A picnic, a fabulous weekend and organising the appleTV

For my b'day festivus last weekend we planned on going for a picnic, with the weather we had to cancel (not bad thing still had a fantastic party at home) but today we had the picnic over again.

It was brilliant, a beautiful day (although a little too much sun judging by my arms) and super relaxing. We went for brunch and stayed until about 10:30...

Picnic in the Park (April 09)

There was only a small (but hilarious FAIL) with the butter the whole day. It really was the perfect way to finish a fabulous weekend. The source of it's fabulousness was that I managed to achieve exactly nothing. Saturday I pottered around, caught up with some friends and progressed a little further through GTA:CTW (if you own a DS you should really pick up this game if you're after a more adult experience than the 4000th revision of Pokemon). Today was a wander along the river, then one to New Farm Park for a picnic and then home. I had started a whole list of jobs to get done this weekend and unsurprisingly that list is still standing... just the way the weekend should be.

The only thing that can partially be labelled acheivement is some organisation of my itunes  and iphoto library. Having the AppleTV has meant that I'm seeing a lot more photos while I've got music playing so I've been sorting through albums both old and new trying to get a good selection of photos. I've also discovered that I lot of CDs I own haven't made it to the itunes library so I've been moving the CDs over to the iMac while I've been sorting through the photos. As a result I've also got some more photos to upload so in no specific order here are few more albums

Holiday on the Beach (April 09)

Zachary and his cousins

Zach's first ferry trip

Misc Zachary Shots

Tasmania: By Photos

Now I'm back to some real internet it's time for the photos. A trip away was the perfect time to tryout the new camera so there are quite a few shots.

Hobart Trip - Jan 09

Targa Tasmania

Hasting Caves

Macro

Tasmania: Gluten Free goodness, Spelunking and the Targa

The trip to Tasmania has come with some good surprises. Last night we stumbled across a floating fish and chip store in Huonville that was a haven of gluten free goodness. They did almost everything gluten free, there was so much choice I ended up having 2 dinners. Ness ordered me a hamburger and crumbed fish AND crumbed calimari all gluten free. There was even a selection of gluten free desserts. The food was fantastic, some of best Fish and Chips ever. 

Today we set out for some spelunking at the Hastings caves. There wasn't much warning with regards to how cold it was on the brochure. To start with it was actually a cold day (as compared to to the hottest day on record we had yesterday), the 9 degrees in the cave though was a bit of a different story. I think something more than shorts and a tshirt would have been a good start. Fortunately Zach had plenty of clothes so he was rugged up (beenie and all) ready for spelunking. The caves were great and the Gorillapod came through with some great cave shots, not to mention the Pentax's performance (unfortunately I'm still on GPRS so the photos will have to wait until I come back).

On the way home, we managed to join a (non competition) stage of the Targa and weaved our way home between some 911s and WRXs. The stage went past our B&B so I took the Pentax out for some more shots. Fortunately there were still quite a few cars behind us so I got a couple of nice photos.

Tonight we were down to the last of the recommended restuarants in town, the local pub. I was pretty suprised at the meal (to start with it was HUGE) and it was a really good steak as well. They had some pretty impressive desserts as well, but I'm still holding out for another slice of GF Cheesecake from the Huon House Boat Fish and chips store.

It's been a really good weekend away and the Watson's B&B in Huonville has been outstanding, I would recommend it to anyone wanting to stay just outside Hobart.

I think I'm going to end the night with some Port and Cheesecake, while the others are playing cards.

San Francisco, Day 2

It's another beautiful day here, I think I'm going to try and hit the shops today (at least in the middle part). The Sunburn from yesterday won't be much fun if I repeat it today. I didn't bring any sunscreen with me and so far haven't found one I'm not allergic to.

I really wanted to get to Alcatraz today, but the labor day holiday has foiled my plans with tickets really hard to come by. I did have some successful shopping yesterday, highlighted by a trip to BabyGap for some stuff for Paris.

(Un)Fortunately I've only brought small bags and they are pretty packed already so there won't be much room for any really big shopping sprees...

This is my last day in San Francisco proper, tonight (and for the rest of the week) I'm staying out at Pleasanton. Yesterday was fantastic (apart from the sunburn, which is more embarrassing than anything) got to see lots of great sights and pack in quite a few different things yesterday. My favourite though has to be the cable car ride at night. Hanging off the front of the through the lit streets was great.

Ness is keeping me up to date with everything that is going on back home... which is fantastic.

A big day of sight seeing in San Francisco

I tried to pack a lot into today, for one tomorrow is Labor (sic) day so I'm not really sure what is and isn't open and two it was a really beautiful day...

I've updated some more photos and I know I promised to blog but it's late, I'm sunburnt and the jetlag are all too much....

Quick Highlights
Golden Gate Bridge
Union Square
Riding on the outside of a cable car
The Pier
Lombard St
and a fabulous steak dinner at the Urban Tavern.

A few SF Photos...

Just back for a quick camera upload and a snack before I'm off to hit the shops...

Here are some of the snaps... hopefully I'll get a couple of night shots tonight

San Francisco

Landed in San Francisco....

Not much to report really, flight was bumpy but uneventful.. I've checked into my Hotel and am about to head out to take in some sights.

The view from my hotel isn't much... but it's nice to have a view all the same.

On an annoying note.... my phone doesn't work. Not sure if it's the network or the phone but either way I've got no communication other than my laptop.

Leg 1 over, onto leg 2...

I've made it to Sydney, checked in (again) and swept through customs in record time so it's back to the story from before.

So after a failed web check in, it was a similar story with the kiosk at the terminal (that has a useless interface) which promptly spat out a "go see the service desk". The service desk told me that I couldn't check in there/web/kiosk because I was on an international connecting flight and sent me on my way. I sat in the international queue for about 20 mins, to only be called back to the service desk to check me in because international was too busy...

Fortunately United were much friendlier only adding further fuel to my "Qantas are terrible" stigma.

The added bonus of "you don't have a seat, want to upgrade to business class?" is that I'm now also enjoying the Air New Zealand lounge.

A new post from my phone.

I promise a more in depth post about our weekend vm melbourne but I've just reconfigured blogging from my phone so I figured now was as good a time as any. The weekend was great a bit cold, which was a great excuse to buy a new jacket, but relaxing. Here's what we got up to:
Art Deco exhibition
Design expo
Design markets
Shopping at bridge road and chapel st
More than enough chocolate to last a lifetime. (on that note San Churro has the best hot chocolate!)

Happy Easter!!!!

I know it's a little early but I'm heading home for the long weekend and a week off so I thought I'd get in early as I'm going to try not to use my laptop much... unless of course my new laptop turns up.

Oh in response to Mick's post this week.... here's an email I got this week...

Customer 2 (in Sydney) would like Cameron to assist with the New Project. I appreciate Cameron is a little tied up at the moment with Customer 1 (also in Sydney), however Customer 2 want this work carried out ASAP. Therefore dare I request that we ask Cameron to work on this for say 4 hours per night with Customer 2 until it is finished?

'nuf said (not there was not complaining... I could have said "harden up princess", but didn't)

In other news, my DS may soon be on the mend with the case turning up this week. Also another pile of HD titles apparently turned up so there will be a lot of movie watching in my future I can foresee..

A very cold day at the cricket

It was a very bumpy ride in to both Melbourne and Hobart last night. I also had to run between gates once my flight landed (45 mins late) from Sydney. The ride was so bumpy it's the first time I've ever felt sick on a plane.

The other fun part was the rain in Hobart and the long walk to the terminal, with no aerobridge.

Today we went to watch the Domestic One Day Cricket final in Hobart between Tasmania and Victoria. It didn't really feel like a summers day in the cricket, despite the 35+ temperatures in Brisbane we were lucky to break 15 in Hobart, the wind was a bit of killer as well.

There was some good cricket, lots of wickets falling made for an exciting morning session. There was a bit of rain in the second session and when it came to the big rain delay we called it quits and headed home to watch the end of play

Cricket in Hobart

The game came down to the wire with rain shortened rules and wickets falling very fast with the wet pitch.

Only 3 off the last 2 overs seemed an easy target but 2 quick wickets made it a nail biter. But the number 11 survived to put Birt on strike for the final over and edge the first ball to win.

My HD-DVD collection is also growing with Valavien tracking down a HD sale at Video Ezy and picking up some more cheap titles.

Europe Photos, some more

I've started uploading the photos I took on my real camera while we were overseas.

Holiday Post Cards

I've called the album Postcards from Europe and I'm including all the big attraction photos of the trip. One of the best things about the upload is there is a new feature from Blogger allowing you to put the photos in a slideshow in the blog (I'm going to leave all the camera phone photos up as well). As a result I've done a bit of a redesign of the layout of the blog... There's still a bit of work to do but I figure there will be a bit of time to play around while I'm in Townsville this week. I don't have many more photos but there will probably be some more changes to the blog.

Speaking of Townsville, for dinner tonight we went to the Watermark Restaurant on the The Stand and they had the most fantastic Orange and Chocolate Brulee for desert. If you're in Townsville it's worth a look.