Great Weekend

We had a GREAT weekend in Perth which I don't have time to blog about now, except to say that the football was fantastic on Friday night, a heart-stopping thriller with the Cats getting up to win by 1 point after being 39 points down in the 2nd quarter and still 25 points behind at 3/4 time. My voice has still not recovered.

And, we had a great time with The Breakfast Club on Saturday night in Leederville.

I'll catch up on details tomorrow.

50% Breakfast Club

Blogging from Westminster St where I'm staying the night with Phil and Julie and their two gorgeous kids, Pieta and Elijah. The other two members of the Breakfst Club were not available, ironically Broadie and family are away, in Busselton! and Hugh had 16 beeps on his answering machine so I suspect he may have gone overseas for the holidays. Phil and I decided to revisit an activity from our past: go karting! We used to go quite often some 15 years ago when we worked together at Chip Inn. We went to the track in Belmont and had a great time, both qualifying for the advanced karts after impressing in our first turn on the standard karts. Hurtling around a twisting track in a fuel burning rocket 2 inches abovethe ground is an adrenaline pumping experience.
After that we changed the pace and went to the movies. We were almost forced to choose between a chick flick and Alien v Predator until we discovered that Atonement had only been going for 10 minutes so we went to see it. I'd read the book a couple of years ago so was able to fill in the blanks for Phil from the bits we missed. It is a very sad story so it was one of those movies you don't really enjoybut are glad you saw.
We came home, had icecream and talked for the next 2 1/2 hours, about life love and Afghanistan. Phil and Julie are returning to work there later this year. Phil has a blog called Itinerant and Indigent, I thinkthere's a link to it on my sidebar but I can't tell from here. If there's not I'll sort one out soon. He doesn't post often but is always well worth a read.

PD in Perth

Apologies faithful reader for the lack of blog action at Holt Press the last couple of days, I've been in Perth for some PD days and this is the first chance I've had to blog.
The PD went well, it's always good to get together with people, and some of the input was interesting and stimulating, especially the Bible studies by Ian Robinson this morning. Ian is the brother of Bruce, a good friend of urs and fellow Augusta Beach Mission team member.

I was able to combine painting and listening which was very relaxing and also helped keep me awake. Warm afternoons sitting and listening following a big lunch are often an invitation for the para-sympathetic nervous system to kick in and send a message to my brain saying "Sleep"! The painting was a good preventative measure.

I came up on Sunday night but left later than I'd planned because of delays in sorting things out with the kids; getting Paul picked up to spend a couple of days at Ben's, and cooking a BBQ dinner with Sophie and Jordan who stayed home together while I've been up here. I wanted to leave enough food for them not to starve in my absence.
All of this made my arrival in Perth pretty late, about 1.30am in fact, and to my surprise and horror, when I got to the place where I had arranged to stay the door was locked and I couldn't get in!!!! I felt it was too late to wake anyone up so I went looking for alternative accommodation but the only place I found open, The Esplanade wanted $276 for a room (booking in at 2.00am!), needless to say I declined! In the absence of any other options I found a place to park under the trees at Phoenix Primary School, lay the passenger seat down and slept in the car. Slept is a somewhat generous term to describe how I passed the night but I must have managed a few hours because the phone woke me at 8.00am. A rinse of mouthwash had to suffice for my morning ablutions, brekfast was courtesy of the Golden Arches, and I arrived at the PD day earlier than I ever have before!

I'm glad to say that my accommodation was much more satisfactory last night and I luxuriated in a bed and enjoyed a hot shower before day two of the PD.

Tonight has been most enjoyable, a BBQ dinner with Phil, Hugh and Broadie, the members of the Breakfast Club, in fact it's the first time in several meetings that all four members have been present. We talked about taxi driving, art, travel, returning to school (work) for two of us next week, in-laws, job prospects and of course, some secret men's business.
Phil's just gone to bed, leaving me to blog before retiring.

He made 7 picture frames for my paintings today which I hope will increase my chances of selling some at the Petticoat Lane Street Markets in Busselton tomorrow night.
We're going to Ikea to check out some other frames tomorrow morning before I head south for home.