Wet and windy Wellington Weekend

1.

Eating out

Friday night
We pleasantly surprised to get a last-minute invite to go out to dinner with a couple of friends from Levin who were down for an optometrists convention. We ended up going to Chameleon (at the Intercontinental - since that's where they were staying). It was in the voucher book too. I got venison. It was one of those fancy restaurants where all the mains are over $30 and then they come without 'sides', so you have to order those as well. But we thought the meals were worth it - you can tell they were superior and so rich that they actually were filling. They gave us individually wrapped Mentos fruit lollies with the bill - we agreed that was superior to plain old mints.

Afterwards I met Matt and his friends at the Southern Cross. It's flashed itself up since I was last there. Very fancy. I remember many a drunken T-coll session we used to have there, back in the Zeebos days. Ange says they have quite exquisite food there now too.

Saturday Brunch
Met Lulu and Clint for brunch. Rendezvoused at Dymocks (where I splashed out on two quirky books) and went to some sandwich place upstairs from The Body Shop on Lambton Quay. Due to my tender mouth (one of my wisdom teeth is coming through some more, and I can now understand how teething babies feel) I had the soup.

Saturday Dinner
Matt took me out to Little India. It was actually fairly average service - felt a bit rushed and they'd hover round eyeing up your plates when you were almost finished... and swoop in as soon as you took the last bite. And they told me they DIDN'T take the Entertainment card, when they DO (and it was the main reason we'd chosen to go there!). But I didn't make a big deal out of it, thinking I'd been mistaken...... Might have to go back and get a refund.

Sunday Brunch
Went to the good old Realm again with Cass and Matt. They do a good cheap hot brunch menu. I had Eggs Florentine. Under $10. I was excited to see a counterfeit $1,000,000 note had been stuck to my windscreen by someone..... until I realised it was church propoganda. Sneaky buggers.

Sunday Afternoon Tea
Cass and I dined at Elements in Kilbirnie. I got a yummy carrot cake slice, slathered with cream-cheeese icing. We enjoyed the free Cafe Culture magazines - but I found several cringe-worthy typos. Why can't people use posessive pronouns???

2.

Dramas

Ange rang me up at 8am on Sunday morning. It was one of those great opening lines where she got to say, 'Sorry to bother you - but I'm in the emergency department at the hospital and I've been on an IV drip for a few hours so they won't let me go home unless someone picks me up'. She's ok - but had another bout of doubling-over stomache pains and vomitting. Scan-time. She has great tales of having to walk/crawl there at 1am on Sunday morning and vomitting as soon as she got to the waiting room and then fainting as she was trying to get into the wheelchair. They gave her morphine. She said it made her weird.

Anyhow, she was very fragile and moved very gingerly. Poor Ange.

3.

Top Ten
a) Things that never seem to go as smoothly as they should (and I expect something to go wrong every time I try them)
b) Things boyfriends enjoy doing (other than the obvious)

My Answers
a) Setting the video to tape something and using the bloody voucher book.
b) Defragmenting their girlfriend's hard-drive and figuring out all the gadgets in their girlfriend's new car.

4.

Sorbet and Gelato

These are my favourite dessert treats at the moment. You can buy tubs of them at Woolworths and New World. Lemon sorbet and pistachio nut gelato. Mmmmm. I like to fool myself into thinking they're both healthy. That was it's ok to eat the entire tub by myself. Matt tried to share my sorbet, but I kept defeating him in spoon-duels and stealing it back off him.

5.

Bowling

Out for a romantic walk after our dinner, Matt showed me the new bowling alley out the back of Courtney Central. Good gracious - how did the buildup to that being opened up pass me by???? It's a truly grown-up alley with a big bar and sofas and large-screen TVs...... Looks like a place that needs checking out. Drunken bowling = Fun!

Now I have two ideas for my birthday.
a) Murder Mystery Night at my flat
b) Dinner and bowling in town
Not sure which one to go for. Option B would be easier to organise, but I haven't done a murder mystery in years and they're so very fun......