Mundane Daily Life

This week’s exciting news is not as flashy as a 3 day camping trip and playing with a fox. But here goes….

Tuesday evening I went to Acland Street and had a few drinks with a friend Tony Wilson. He recently closed his aquarium store, The Funky Fish after 10 years in business and needed someone to have a few drinks with. You know me, if there’s drinking to be done and a friend in need, I’m the person to count on. Acland Street is a main drag in St Kilda (the neighbourhood next to the one I live in) We sat at one of the sidewalk tables and watched all sorts of people parade by. One really young queen with his Chihuahua in a little pack back came into the restaurant. Not a very butch looks at all. But his dog was comfortable. That was 2 or 3 glass of vodka on the rocks into the evening. Tony and I had several comments, none of which I can really repeat here. The evening itself was pretty warm and there was a beautiful sunset. Sorry, I didn’t have my camera with me. This was a day that hit 34 degrees (95 Fahrenheit). So a lot of people were out and enjoying the summer weather until late in the evening.

Wednesday cooled off a bit and was only 30C (86 F). I had my first sax lesson with Justine. She’s a jazz musician that is doing lesson to make a little money on the side. Justine is teaching me some tone exercises that allow me to make multiple notes holding the same fingering for all of them. I’m told this will greatly improve my embrasure (the way I hold my mouth while playing) and my overall abilities. We’re also doing some rhythm exercises too. She’s not as formal as Meg, my instructor back in Portland, but I think I’ll learn a lot from her. My hope is that she can help me get through some of the more difficult parts of the Rainbow Band’s holiday pieces.

Thursday night was band practice. Our conductor, Mark, is trying out a bunch of pieces to see what to put into the Christmas concert on Saturday December 13th. This concert we’ll be joined by the Melbourne Gay Men’s Chorus and will take place at Pharhan (pa-ran) Market. It’s one of the open air, local vendor produce, meats and other goods markets like the Queen Victoria Market I have mentioned in earlier blogs. This particular market has a court yard area and restaurants all around, kind of like a food court at a mall but with NO chain food. It’s all mom and pop places with a great variety of yummy things to eat. Also, on Thursday Michael flew up to Byron Bay to visit some friends for a week and left me the house, his laptop and his car all to myself.
Friday evening I went to a gay bar I hadn’t been to yet called “DT’s”. It’s a local neighbourhood kind of place in Richmond. One of my band mates, Eric, currently sings with the Melbourne Opera but is moving to Florence Italy to sing with the opera there too. He’ll travel between the 2 cities performing for both groups at their events. He won’t be back in Melbourne until February so some of us wished him well. That bar closed at 1:30 (the first time I’ve managed to close a bar here) so a few of us went over to “The Market” to dance the night away. This place is the young hip techno music club that doesn’t even start to get busy until after midnight and closes at 9am. I left there at 4:15am which was a lot later than I expected the evening to be when I got started at 8pm. It was fun. I hadn’t danced like that in a long time.

Saturday morning I was up by 10 am. I know I’m quite surprised too. But the dancing had worked out most of the alcohol I consumed at the first bar. I took Michael’s car and ran to the frame shop where I was getting my dad’s charcoal print framed and picked it up. It looks really good and is now the only piece of art work up in our apartment. Because the walls are all concrete and we’re not allowed o make holes. I just put it on top of one of the book shelves. The rest of Saturday was spent running errands and farting around the house. I reorganized my bedroom a little. The closet had just been packed with stuff when I moved in and needed to be re arranged to be more functional now that I have all my clothes in too. I managed to find a bag of stuff to donate to charity and was able to finally get all of the stuff out of one corner of my room. So now you can walk around the entire bed. Saturday evening I was to meet Giacomo (my Italian pastry chef friend) at Sircut so I needed to nap for a few hours to have the energy to meet him at 10pm. He had a friend in town from Brisbane and we partied the night away there. This time I managed to leave the bar shortly after 3am.

Sunday I was up at the early hour of 10am ( 2 days in a row this is VERY surprising even to me) and then finished up some left over tasks at the house before practicing the sax for about 2 hours. Around 4pm I went to another new gay bar, The Prince of Wales in St Kilda to meet yet another band mate, Andy. (He’s in the overalls picture from the Numurkah bus trip in an earlier blog) I met some of his friends which are all very nice. We chatted for a while then went to a Malaysian place to for dinner. Another beautiful day in Melbourne came to an end I was home by 8:30 and in bed at 9…. I SOO needed to catch up on my sleep and to get ready for Monday morning back to work… putting me here and now typing up this blog.

I am planning on making a Thanksgiving dinner for a few friends on Sunday the 30th. So part of the weekend was spent looking and pricing items for the dinner. I found 2 places where I can get a whole turkey. (Australians eat turkey at Xmas and save ham for Easter I guess) They are about $8 a kilo which works out to approximately $2.50 a lb US. One place could only get them up to 4 kilos (9lbs) another said they could get them up to 10 Kilos (22lbs) I’m going to place an order this week for a 7 kilo bird. This should be enough for 6 to 10 people. The best thing is this bird comes fresh not frozen. This will allow me to marinate it for a couple days before cooking. I don’t plan on stuffing it. We have Stovetop here so I’ll just buy that. I haven’t cooked a turkey in years but I’m sure I’ll be able to figure it out and all will go smoothly. I was able to find the Durkee Onions for green been casserole at the USA food store a few weeks back. But I can’t find cranberry sauce. I’ll have to keep looking for that one.

I also booked my auto ferry ride and my car rental for my big camping trip at the holidays. Some of you know where I’m going but for some it’s still a secret… and here’s another clue. It’ll take an 8 hour boat ride to get there and once I arrive there’s only open ocean beyond to Antarctica. Anyone want to make a guess where I’m going??

I don’t really have any pictures to post and this week is proving to be just as exciting as last week. The gym Monday, Wednesday, Friday, practice the sax on Tuesday and band practice on Thursday. I’m sorry this blog is a little boring but that’s how it goes sometimes. They all can’t be big exciting trips.

Take care and I’ll see you all next week. Brian