tog­ra­phy for a work event, I hadn’t touched my cam­era at all since we left Wilson’s Prom. Think­ing back on it, I why.

I was begin­ning to get very crit­i­cal of my pho­tog­ra­phy style around that time. After look­ing through the pho­tos I took in the Prom noth­ing jumped out at me and it felt like I’d lost my spark. Fast for­ward to last week­end. My sis­ter, Sarah was cel­e­brat­ing her 21st birth­day, and asked me to act as offi­cial pho­tog­ra­pher. I was a bit wor­ried about how my shots would turn out, based on my opin­ion of my new years work. But tonight, after going through the 120 odd shots, I’m actu­ally really impressed with the work I did. So the break really did wonders.

It’s prob­a­bly a good thing I took that break as well. I was able to occupy the cre­ative side of my brain with less visual stim­uli. I finally fin­ished off Brave New World and, even began writ­ing down basic plot points for some story ideas I’ve got float­ing around in my brain.

This is also one of the rea­sons the site has been quiet of late. Even though Charles has been hang­ing out for the next install­ment of my ran­dom thoughts, in my head, it was either the site or my sto­ries. Now that I have most of the plot­ting work done I’ll try and keep this thing updated more often. I may even post some excerpts of my writing.

Hey, now there’s an idea!