An assignment-free weekend.
Oct. 26th, 2009 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccI took the weekend off, much to Dean's relief. Saturday we got up early (well, earlyish) and headed into the Last Days of Pompeii exhibition, which finished on Sunday. We'd actually tried to go two Sundays ago, but the queue at 10am (when the museum opened) was out the door, and the earliest time we could get in was 1.30pm. Which wasn't going to work because I had an early soccer game, so we had brunch on Lygon St and went home instead.
The important piece of information we'd discovered though was that you could book tickets online for this exhibition. Well, you could if the site was up. Which it wasn't the four times I tried it.
The fifth time, which was Friday night, the site was finally working. That was because they'd stopped selling tickets online. On the other hand we did find out that they were opening the exhibition from 6.30am to midnight on the Saturday, so we headed in at 7.30am and entered the exhibition at 8am. It was still busy, but not jam packed.
The exhibition was interesting, but not particularly well set out - it wasn't obvious which way you were supposed to go around it, and the majority of people turned left upon entering, and then had to go back to look at the first bit. I can't remember if people normally turn left or right, but in this case everyone seemed to have decided that left was the logical choice. There was one part of the exhibition where everything came to a dead halt - this turned out to be because they had interactive screens around a corner, which of course people were using. The queue couldn't tell what was going on though and just stopped. (I skipped that bit and then went back to it later from the opposite direction which is how I found out.) Dean totally missed the 3D film because the queue was enormous and spilling over into where people were exiting - I know there are space issues, but that one does seem like a problem. I really enjoyed the 3D film - everything so calm and normal at 8am, then becoming worse and worse until the final blow the following morning, leaving a completely unrecognisable landscape behind. It must have been terrifying to live through - I hadn't realised the death toll was both higher (approximately 2000 people) and lower (of a population of approximately 12,000) than I'd thought. At least the majority of people had the time to escape - which did make you wonder about those who died, particularly the young. The one that creeped me out the most was the poor bloke in shackles, who had managed to crawl in his chains as far as the city gates before the pyroclastic flow killed him. God knows why he was chained - a slave, a criminal, both, who knows - but it was an horrific way to die. Some must have stayed to protect property, some to loot it - and some of course because they were property and weren't permitted to leave. And then you'd have those who were ill or immobile or just dithered too long. I can understand the dithering, although I think I'd have left when the choking ash started at least.
Then again, I also watched Supervolcano and possibly have some additional information handy. Like that big mountain over there? A volcano. An active volcano. Yeah, just because it's done nothing in 700 years doesn't make it inactive... what was Mt Dandenong doing in the 1300s I wonder? The volcanoes around Portland were certainly active.
After we finished the exhibition (which was packed with enormous queues again by the time we left at 10am) we headed to Lygon St for coffee, then to Myers to get a gift for my cousin's wedding later that afternoon. One crepe-pan later - after finally managing to find a counter which had staff on it, both of whom promptly vanished as I got to the front of the queue - it was up to Whittlesea to collect some stuff, then back home to get ready for the wedding. Dean hadn't slept well, so napped on the couch while I tried not to get too irritated by the pain nurse's e-mail.
The wedding was at 5pm, so at 3pm I woke Dean, had a quick shower and discovered I had no formal dresses in my cupboard anywhere. Which was odd, because I distinctly remembered having two. A couple of panic-stricken moments followed until I remembered that I'd lent both of them to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kirstenfleur at the start of 2008. Obviously I've not had a lot of formal events recently. I rang her, she was home and fortunately lives en route to the wedding venue. It would have been tricky trying to either buy a dress or find one at quite that short notice. We headed over, and I got changed there and did my makeup - watched intently by my 2 year old niece, who I don't think has ever seen anyone put lipstick on before. Heh.
The wedding was out in the Dandenongs, at a former farmhouse which has been converted to a cafe. The view was gorgeous, across blue hills and surprisingly green farmland. The wedding was of course fantastic - funny moments include my cousin coming down the 'aisle' between the rosebushes and having to stop and untangle her veil from the thorns, the photographer getting all of the guests to move out of the background of his shot - we were standing there because there was sun and it was warm - and the matron of honour ("I'm the shy and retiring bridesmaid") presenting my cousin with 'something blue' - a set of NZ flags. All of the bridesmaids turned out to be Kiwis, although one now lives in the UK and another in Melbourne. In keeping with the rural theme, the meal was pretty much beef - apparently my uncle bought a cow. (There was also salad, thank God.)
The only thing that irritated me slightly was the service - we kept running out of water on the table, and it was never automatically replaced (the wine bottles, on the other hand, were) - I had to keep asking if we could have more water and the reactions I got ranged from helpful and cheerful to irritated. Sorry, but your venue is an hour's drive away from my house, and around a third of the guests were driving. Not to mention that if you read your "responsible serving of alcohol" pamphlet I'm pretty sure that they mention having non-alcoholic drinks as available as the alcoholic ones. A minor gripe, but it did lead to me being more hungover than I probably would have been otherwise - I gave up towards the end and just drank more wine. And danced the nutbush (not related to the wine drinking, honest). (I did mention Dean was driving, right?)
The next day was a post-wedding BBQ, which was at my aunt and uncle's place. Which is about 5 minutes drive from the wedding venue. Dean was sick with some virus or something he'd been coming down with the night before, so I headed off on my own having first done some rough calculations of whether my blood alcohol would be legal or not. I was fairly sure it was - more than 12 hours since I'd stopped drinking for starters, and I hadn't actually drunk that much either. None of which stopped me being paranoid about it. At the wedding BBQ I met a woman who I hadn't seen for at least 20 years, and who recognised me. How do people do that? I knew her face, but it wasn't until she told me she was from Warragul that I clicked. And even then it took me an hour before I could remember her surname (although by that point I had a mental image of her as a 15 year old - in Guide uniform what's more! - and knew who her mum and aunt were.)
Driving back from the BBQ I turned left instead of right and came the scenic route home via Belgrave. Oops. Only an extra half hour or so.
I was all set to crash on the couch when Dean's mum rang to ask if I could emergency babysit for half an hour or so. So I headed over to Dean's brother's place (with Dean) to play with my niece and let Dean's brother and his wife head off to their function. Amy was happy and chirpy despite having an ear infection and being extremely snotty. So far I haven't come down with her cold! Dean's mum arrived shortly after so we handed her back over and I went home and finally crashed.
All up it was a really nice weekend. And now I should get going on assignment #2, and finish my tax. Argh.
The important piece of information we'd discovered though was that you could book tickets online for this exhibition. Well, you could if the site was up. Which it wasn't the four times I tried it.
The fifth time, which was Friday night, the site was finally working. That was because they'd stopped selling tickets online. On the other hand we did find out that they were opening the exhibition from 6.30am to midnight on the Saturday, so we headed in at 7.30am and entered the exhibition at 8am. It was still busy, but not jam packed.
The exhibition was interesting, but not particularly well set out - it wasn't obvious which way you were supposed to go around it, and the majority of people turned left upon entering, and then had to go back to look at the first bit. I can't remember if people normally turn left or right, but in this case everyone seemed to have decided that left was the logical choice. There was one part of the exhibition where everything came to a dead halt - this turned out to be because they had interactive screens around a corner, which of course people were using. The queue couldn't tell what was going on though and just stopped. (I skipped that bit and then went back to it later from the opposite direction which is how I found out.) Dean totally missed the 3D film because the queue was enormous and spilling over into where people were exiting - I know there are space issues, but that one does seem like a problem. I really enjoyed the 3D film - everything so calm and normal at 8am, then becoming worse and worse until the final blow the following morning, leaving a completely unrecognisable landscape behind. It must have been terrifying to live through - I hadn't realised the death toll was both higher (approximately 2000 people) and lower (of a population of approximately 12,000) than I'd thought. At least the majority of people had the time to escape - which did make you wonder about those who died, particularly the young. The one that creeped me out the most was the poor bloke in shackles, who had managed to crawl in his chains as far as the city gates before the pyroclastic flow killed him. God knows why he was chained - a slave, a criminal, both, who knows - but it was an horrific way to die. Some must have stayed to protect property, some to loot it - and some of course because they were property and weren't permitted to leave. And then you'd have those who were ill or immobile or just dithered too long. I can understand the dithering, although I think I'd have left when the choking ash started at least.
Then again, I also watched Supervolcano and possibly have some additional information handy. Like that big mountain over there? A volcano. An active volcano. Yeah, just because it's done nothing in 700 years doesn't make it inactive... what was Mt Dandenong doing in the 1300s I wonder? The volcanoes around Portland were certainly active.
After we finished the exhibition (which was packed with enormous queues again by the time we left at 10am) we headed to Lygon St for coffee, then to Myers to get a gift for my cousin's wedding later that afternoon. One crepe-pan later - after finally managing to find a counter which had staff on it, both of whom promptly vanished as I got to the front of the queue - it was up to Whittlesea to collect some stuff, then back home to get ready for the wedding. Dean hadn't slept well, so napped on the couch while I tried not to get too irritated by the pain nurse's e-mail.
The wedding was at 5pm, so at 3pm I woke Dean, had a quick shower and discovered I had no formal dresses in my cupboard anywhere. Which was odd, because I distinctly remembered having two. A couple of panic-stricken moments followed until I remembered that I'd lent both of them to
kirstenfleur at the start of 2008. Obviously I've not had a lot of formal events recently. I rang her, she was home and fortunately lives en route to the wedding venue. It would have been tricky trying to either buy a dress or find one at quite that short notice. We headed over, and I got changed there and did my makeup - watched intently by my 2 year old niece, who I don't think has ever seen anyone put lipstick on before. Heh.The wedding was out in the Dandenongs, at a former farmhouse which has been converted to a cafe. The view was gorgeous, across blue hills and surprisingly green farmland. The wedding was of course fantastic - funny moments include my cousin coming down the 'aisle' between the rosebushes and having to stop and untangle her veil from the thorns, the photographer getting all of the guests to move out of the background of his shot - we were standing there because there was sun and it was warm - and the matron of honour ("I'm the shy and retiring bridesmaid") presenting my cousin with 'something blue' - a set of NZ flags. All of the bridesmaids turned out to be Kiwis, although one now lives in the UK and another in Melbourne. In keeping with the rural theme, the meal was pretty much beef - apparently my uncle bought a cow. (There was also salad, thank God.)
The only thing that irritated me slightly was the service - we kept running out of water on the table, and it was never automatically replaced (the wine bottles, on the other hand, were) - I had to keep asking if we could have more water and the reactions I got ranged from helpful and cheerful to irritated. Sorry, but your venue is an hour's drive away from my house, and around a third of the guests were driving. Not to mention that if you read your "responsible serving of alcohol" pamphlet I'm pretty sure that they mention having non-alcoholic drinks as available as the alcoholic ones. A minor gripe, but it did lead to me being more hungover than I probably would have been otherwise - I gave up towards the end and just drank more wine. And danced the nutbush (not related to the wine drinking, honest). (I did mention Dean was driving, right?)
The next day was a post-wedding BBQ, which was at my aunt and uncle's place. Which is about 5 minutes drive from the wedding venue. Dean was sick with some virus or something he'd been coming down with the night before, so I headed off on my own having first done some rough calculations of whether my blood alcohol would be legal or not. I was fairly sure it was - more than 12 hours since I'd stopped drinking for starters, and I hadn't actually drunk that much either. None of which stopped me being paranoid about it. At the wedding BBQ I met a woman who I hadn't seen for at least 20 years, and who recognised me. How do people do that? I knew her face, but it wasn't until she told me she was from Warragul that I clicked. And even then it took me an hour before I could remember her surname (although by that point I had a mental image of her as a 15 year old - in Guide uniform what's more! - and knew who her mum and aunt were.)
Driving back from the BBQ I turned left instead of right and came the scenic route home via Belgrave. Oops. Only an extra half hour or so.
I was all set to crash on the couch when Dean's mum rang to ask if I could emergency babysit for half an hour or so. So I headed over to Dean's brother's place (with Dean) to play with my niece and let Dean's brother and his wife head off to their function. Amy was happy and chirpy despite having an ear infection and being extremely snotty. So far I haven't come down with her cold! Dean's mum arrived shortly after so we handed her back over and I went home and finally crashed.
All up it was a really nice weekend. And now I should get going on assignment #2, and finish my tax. Argh.
