S and D Do Victoria (or parts thereof) Part IV - Airports and death

The final day of our three day whirlwind saw us off to Hanging Rock early in the day. For those of you who are unaware, there was an eerie story surrounding the place that start in the seventies. If you'd like to learn more, love Wikipedia. It loves you.

Before we left I told her she'd been in my dream again the night before. If she was unimpressed last time, this time she was.. even less impressed than that. We were standing in queue at the supermarket. Even in my dreams, I'm not very entertaining.

At Hanging Rock we tried to determine how to tackle the different tracks through the place. Feeling game, we tried the summit walk first. It almost killed me, and we hardly went anywhere. I really couldn't believe exactly how unfit I am, so I learned something about myself that day.

Failing the summit walk, we went and got some water from the cafe place (probably should have taken water with us, you live and you learn) and sat for awhile before setting off again. This time, the base walk.

We'd hardly started the base walk when we saw an interesting sign. "Snakes occur naturally in this area". Snakes can be scary critters if you let them get close enough to you, and I just kept getting flashes of either of us being bitten by one. I guess that's crazy though, it's a tourist destination after all, there'd be people walking there all day, the snakes wouldn't want to be anywhere near the path.

When we finished up at Hanging Rock we went to a shopping centre and wandered for a few hours. The weekend was drawing to a close now, and I could feel it. (And, as a side note, I also got the complete "Black Books" DVD for a bargain price of $25. I couldn't believe it.)

She got me to take her back to the airport about two hours before her flight was ready to go. That's just how exciting I am, people would rather sit in a queue than spend time with me. But hey, that's life (or at least my life)

I haven't really heard from her since she left. I don't know where the friendship is heading, and if it ends at least we've had a fun ride. If it grows, I'll embrace it as it comes.

I guess in life, sometimes all you can do is enjoy the present, accept what changes, put on a smile and go about your business.

S and D do Victoria- Part III The Zoo and a Sunday drive

The next blog in the series takes place on the Saturday.

Saturday was Zoo day. I think it's the only thing out of the whole weekend she was really looking forward to, and the only part of the weekend she really enjoyed.

We are both early to rise, so there was a bit of sitting and waiting before we left to make sure we didn't get there before the zoo opened.

At the zoo, we of course saw lots of different animals. Some of them were very cute, some of them were quite entertaining, some of them just looked depressed. The tiger in particular falls in to that category. He was just pacing backwards and forwards along the wall of his enclosure. It was very sad.

We also spent some time in the butterfly house, which I think was the ultimate highlight of the weekend for her. She even got her photo taken with a butterfly on her hand. Sure, it seemed incredibly ill and therefore she was able to scoop it up off the floor rather than waiting for it to land on her, but anyone looking at the picture wouldn't realise that.

After lunch she got her face painted and looked adoreable. It provided one of my favourite (if not my absolute favourite) picture of the weekend.

When we'd done all there was to do at the zoo, we stopped by the gift shop and I picked up some goodies for my neice. I can't wait to give them to her.

Time to leave the zoo now and we didn't really have any place else to go. Again, if I were a better tour guide I would have planned another activity for the afternoon, but I didn't expect to be out of there as early as we were.

So we spent the afternoon just driving randomly. With neither of us being "car talkers" it lead to great periods of silence. I did learn a bit about her in the few conversations we had however, so it was worthwhile.

I also told her she'd been in my dream the night before. She sounded thrilled *I know sarcasm is hard to portray over the Internet, but that didn't stop me trying*

All I remembered from the dream though was I was sitting in a car and she was walking towards it.

That about covers Saturday's highlights. Tune in tomorrow as I wrap up the weekend!

S and D do Victoria (or parts thereof)- Part II Street Performances & Rainbows

As you will recall from the last blog, I spent the weekend with an old friend of mine. I went into detail about the friend, but not the events of the weekend. So here we go, day one.

It started at the airport. We met, hugs were exchanged, we were walking back to my car and she had a card and pressie for me (she's so lovely and generous), we loaded up the car and we were on our way. Or so I thought. Until we got to the gates and..
"I hope you got the ticket"
"What ticket? Was I supposed to get that?"
"Yes you were, don't tell me you didn't get it"
Well, you can see where this is going.

I checked my pockets, I checked my wallet, I was freaking out. I kept checking everything and she told me she didn't remember me grabbing it. I didn't remember grabbing it either. Damn.

So I put the car in reverse and we parked in the bays nearby and walked back into the carpark facilities trying to work out what we were going to do next. She came up with the idea of just running back to the entrance, grabbing a ticket and we'd be on our way. Good in theory, in practice it failed. She ran over and hit the ticket button and was told "No ticket without a vehicle"

So plan A failed.

We went to the customer service desk for assistance and she paid for another ticket. She gave it to me and told me not to lose this one. I put the ticket in my pocket, and as I did, I felt something familiar. Something not disimilar to what was in my hand. That's right ladies and gentlemen.. it was the first ticket. Can I make a lasting first impression or what?

From there we travelled back up the road to my place so she could unload her bags. About 40 minutes into the hour long trip she began asking questions about my plans for the future, and would they include living in the city. Apparently she doesn't appreciate long car rides or trees and paddocks.

After unloading the bags, we turned the car around and went back to the city. More trees, more paddocks.

When we got there I hadn't really planned what to do next (I'm such a bad tour guide, if there's a next time I'll be better) so we just wandered the streets aimlessley.

Whilst doing so, we saw through the window of a station wagon what looked to be several boxes of "Fresh bidet wipes". There was at least one box of the suckers anyway. It amused us both greatly.

We went up the Rialto (the tallest building in the city) and had a look around. I looked through the binoculars and noticed some action a few blocks away. Note to self- make that our next stop.

And our next stop it was. There was a street performer there who was rather entertaining. He had exceptional coordination. His final trick however was a beauty.

He pulled out a 10 foot high unicycle and was going to juggle knives on it, and kick a plastic goldfish into the bowl on his head. He would of course, need help for this trick.

He pointed out a "volunteer" from the audience to hold the unicycle in place for him. He went on and did a few other tricks, checked that our "volunteer" had a decent grip on the unicycle and decided it was unsafe. Enter "volunteer" number two to hold the other side.

But these two volunteers were not enough. No, he would need one more. I have a psychic moment, and I know what's about to happen. He points at me.
"You sir, you look non threatening, come over here and give me a hand"

My role in the masterpiece was to stand with a hand on each of the first two volunteers shoulders, facing away from the action, and pray that he knew he was doing.

I could hear him playing with his knives behind me, and I was trying to work out what was about to happen, and thinking to myself "I am going to stuff this up and the four of us are going to end up with broken bones"

After a period, he announced it was now time to start the finale. He asked the audience to clap each time he took a step. This only built up the fear inside me.

*Clap*
Where is he?
*Clap*
What's going on?
*Clap*
I see him out of the corner of my eye
*Clap*
Ok, he's running in front of me
*Clap*
If he stays out there I'm safe
*Clap*
Oh no, he's heading back around the other side
*Clap*
If he tries to use me as a stepping stone, we're all in trouble
*Clap*
He's behind me now
*Clap*
I know, I'll scan the audience to try and gauge what he's doing from their faces
*Clap*
Oh, a girl sticking her tongue out at me, lovely
*Clap*

"Jesus christ!" I heard him scream as he landed on my back with his hands around my face.

"He didn't look this big in the catalogue"

With the assitance of another audience member, he was able to climb up my back and onto his unicycle. The feat was, eventually, a success.

From there we went to the aquarium and had a look around, which was quite interesting, but nothing too exciting happened there (except she got quite a fright.. hehe..)

We then travelled on back to my place, and on the way we acutally saw the end of a rainbow. A new experience for both of us, but there was no pot of gold.

And that, dear readers, concludes day one of the weekend.

S and D do Victoria (or parts thereof) - Part I - The Girl

If you want to see this story from her point of view, keep an eye out over here. Even if she doesn't write her side, it is still a blog worth reading.

I'll just start by saying it feels weird writing about someone I know will be reading this.

I have been friends with this girl for about 7 years, however until last weekend it had always been an Internet friendship. She asked a few weeks ago if she could come down and visit me, and, as you may have worked out, I readily agreed.

She was very excited about coming down and seeing what Melbourne and Victoria had to offer, and I was just excited about having her here. She is one of the nicest, loveliest, kindest (sure, they might mean the same thing, but I'm making a point here) girls I know, and I've always been able to count on her as someone to make me laugh or just have a talk about life in general.

I won't go into the weekends events too much (they'll be saved for the next three blogs), instead I'll focus on just the girl this time around. I'm sure she'll enjoy that.

As I said, I was looking forward to having her here and taking our friendship beyond just what we had on the Internet. I knew if I was able to utilize the wit, charm and humor that has made me popular with my coworkers and made so many of my clients leave the office moist (around their eyes, from laughing so hard) then when it came time for her to leave on Sunday, we'd be much closer than we were when she arrived on Friday.

Almost immediately, I felt very comfortable around her. Normally I'm nervous with new people, but I guess the familiarity with her helped and it felt (to me at least) like we'd been hanging out for years.

However, I do not think she felt the same way. I don't know whether it's because she was out of her comfort zone, and I was at home or whether it's because she's just a much more open person whereas I tend to keep people at a distance, but either way she was not as comfortable with me as I was with her.

I doubt it helped that all weekend I struggled to find the wit, charm and humor that she would have got through our internet conversations (and you dear reader, have no doubt seen in my blogs.. I love you all, really) and I really don't know where it went. After three days I don't think I made one fifth of the impression on her that I have made on clients during a 25 minute interview.

It probably didn't help that we spent a lot of the weekend on the road, and neither of us are "car talkers", and it also probably didn't help that when we were here.. I put the TV on (my bad, sorry gorgeous) and other than that, I don't know why I wasn't me.

But she was definately her. I loved her to death before she came down here, and after the weekend if anything I love her all the more. As I'm writing this in the spare room I can still smell her here, and I miss her a little, but I know that she is definately glad to be home.

It's very weird for me to miss someone when they're gone. I think there are probably only a handful of other people on the planet I could spend as much time with as I spent with her and still want to see more of them. Most of my coworkers would have to fall into that category I guess, because I do spend way too much time with them.

I felt bad for sending her home disappointed, she was so excited before coming down here and she had spent quite a bit of money, so I thought to myself last night I'd send her some flowers to where she worked. Good idea, right? I thought so. Anyway, I sent her the flowers, just not to where she worked. Not even close. I can't even apologise properly.

Normally in this situation, I would just give up and ruin the friendship we had. Last night, I was very seriously considering doing just that. But I don't want to do that, she is still in my top five girls (and that includes Amelia and my mother- tough competition there) so instead, this time, I'll try my hardest to not only keep what we had, but make it better.

I want to be able to spend time with her and make her laugh and enjoy spending time with me as much as other people enjoy my company, and as much as I enjoyed hers.

I'm a man with a plan, and dear reader, I always win.

"Things have changed. Everything has changed. I've always prided myself on being an outsider, but now.. I feel the need to connect with someone" - Dexter Morgan, Dexter, Series 1 Episode 7