Oben and Up

Hey, where did the Summer go? As if by magic, things have changed here. It seems to have happened overnight, or was I just too busy to notice. My neighbours have buttoned up their garden houses, tucked up their stone statues and raked up all their leaves.

Don't know why I am pretending, all the signs were there, clear as day. The first happened when I woke up and found that Mr Frost had come to visit. He left behind his card. All the lovely summer Geraniums killed with a single stroke.

Then the water buckets iced over. Miss 8 found this exciting, but it reminded me that I have now made my home in a country that requires you to change your tyres over according to the season -- unheard of in Australia. Why, we only change our tyres when the rims start scratching the driveway (or is that only in Queensland heeeeheehee)

And so it was, that we decided to start investigating indoor activities. There are massive indoor sport halls here on every corner. Clubs that meet at pubs (more my style), dancing, singing, more drinking, more singing.... all of this will eventually lead to Carnival, which is just about to come a knocking. I will post more about that later. As Miss 8 is still too young to take much pleasure in the drinking, singing, more drinking, more singing club, we took off to the movies.

I wasn't sure what to expect. The first shock being the prices... I did try explaining that I only wanted 2 seats, not buy the whole cinaplex, but it didn't help. Then there was the usual or might I say, not so usual Movie Snacks. Popcorn... the first mouthful almost landed on the back of the head of the person sitting in front of me. It was SWEET... blerk! No salt, no butter... I scanned around to see if anyone else had discovered this devilish mistake, but they all seemed to be stuffing it down as if normal. The then was the 'shared armrest' protocol. Hmmm... would this be different. Which drink holder belonged to me? Very confusing. As if that wasn't bad enough, it was a 3-D movie, which required me wearing funny glasses, and resulted in me embarressing myself when I kept constantly trying to swat things out of the air....that weren't there. This caused much merriment for 13 year old boy on my right....and distracted him enough so that I could plant my elbow firmly on the armrest!

In the end, it was fun, but I miss watching movies that haven't been dubbed. Somehow that little out of sync mouth movement v's sound distracts me from the movie. Might be time to invest in a home cinema.

PS. Photo of Miss 8 taken just after I had tried to swat a bird out of the sky, at the same time upending my bucket of SWEET (just can't come to terms with that) popcorn into the lap of Mr smartypants 13 year old spotty youth. She is NOT amused! More and more often lately she wears that same expression when she looks at me.....should I be concerned?