On Friday evening, Justine and I paid a visit to good (a relative term) ol’ Frankston for a birthday dinner with Justine’s friend, Natasha. We dined at “Ecco qui”, which is situated in the new “ker-chunk” (the sound made when the pre-made building was dropped onto the site) precinct.

Obviously Natasha likes the place, since it was the third time she’d been there in as many weeks. Not only that, she had ordered the same meal each time (with the third attempt being the first time she’d managed to actually finish said dish). Justine wasn’t feeling too well so just had a boring old salad, while I had a plate of “Sicilian” prawns (they weren’t very Italian, let alone being from a specific part of Italy). Other than that new part, Frankston looked pretty much exactly the same to me; in fact some parts looked more decrepit than last time we visited. Don’t miss that place.

On Saturday night, we made an even further trip to Mornington for Timara’s 21st birthday. Timara, for those who don’t know, is my half-sister and for various reasons I have not been a big part of her life (probably somehow attributable mostly to me, I don’t really know). Anyway, not having seen Timara for a few years, I was surprised to see how much she’d changed. Mostly gone was the shy little girl; instead, before me was a confident young lady (well, mostly, but I won’t get into that). I also managed to catch up with Mum for the first time since her big operation; I was relieved to see her happy and looking quite healthy (especially given the circumstances).

After the bog-standard 21st stuff (speeches, bad adult dancing, etc) I had the fun experience of my car’s engine seizing while trying to start it. After giving it 20 minutes to calm down, the engine started fine (twice in a row!) though I suspect it’s a sign of possible things to come. We’ll have to see if it happens again.

Sunday was a pretty relaxed day, with Justine and I getting closer to the end of the first season of Arrested Development, which is definitely growing on Justine. To date, we’re completely caught up with Scrubs (we’ve watched all 86 or so episodes since the start of January) — which, unfortunately, is turning more into a drama than the wacky comedy it started out as — and have not quite reached the end of the first season of That 70’s Show, which means we’ve got another 150 or so episodes of that to get through. I’m all up-to-date with Stargate Atlantis, and waiting to see how the end-of-season cliffhanger turns out. I’m now downloading the first two seasons of Stargate SG-1 and the first season of The Sopranos since I pretty much missed them the first time around.

It might look like I haven’t been posting much since I haven’t posted for over a week, but this is the sixth post this month, which means I’ve been posting (on average) once every four days. Actually, that’s pretty bad anyway, since I’m aiming for at least once a day (ha!). So, let’s quickly go over the last week:

A new IT guy — Lesly — started last Monday with me in Melbourne. Thrilling. Wednesday and Thursday I attended an overnight work seminar thing which was totally underwhelming. I’ve been playing with software, such as ProShow Gold to turn a bunch of so-so photos into a semi-interesting slideshow with music; it’s all automated (if you want it to be) which is nice I suppose. I also spent a great deal of time with Adobe Premiere making a few slideshow, though it’s a lot more involved/complex (but you do get better results than ProShow).

Since Optus’ “download-all-you-want-between-2-and-8-am” thing is still going, I’ve been trying to get as much TV as I can in that time. Since Chris graciously gave us That 70’s Show and Scrubs episodes from the beginning to a month ago, we’ve been watching a lot of those. As well we’ve been watching Black Books (I have all of the episodes), Arrested Development (on Trav’s suggestion, I wonder where Jason Bateman has been all this time), Lost (keeps getting more interesting), Stargate Atlantis (now I just need to get all of the original SG-1 series, since I never bothered with it), The Thin Blue Line (mid-90s Rowan Atkinson/Ben Elton comedy), Joey (I have no idea why I find this so funny, since I never really got into Friends), The Prisoner (interesting 60s TV series). All this hardly leaves time to watch our cable TV!

Enough rambling for now, I’ll try to post something interesting later toda… this week. I’ll try not to make it about Firefox or my Xbox either, but I can’t promise anything!