spring is back

although we really needed the rain (and a lot did fall in the catchment areas) i'm soooooo glad to see the sun again. it was starting to feel very vancouver like with all the rain, grey sky and coldness. i decided to celebrate the sunshine this afternoon by cleaning up the back yard a bit, doing a lot of laundry (i had been putting it off because of the rain) and then relaxing with a margarita and some good music.

wombat even joined me for a while and started working on her belly tan (it'll be black in a few weeks):
she's a bit of an idiot though and stays laying in the sun, even when she's too hot. she's panting in this photo: i did force her to go get a drink after i took the photo (she was back out in belly tan position 10 minutes later).

curling up on the couch

i wanted to go up to sydney road this afternoon (mainly to get ice cream from the radical grocery) but i don't think that's gonna happen. its really dark for 4:45pm and the rain has been coming on and off most of the day (and the one point where it wasn't raining i took the dog for a walk since she was going crazy in the house). i'm not gonna put all my raingear on just to ride up in the cold rain for ice cream. it's good for all my new little veggie seedlings though. i haven't had to water them since i planted them 4 days ago cuz they've had good rain fall on them every day.

lotf

i finally tried lord of the fries today. don't know why i've never been there. probably cuz i rarely go into that part of the city and when i do i'm not hungry or i'm rushing to/from a train. i even faught the massive footy crowds who were trying to keep dry while waiting for the parade to start (i forgot there's a parade the day before the grand final-- i wondered why so many st kilda fans where getting on the tram all in their team colours/clothing). i just got the fries with the frech-canadian toppings (vegan gravy and "cheese"). they were sooooo good. just what i wanted today. i'll have to go back and get a burger or something at some point. now i'm gonna finish setting up our new set top box so we can get all the extra free to air channels (so now we'll have 7 or 8 channels of nothing on instead of 5).

summer?

it's suddenly summer today! 29C and sunny (most of the time). i think tomorrow is supposed to go back to normal high teens sort of temps but it was nice to have a day or so of summer. the wind is driving me absolutely crazy though. yesterday it was so bad when i rode home at lunch there was no way i was getting back on my bike to go back to work so i walked. it was still blowing bits of hair in my eyes and pushing me around. today when we were walking home we could hear a sound that was a bit like a jet engine being distorted by wind. when it didn't go away after a minute or so we realized it wasn't a passing plane but it was just the wind howling over everything. it was really weird how it wasn't just howling going around any specific building but it was just doing it in the air overhead. it's also weird of the graph above how the humidity and dew point suddenly plunged in the last hour or 2. the wind has also mostly died down just now too. its weird feeling warm, dry air and having quietness.

the celebration continues

i got to keep celebrating my birthday with a nite out on wednesday. we went for dinner at white lotus (mmmmm....tamarind "fish") and then off to somewhere in the city that zac kept as a surprise. we ended up at the anthenaeum where tex perkins was doing a show called "the man in black". it was the story of johnny cash mixed in with his music. it was a really good show.
until wednesday i'd also forgotten one of my other highlights from our canada trip. while we were in portland we saw a johnny cash cover band (counterfeit cash) do a show at a pub. it was really impressive (it was kind of weird looking at the guy cuz he looked nothing like johnny cash but did really well at johnny cash's vocal sound). he even did some of the cover songs johnny cash did on his american recordings albums (you gotta be a pretty good impersonator to be able to pull of covers of covers).

birthday weekend

for my birthday dinner i wanted to try shakahari in carlton. it's odd we'd never gone there before last weekend because its a very vegan friendly vegetarian restaurant and only a couple kms from home (and one of the oldest veggie restaurants in melbourne). soooooo goood! we shared the avocado rolls for our entree (appetizer to north americans). i got the marcopolo gift for my main and zac had a vegan lasagna made with quinoa. the meals were the perfect size and i still had a bit of room for dessert but we decided to go for a walk down lygon street to one of the gelato places and get vegan sorbet.

my actual birthday was on sunday and we had a wedding to go to. it was the brother of the groom of the wedding we went to in february. the ceremony was at the same greek orthodox church the groom's brother's wedding was at:

the reception was at quat quatta. they did an amazing job of our vegan meals. i was a little worried about our meals because this was the first wedding i've been vegan at. in the past, my vegetarian meals have been good and filling mostly because of the amount of cheese. zac's vegan meals have always been good but very small because the chefs don't seem to take into account that when you put a few veggies on a plate (with no grain or protein) it's not going to be a filling meal like the meat mains are. we were stuffed by the end of this meal. we had 2 rolls with some veggies at the start of the meal from a share platter on the table. then we had avocado salads (with about 1/2 an avocado for each of us). the main was a stack of grilled veggies that were done really nicely. our dessert was a bowl of berries (i LOVE berries and was excited to find out that was our dessert over the usual fruit salad that zac has always had at weddings). the parents of the groom:his mom is soooo sweet. i've only met her a few times in the past but she greeted me at the church with "happy birthday, shawna!" i was pretty amazed she remembered considering her son's wedding was about to start. at the reception she came up to me a couple times and wished me a happy birthday and at the end of the nite she told me she had planned on getting me a little mini birthday cake but remembered i was vegan and didn't know where to buy a little vegan birthday cake. i was sooooo full when we left there's no way i could have eaten any birthday cake.