2007-07-07 - 10:22 a.m.

So this time last week I was getting ready to head down to Canberra for 3 days. I'm struggling to remember if I've been down there since my Grandfather's funeral in late 2003- I know it's slack the amount of times I've seen my Grandmother since then, but even those times were probably in Sydney. The occasion was a big (well, not huge but say 25 odd people) family do for my Dad's 60th. I decided to take the opportunity also to catch up with various other Canberra dwellers, some who I hadn't seen in even longer than the aforementioned three-and-a-half years. So I was prepared for bitter cold, and in the end I was pleasantly surprised (which isn't to say it wasn't cold).

I drove down with my sister, and got to the motel we were staying in by just before 3pm. We were at my grandmother's place by about 4pm. I ate too much and was exhausted by before midnight, but it was still a good night.

Next day (Sunday 1st July) I drove out to Queanbeyan to visit my old friend Stuart. I've known Stuart since Kindergarten, and discounting Luke who I occasionally see at the Townie he's the oldest friend I still keep in not-so-regular contact with. Along with Steve and some others we used to pool our Transformers and make bases for them under a big tree at primary school, so it seemed fitting that we headed back into Canberra to check out the new Transformers movie. I was more than a little cynical and prepared for the worst but I actually thoroughly enjoyed, as much as you can enjoy a movie pitched at twelve year olds and thirty year old nerds.

After the movies I headed on to Lisa and Mike's place for dinner. I hadn't seen Lisa since before she moved to Canberra, which I think was about 4 years ago, and it was great to catch up. In fact I'm pretty sure I remember the last time we caught up, as it was literally days before Jo and I decided we were going to do the boyfriend and girlfriend thing, in Hyde Park in the first couple of days of 2003. So Lisa made a delicious lasagne and puts Haloumi in salads which scores points with me, and Mike let me try some of his Blue Label Scotch- so he scores points too :)

I stayed at my Grandmother's place that night (3 of my cousins and my Aunty also live there at the moment- so with all the other visitors on Saturday there was no way we were staying there the night before), then the next morning (after wanting to shake some sense into my brother when it sounded like his pseudo-girlfriend on the other end of the phone was giving Annie a run for her money and he kept changing his mind on whether I was dropping him in the city and driving him back to Sydney in the afternoon) I drove to the Northern Suburbs again to catch up with Liz (that sentence was ludicrously long but I think it still was grammatically correct). Liz is a Unifriend, for those of you playing at home. We had lunch at a pub next to Cockington Green (the miniature village that I remember from when I was 4 and 12) and then I headed into the city to pick my brother up, who had made his own way there to have lunch with aforementioned girl. It was about 7pm by the time I got to Marrickville.

The next day I did some shopping, had a few beers with Kellee at the pub, cooked spaghetti for dinner, and my brother actually came through with his promise to fix my temperamental computer. I was sceptical seeing as I'm pretty sure it became temperamental after the last time he touched it. So now it talks to my iPod, and Limewire isn't firewalled out so I can be a pirate again (in a dose of Karma I'll probably get a virus and lose all my music, but we'll see). Then it was back to work on Wednesday.

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