Falling off the face of August.....

Seriously, where has this month gone.

I'm flailing in my lack of date recognition and the disappearance of the days.  I'm really pinning all my hopes on the longer days meaning I get back on top of things again - in my world, we're only just into the first week of the eighth month...very disappointing, and more than a tad scary, to realize with a jolt that we're nearly into September already.  I'm just not ready.

That being said, a lot has been happening in this neck of the woods lately.  A blog post in each to be sure, but in a nutshell.....(not, as the LOML would say, you're a nut-Shell)....

......it's been Languages and Cultures Festival time again....

.....I've been working long enough to accrue a week and bit holiday - so we headed south and spent a week and a bit in Melbourne and Sydney....

(I loooovvveee hotel freebies)

....saw some sights...

Could I get a bigger pole in the centre of my frame????

 ....made a few donations....

.....welcomed home some olympians....

....did some shopping, met some rellies and then headed home loaded up with goodies....

.....I've since been out in the garden with gusto (this weather is glorious, just plain glorious!)....

.....we've also been cranking up the little Webber on the deck again with the LOML showing off his chicken-stick prowess...

Hopefully now I'm back in the routine of blogging, just like I'm back in the routine of exercising.  But while I despise with the white hot intensity of one thousand suns the necessity which is exercise in my life, (a routine that is a must.  M.U.S.T.), blogging (both reading and writing) is my outlet and my release and I'm glad to be back into it.

Cheers!!

High, Low, High, Low, High (phew!)

[to set the scene.....]

Remember these tickets?  Ignore for a moment the front ticket and focus your attention on the ticket behind.....that is the source of this post

HIGH:  Realising you read your Melbourne Cup ticket wrong and that you actually won.

LOW:   Finding out your husband (chief holder and checker of tickets and claimer of winnings) also read it wrong and threw it in the bin at the pub after the race.

HIGH:  Remembering you took a photo of your tickets to put on your blog and that maybe, just maybe, that might help in the quest to claim your pickings.

LOW:  Realising that some low-life grub at the pub on Cup Day (and there are a lot of them out and about on Cup Day) may have gone through the bin, picked out your winning ticket and claimed it themselves.

.......

The agonising wait.....

.......

HIGH:  Getting to the TAB with your printout of your blog photo of your tickets, being told you were very smart to take a picture of them because in a situation like this a photo makes the process soooo much easier (and quicker) and then finally, finding out that no low-life grub found your ticket and that you are the winner of the Melbourne Cup Trifecta!  Wooohooooo!  

Now to go shopping.....!

Post script

So it turns out that putting all your money on an alcoholic and expecting them to come through with the goods is optimistic thinking at its best.

Yes, Drunken Sailor, my pick in the Melbourne Cup, clearly spent too much preparation time propped up in a bar somewhere knocking back cheap shots like they were lolly water.  Did it even make it to the starting gate?  Or was it still in the bar, slumped in a corner, drooling onto a barmat?  Who knows. What I do know is that I shouldn't  put my faith in a tipsy seaman.  Or horse.  Or whatever.

Sigh.

The LOML it turns out had a bit better luck.  Or would have if it wasn't for the pipping at the post by a nostril hair.  He had a trifecta on.  The horse that won (Dunaden) he had picked to come second.  The horse that came second (Red Cadeaux) he had picked to come first.  He picked the third placegetter.  He also picked fourth and fifth, not that that made any difference.  If it weren't for that nostril hair, I would be not far from kicking back beneath an umbrella in a resort on an island off the coast of Thailand sipping a strawberry daquiri whilst watching the sun set.

Stupid nostril hair.  Horse should have poked out its tongue and won.

Rrrrrracing....

Tomorrow is the race that stops a nation.

Yes, it's Melbourne Cup Day.  Here already (where has the year gone?) and instilling a betting frenzy among otherwise sane people everywhere.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having a bet too - in fact mine's already placed - but it'll be a nutter of a day wherever you go.  Women in too high high-heels, too tight and too revealing dresses wearing half a chicken on their heads in the guise of a fascinator; fellas in loud and obnoxious suits in unflattering colours sporting the ugliest tie they could find at Vinnies.  Or is that just what happens around these parts?

For the LOML and I, heading off to another day in the shop, it signals a slow morning, a dead lunch, and then an even slower afternoon.  It might as well be a public holiday given the lack of people out and about.  Particularly out and about gift shopping. 

True, there'll be a few diehards out to prove a point (you know, that the rest of the world is going straight to hell for partaking in a flutter on the nags accompanied by a liquid lunch), it wouldn't be the same without them but as a rule it's a wasted day.  

However, should my trifecta by chance happen to get up, my next post will be from a remote island somewhere off the coast of Thailand.  I may or may not have a cocktail with an umbrella by my side.  Nothing wasted about that.

So here's to a slightly wet track, a good barrier exit and a speedy home straight for my pick Drunken Sailor - with a name like that's it's bound to get plenty of support from the punters of Australia - hopefully enough to push it past the post first!

Go horsey, go!