roycemleev3.50

Now that Laura has her motorcycle learner's permit, we are both pretty interested in looking at bikes and accessories. Well you'd have to be mega keen to go to the Sydney Motorcycle Show, considering the tickets cost THIRTEEN-FIFTY EACH!!!!!

Laura had a good look at the 250cc bikes available, but I spent my time gawking at the new Ducati's. Perhaps the best thing that was there was the booth run by Girls Ride Out, which pleased Laura no end - much more friendly and less threatening that many of the other booths, and with a (obviously) strong "chick" focus.

Laura and I went and saw the Matrix Reloaded today, and boy does my head hurt. I spent so much time trying to take in the fantastic special effects that when all the philosophical stuff started happening 15 or so minutes from the end, I was too exhauted to keep up.

Highlight was that Freddie (my silver Lamy Swift roller ball pen that I've had for 10 years or so) was featured in the movie.

Laura and I hadn't seen friends of ours John and Colleen for some time, so thought we should combine our love of a chat and love of good Thai food and make a night of it. Colleen's sister-in-law Penny joined us - drinks started at our place before moving on to Narai Thai for dinner.

After dinner we all took ice-creams back to John and Colleen's place (just around the corner) and watched bits of The Blues Brothers on their plasma tv. I don't quite understand why I was so tired, suffice to say I struggled to keep my eyes open. Must just be my old age (you know - hitting 30 and all).

Nevertheless we had a great time - a really nice way to spend a Friday night!

Some work friends of Laura's invited us to dinner at a Korean BBQ joint a short walk from our place. We were told to be there between 6:00pm and 6:30pm so I was a little suprised to see not only were we the last to arrive (at 6:25pm), but that the others had already started eating. Laura wasn't suprised though - apparantly Nitaya has a bit of a reputation when it comes to food.

So what we had was a Korean BBQ buffet - raw ingredients (different thinly-sliced meats and vegetables) were prepared and put into a central servery like they have at Sizzler - sneeze guard and all! You'd grab up all your ingredients and take them back to your table. In the middle of each table was a hole filled with hot coals, and covered with a wire grill.

Laura cooked for us - it was delicious. We had an enjoyable chat with everyone; Nitaya and Nick, Debra, Chrissy, Linda, Julie and Kevin. Well enjoyable right up until the staff seemed to have some sort of domestic. There was lots of shouting in Korean, throwing of aprons, storming out of the building, pushing, shoving, screaming - all right next to our table! Quite awkward really.

Groan. Woke up this morning, not just a year older, but no longer a fresh-faced and fun 20-something. I have hit the dreaded (well for me anyway) thirties. Slept in a little bit, but had stuff to do so didn't muck around too much. After some sketti on toast Laura and I headed off to have some left-over speedframe tubing cut for me to use to make a microwave shelf. After getting that done we had to get a couple of buses to get back home which took a fair chunk of the afternoon. We grabbed lunch (a pie and a canoli each - I'm getting into healthier eating in my 30's) and went home to assemble our stuff.

I possibly forgot to mention, but Kevin from Speedframe came on Thursday to install my new home office and Laura's writing desk. I still have some work to do tidying them up and organising storage, but already they are making a huge difference to the space in our unit.

So the pics below are me assembling the left-over bits into a microwave oven shelf. Laura is thrilled with the extra bench space, and especially happy that the left-over pices I had been hoarding for over 2 years had finally been put to good use.

With that sorted, 5:24pm came - being the time I was born - so it was time to open my pressies. I scored a lovely shirt (black) and some socks from Laura's mum, and a picture frame, book, and professional remedial massage at a local studio from Laura.

Once that was done, it was pretty much time to head in for dinner. I have a soft spot for I'm Angus at Cockle Bay, so that's where we headed. We enjoyed garlic bread and tempura prawns for entree, followed by fillet mignon with a side of veggies for our mains. Yes we both ordered the same meal, but I had mine medium rare!

I had a raspberry brulee for desert, and managed to score at least half of Laura's sticky-date pudding. We toddled off rather early (around 10pm - I know - must be the old age!) and I watched a bit of The Matrix before calling it a night on my first full-day as a thirtysomething.

Much like we did well over a year ago, my friend from Brisbane Shaun Gallagher was in town, so as is tradition it was off the the Old Fitzroy for one of their famous laksas.

Now that we live in the Cross, it was only a few minutes walk down the road. Laura thought she recognised Shaun's friends Chris and Scriv, but I wasn't sure so we waited a little longer for Shaun. Her instincts were correct, so after a few ale's we sat down to enjoy our laksas which didn't disappoint.

The smoke got a bit thick, and being as I was a little unwell we called it a night rather early.

Since returning from Brisbane on Wednesday, Laura busied herself getting her motorcycle "Certificate of Competance" (real name - I'm not making it up). If you want to get a leaners' permit in NSW you need to get this certificate first. 2x 3 hour sessions in bike handling, a passing grade, and the certificate is yours.

Having got that yesterday, Laura sat the written test, and having scored 44/45, she was issued with a new license and her "L's".

A labour of love, roycemlee.com was originally entirely hand coded - meaning that it took an awful long time whenever I needed to make changes. Well no more! This site is now powered by Movable Type, a powerful yet free content management system.

Although my page looks very similar to the old 2.50 version from last year, there are a number of improvements, including:

Search

Using the search feature, you can search the site for anything you like. If you want to find pictures of yourself and can't remember the dates they would have been taken - try typing your name into the box and hopefully it will return links to the appropriate parts of the site.

Calendar

The calendar is context sensitive - if you go back to archived months the calendar changes, showing you which days there were posts. You can also move forward and backward through months by clicking onto the << or >> next to the month name.

Log Archive

Added to the archive page is the whole year calendar - allowing you to see the whole year on a page, including the dates that posts to the site were made.

Notifications

You can now register to receive updates. When I make any changes to the site, or make any new posts, you'll get an email to let you know.

Then, under each and every post there is 3 new links:

Get Notified

This is another link to the notifications registration page. Sign up and be informed of updates. Tell your friends!

Permalink

OK, this wil probably never happen, but say you wanna create a bookmark to a particular entry (perhaps because you are in it), use the permalink. It is the permanent location of the entry, so even after archiving the address will still be valid.

Comments

Click on this link to, well, make comments.

Finally, if there is a photo on the site that you want a hi-resolution copy of (presumably because it has you in it), simply hold your cursor over the image to display the image number. Then send me an email with that number and a request to send you a hi-res copy and I'll email it to you ASAP.

Laura and I spent most of Friday trying to unsuccessfully sell her car. We pooped in at Kerry's place but didn't stay long as she would be joining us for dinner later on.

We got into town for dinner fairly early, with Sharon and Dwayne already there waiting. Our other guests arrived at the Zen Bar steadily through the evening - Kerry, Heidi and Dave, Michelle, Mike and Emma, Shaun and Jo, Matt and Chelsie, and Tim. I think everyone enjoyed their meals, with the exception of Dwayne, who as an executive chef was was well qualified to comment, who copped a hot and spicy one that he wasn't expecting.

To my great surprise, it was my friends (none who have children - oh except Tim) who were the first to call it a night. After deserts Sharon and Dwayne had had enough, with the rest of us going for a dance/cigar at Adrenalin. The group ended up with Laura, Kerry and myself from around 11pm onwards. Uncharacteristically the combination of cigar smoke and Johnny Walker was leaving me feel just a tad green. A few sips of water and I still felt a bit off-colour - then the unthinkable - a burp that brought up some of my dinner (no more than a mouthful) which was then somewhat unfortunately deposited to the floor beneath the table.

Feeling immediately better, we saw that as an opportunity to call it a night. The drive home made me a little quesy again - so I quietly went to bed hoping to somehow live down the earlier embarrassment.

After last night's disappointment I was hoping that today might turn out a little better - fortunately it did. After spending the morning logged into my laptop, Laura and I headed into town for lunch - her with her friends and me with mine.
I was ten minutes late by the time I got to the Adrenalin Sports Bar, but fortunately everyone else was also late so it worked well.

Paul, Rod, Brendan, Louise, Sonia, Paul and Tim made it, Kevin, Bruce, Don and Will didn't.

After lunch I headed up to the new and improved James Cubitt Architects, which was looking fantastic. New desks, new paint, new computers - the place really looked the part. Up there I chatted with Maureen, Marc, Quentin the new IT guy, John Nankervis, plus all the guys I had lunch with.

Sometime later, after Laura had finished seeing her friends from her old office, we headed off to James and Jakki's for a BBQ dinner. The kids (Harry, Sarah and Abie) were a heap of fun before they trundled off to bed at 7:30. After that we enjoyed James' super-duper special BBQ chicken breasts with capsicum and eggplant - it was truly delicious. After chatting over wine we enjoyed some deserts over a game or two on James' Playstation.