In Brisbane

Tuesday 12^th February

We arrived in time for lunch and went to Chung Shan, our favourite Chinese restaurant.

We had an appointment with Kay, the optometrist at 2.45 and an appointment with the fridge people tomorrow at 2.00pm. The fridge people rang and asked to make it 9.00am tomorrow.

Kay was busy so Ron ended up seeing David.  It appears that there is still some active virus in Ron’s eyes so David has arranged an emergency appointment with a specialist, Dr John Pyle for 8.45 am tomorrow. Ron also has some scaring on his corneas as well.

We are staying at Newmarket Gardens Caravan Park tonight $35.10 (with CMCA discount). We will rearrange things (we have rescheduled the fridge) after we see the specialist.

Wednesday 13^th February

Number 13, lucky for some!!! We rocked up to the specialist after parking a million miles (typical Brisbane traffic) away and it seems the news is quite good. John has given Ron some drops and we have to go back in 3 weeks. What appeared to be active virus turned out to be antibodies still running about and the drops should fix that up and Ron’s eyes should continue to improve (the scarring abate) and John said that he has never seen a case yet where it has not gone back to normal with 12 months.

We then took the fridge up to Geoff and after much stressing and straining (and hitting with a big hammer) we managed to extract the fridge from the confines of the bus and leave it with him. Of course, it was not an obvious, quick fix, cheap problem so we are waiting for a diagnosis and quote.

We decided to go to Strathpine shops and buy a cheap foam esky to tide us over for the short term, when we ran into our friend Nelma. Aghast at the prospect of us buying an esky she insisted we borrow one of hers.

We have returned to Newmarket Gardens and are happily set up with our esky and our cold wine!!!! Oh, the simple pleasures!!! Thank you Nelma.

Thursday 14^th February

Today Ron and I are going to catch the bus into town and go to the APT7 exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art.

Armed with bus timetable information we set off and almost made it to the bus stop as the bus was leaving. We were crossing 4 lanes of peak hour traffic at the time. Undaunted, Ron flung himself against the driver’s door and begged admittance. Much to our surprise we were allowed aboard. Of course as the journey progressed, I realised I had misread the information and we were in fact on the wrong bus. We did arrive close to our destination and only had to endure a fairly short walk to the Gallery.

The Exhibition was really great – so many fabulous pieces. I just loved it!! Ron had a good time too.

One of the first pieces we came across was this fabulous flying carpet where you were invited to sit on it. This is so unusual in a gallery with security guards everywhere that I was a little hesitant, expecting alarms to sound, nets to drop from the ceiling and being escorted from the building in handcuffs. My fears proved to be unfounded and here I am!!!!

Some pieces were self explanatory while others warranted in depth discussion and critiquing……

 

 

Still others made you want to twirl around with gay abandon!

 

 

 

Ronnie got all inspired and produced his own arty shots of the Brisbane River and its environs!

 

 

So much colour!!!!!

 

 

 

And to top it all off, would you believe, on the way out, I ran into a dear old friend, Rhonda, who I have not seen for about four years!!!!

 

Who would have thought that in a city with a population of 1.8 million, you would bump into two friends in two days!!!!

 

Friday 15^th February

We have had so many kind offers of places to stay here, thank you all, and at the moment we are on our way to my friend, Christina’s house for a few days to catch our breath and work out how we will get to catch up with everyone while we are here.

We set out this morning and by lunch time, the sky had clouded over and the rain had begun to fall.

We stopped at Logan Hyperdome with the intention of going to the movies but there was nothing that sounded good so we went and stopped near a park and watched ‘The Sapphires’ on DVD. It is amazing how much power you have when you are not running a fridge!

We arrived at Christina’s late in the afternoon and after several glasses of celebratory wine and a beautiful dinner prepared by hubby, David we settled down to a rousing game of Euchre with Ron and I partnered against Christina and son, Sam. It has been years since we have played but we fought the good fight and only went down by one point.

I think we performed admirably in light of the lucky fall or cards that went the way of our opponents. Here is just a sample of the types of hands they would get.

 

 

 

We are quite concerned about Ron. I think he is missing Xander quite a bit……so much so that he has taken to nursing random kittens!!!!

Saturday 16^th February

Today was an at home day and we watched a Johnny Depp movie, ‘Dark Shadows’ and I watched my first ever Bollywood movie, ‘Rab ni bana di Jodi’……let’s just say the jury is still out on that one!!!!

Sunday 17^th February

This morning Christina has kindly lent us her car and we drove down to visit Cheryee.

We had the loveliest day. We started off with a rousing game of Boggle (with a much better outcome than Euchre – I won!!!!)  Then after lunch she invited the family round and we had a great old catch up.  Ron and I found ourselves feeling a little envious of the fact that Cheryee has all her grandsons just five minutes away.

 

My pains in my shoulders and arms have started up again and it is quite bad.   

Monday 18^th February

Still it rains!!!! Brisbane and the Gold Coast certainly have not put on their Welcome Home Weather for us!! Christina and I went to lodge her papers for her new job which she starts on Wednesday and had a lovely Thai lunch.

We had take away pizza for dinner – smoked salmon and anchovy on one and Black Angus beef and roasted pumpkin on the other……yummo!!!!!! (and very up market!)

My pains are getting worse and worse.

Tuesday 19^th February

Christina has put on her bossy voice and insisted I go to Yoga with her tonight to fix my pains. Ron has decided I need to sleep on an extra pillow and I have opted for drugs.

Wednesday 20^th February

It worked!!!! I don’t know which bit or if it was the combination of all three but today I am cured! It may not be permanent (in fact I’m sure it’s not) but I feel sooooo good.

This morning I went to Tai Chi and caught up with all the lovely ladies then it was off to have Coffee with Trish before high tailing it over to the north side (Brendale in fact) to pick up our fridge. $415.00 it cost but hopefully it is all better and good for many years of fault free service.

After we left Brendale it was off to the Breakfast Creek Hotel for pre-meeting drinks and then off to the Cricket Umpires Meeting.

I could not believe it……Ron broke the front tooth off his plate at lunch time and so has had to appear at the meeting homeless, toothless and living in a bus…..oh how the mighty have fallen….he used to be the Secretary of the Queensland Cricket Umpires.

It was a very pleasant evening and I’m sure no-one even noticed.

We returned the esky to Nelma.

 

 

Thursday 21^st February

We took Indie to our old mechanic down near Helensvale and had him all greased and oiled and his electrics checked and his motor tuned.

Ashleigh kindly lent us his car for the day while all this was being done and Ron and I went shopping and bought all kinds of goodies. I decided to buy myself a new pillow and use the Gift Card Cheryee had sent me for $mas. So off I went to Big W and found one for three cents less than the full value of the card….score! Of course when I got to the check out, the lovely lady informed me that it was a Coles, Meyer gift card and of absolutely no value in there. Undaunted, I then scuttled off to Target and after availing myself of their new Bra fitting service, and spending the best part of an hour there while the lady ran to and fro with what appeared to be their entire stock, I finally found one that fitted and now have some nice new $mas undies!!!!! (Don’t you just hate bra shopping!)

When we went to pick Indie up, the auto electrician told us that he had fixed the problem with Indie’s lights (we hadn’t noticed there was one because we never drive at night) but would need him back tomorrow to try and fix the wiring from the reversing camera and the CD, radio et al.

We drove back to Cristina’s and boy does Indie go like a dream….they did a great job.

David made us a lovely dinner and we got all the goss on Christina’s first day at her new job.

We have decided to move back down the Coast for a week so Ron can get stuck into the Stats for cricket (he is the Statistician after all) and we can do some serious catching up with folk.