Cake! Food! Shop! Games!

Southbound, D'Fo, the Chip, the Loop. These are the main landmarks along the five times e-tagged road to Frankston.

This particular five-day holiday had the following goals:
1. Catch up with family.
2. Relax a lot.
3. Go shopping for two particular items.



Goals met:
1. Caught up with family.
2. Relaxed a little.
3. Went to three different shopping complexes (Bayside Shopping Center, Centro Karingal, and Essendon DFO) and acquired one of the desired items plus 8 additional items, none of which were my original intended purchase.

Other highlights included:
* Completing Lolo 3 (a repetitive puzzle game in which I had minimal involvement).
* Feeding the pelicans at Hastings (fish heads are disgusting and very smelly).
* Playing cards (it's good for the brain).
* Eating way too much nice food (simulaneously the upside and the downside of visiting good cooks).

O Tannenbaum

Yesterday Stoz and I went out and bought a Christmas tree! I'd never done that before, so it was very exciting for me. The tree was of course from our favourite store, Aldi (with which I happen to have the good fortune of sharing a street, I might add). The decorations are predominantly gold and blue, with some red for contrast, and as of yet no tinsel. We also picked up some LED lattern-shaped lights, because LEDs use less power and last longer, and so in Stoz's words are "good for the environment, good for the pocket" (plus they just have that 'cool' factor).

Finding the tree-topping star was the hardest part. We couldn't find anything that didn't look really tacky (there were nice glass ones at Aldi though), but finally found one in Safeway of all places. This was another LED decoration which does this cool fade between colours, retro fiberoptic tree style!

We got all the stuff back to Stoz's house and managed to set it up - a feat of several hours. The tree happens to have a 'bald spot' which is at least not so noticeable with the decorations on it. We didn't have enough lights to fit around it, and we hung the lanterns in the back room near the dining table (they look great there). So five hours from when we began, there is now a tree in his lounge room. Not bad for a first effort. In fact, I'd say pretty good.

P.S. O Tannenbaum = O Christmas Tree (German)