2008-08-24 - 7:25 p.m.

3 weeks after my last entry- a few more wedding decisions have been made, a few more busy weekends have been had, and work has been the usual ups and downs. I've decided to approach this week with a positive attitude. I'm going to have a productive week at work, and if anything unplanned or unexpected happens I'm confident that I'll deal with it to the best of my ability. I won't make decisions based on what people will think of me seeing as you'll never please everyone so why try to when it's bound to reduce your effectiveness?

Anyway, the first thing worth writing about 3 weeks down the track is that we picked a wedding photographer. On Thursday (7/8) after work I drove to French's Forest, met Jo there, and we saw what this photographer had to offer. His albums were fantastic, he was enthusiastic and laid back, and he was cheaper than the first girl we saw who we weren't 100% enthused by. Actually the day before we had another photographer come to our place and show us her stuff, but despite being the best value of the 3 we looked at, there was no real connection there, she didn't bring any albums with her and in fact after she takes the shots they get sent to Melbourne to be put into their final format. So in comparison it was clear that this guy was a cut above. Which was handy because it meant we could cancel our 9am appointment with a photographer in Manly on Saturday (9/8). Had we gone I wouldn't have even been able to get my piano fixed while I was out that way because the repair place I usually go to is only open Monday to Friday.

On Friday (8/8) just because we had nothing really planned we decided to have dinner in the city. We didn't actually mean it to be an expensive silver service meal, but when we looked through the Entertainment Book it was this particular menu that jumped out (they had lots of things with truffle in them), and once we were there we could hardly go past the Degustation option (you'll see that theme pop up again), so $300 later... Incidentally the restaurant was Kable's at the Four Seasons Hotel. It was a long dinner too- we booked for 8.30pm and we were there until after midnight. Earlier in the evening Jo had a work colleague's birthday drinks at Industrie and I joined her for a couple.

So on Saturday, instead of being in Manly at 9am we slept in quite considerably, before deciding to go shopping- potentially for a dress for Jo to wear to her birthday drinks, for some pants that would go with my sports jacket that I bought in San Fran (I wish I'd let that guy talk me into the trousers now) and to use some of the Sanity/Virgin vouchers that I got for my birthday almost a year ago. Guess which one of the 3 things we actually did? Well that's not entirely true- we did go shopping for a dress and pants, we just weren't successful. But we came away with a Grates CD, "The Neverending Story" on DVD (because the CD was cheaper than the value of my gift voucher) and "The Mysterious Cities of Gold" on DVD (yay!). And also wandered around the David Jones food hall and had good coffee there.

I was trying to remember if we did anything on the Saturday night, then I remembered the Olympics kicked off on the Friday (and wrap up tonight). So I think I spent Saturday and Sunday evening absorbing that. I manage to get into the Olympics without fail- even if a day before the Opening Ceremony I'm thinking there hasn't been as much buzz this time around and I don't know how much attention I'll pay it.

Sunday (10/8) as well as Grocery Shopping I had more CD vouchers to spend, so I bought the Vampire Weekend CD and the first season of "Six Feet Under". I like having complete seasons of things I haven't seen, but I'm not finding the time to watch them now that Jo's back. I borrowed Season 3 of "Grey's Anatomy" from Lucy when we went over there for lunch (ie 3 weeks ago) and I've only watched the first episode. One day last year I watched about 12 in a day. Of course days off in the middle of the week are a different world, especially when your girlfriend's overseas, so I guess that explains it.

The following week- on Tuesday (12/8) after work we checked out some classic Rolls' and Bentleys in Rockdale and decided we'd go with them for our wedding cars (I think we also have Limo from the reception venue to our wedding night accommodation as part of the reception package, so it's the best of both worlds). Wednesday I was planning on normal trivia for the first time in ages, but we didn't really have a team, and Meegs and Lucy were at the Rose, so we went there instead. It was actually really nice to go on a whim, not because we specifically wanted to see the support, or because it was someone's birthday, or anything like that. We weren't sure if we'd stick around for the support (Raoul Graf) but we ended up not only sticking around but chatting to Bernie and Raoul until after midnight (and working out just how painful it's going to be to try to get Bernie to actually commit to doing our wedding).

Thursday (14/8) I went along to music trivia with Mark, Nick and Annie, and managed to catch a certain friend of mine on a hot date who I was introduced to before the intended "friend introduction" time (much to the annoyance of another certain friend of mine ;) That was a nice evening as well- evenings with Annie can be anything from intense to painfully annoying, but this one was nice. We came an agonising 4th after what we thought was a pretty good couple of rounds.

Friday- well I let on at the Rose that I was making a curry and Lucy was very keen to be a part of that (after the last time she was invited around to dinner turned out to be entirely un-curry related)- so we had Lucy around for dinner. And then we played Trivial Pursuit which was fun even though Lucy won. Another enjoyable evening that was completely unplanned.

I've still got a week to go but I've got to take a breather :)

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