We spent most of Saturday hunkered indoors as the temperature dropped again and a series of rolling thunderstorms swept across the city from mid-morning all through to the night. I went and rescued Cass from the shopping where she was stranded without an umbrella and marooned: she'd have to walk back with the shopping in the teeming rain. She went back in and bought another umbrella on credit card (no minimum charge rubbish here) and we hoisted bags on shoulders, splashed through the puddles in the park and made it back home relatively dry. It was cozy to potter around inside and the highlight was to get to see the opening match of the Knights live as they won their game against all odds, shrugging off a controversial off season and a horrific injury toll. We were stoked!
The AFL season has yet to get under way, so we enjoy a weekend or two at the most before they push the NRL back to its usual timetabling of the Friday game repeated on Saturday morning and one of the Sunday afternoon games on delay. I’ve got a subscription to an English site which allows me to watch full replays of any game I like, but these are not available till at least 24 hours after the game. It’s good, but not half as good as this weekend…we got nearly every game, no matter if it was Channel Nine or Foxtel. Also inside from the rain on Saturday, we caught bits of the Australian one dayer in New Zealand, streaming over the net and beamed onto the TV in the lounge room.
We’ve gone into a cleaning frenzy! All the screen doors have been scrubbed and all the windows cleaned. Ceilings cleaned and shelves freed up, verandahs mopped and door tracks cleaned and oiled. Various other little jobs have been done and the house is spic and span: well, compared to what it was a few days ago anyway! Our big curtains in the lounge room are at the dry cleaners where they recommended we have them washed rather than dry-cleaned: apparently this will be much more effective, but the lady did warn me they may be “smaller”…I hope the shrinkage won’t be that noticeable!
Off to The Spice Shop for a delicious late lunch today and we enjoyed the completely reversed weather. It’s sunny, warm and delightful today….this Taiwanese Spring weather really is quite fickle. People were out and about, partly as they must have been restricted yesterday, and we watched them with great interest. Our first choice, the slightly more upmarket Indian fusion restaurant was closed in the mid-afternoon, so we walked two doors down to the opposition…they must be making too much money to gift these guys all the afternoon trade methinks. We then scootered to Takashimaya and got some supplies from Jason’s marketplace: they had a display of products from Victoria! The obligatory Hirota “puffs” for a decadent dessert later tonight and we were off. Hirota puffs are Japanese in origin, light pastry wrapped around a delicious custard filling which is piped into them…addictive.
Photos are few today: we are lunching at the Spice Shop in the mid afternoon, Takashimaya’s special stand and the Hirota cake display. Cass is reading Night at the Wax Museum (the script for the upcoming school play: she's says it's very bad!) and I am reading Down River.
