Visitors and Vinyls

I had a good meaning to why I was in a cleaning frenzy yesterday.  I was expecting a good friend of mine to drop by.  However, she wanted to listen to the small number of her vinyls on my turntable; something she didn't own.  So, seeing she's never been to my place and Cate and I got together at her place first to find the vinyls and then came to my place.

Today, I was up with the Kookaburras... seriously I was woken up by a flock of those birds cackling their heads off.  It was nice to wake up to that kind of thing instead of people yelling at each other and going to work.  Yep, I love Saturdays; but I also hate them as it's when people get up and do their laundry really early; unless it's raining.  But today, I got up, did some handwashing and got it out on line quickly and got another load of laundry out there by 9am.

The washing was done, rubbish put out and then I cleaned out Little Miss Stevie's cage and put a lot of what was on the kitchen table in a green bag.  Compared to yesterday, I really didn't have to do much to prepare for today's visit.

Gus the normally camera-shy cat

Once I arrived at Cate's house - and got some photos of her very camera-shy cat (who really didn't know what I was doing with a large brown thing stuck in his face until he heard a 'click').  Cate was impressed I got so close... but then I did photograph Gus with my iTouch; so the cat didn't know the difference just that I was close to him and he wasn't about to move because it was too hot to.

We headed off to my place and soon we were cleaning up the vinyls and playing them on my turntable.  Cate hadn't heard the records for years; and so was impressed with how good they sounded and we were soon laughing at the titles of the songs - where there was one called 'I Won't Sleep In the Wet Spot' - while Cate drank a very nice batch of ice tea I made last night.  I got the recipe off a Bookcrossing friend in South Carolina and it worked out really well with large slices of lime in it!  I'm not much of an ice tea drinker; so I mainly made the tea for her to drink as it was such a hot day; and I knew she'd appreciate it.  With the tea, I served up some of Mum's Christmas Cake she made... and Cate and I shared that.  It was lovely to eat something nice and sweet - and yet a little Christmassy still - even though it was January; as we sat and chatted and listened to her vinyls.  

By around 4pm, Cate had enjoyed her day, the ice tea and the vinyls as well as the company of my little budgie - kept us very much amused with her clicks and whistles. I even let Little Miss Stevie out for a bit, but put her back into her cage when she tried to follow me to the kitchen and missed the turn - and my hand - while she headed straight for the glass of the back door.  Silly little bird... and she wasn't hurt either.  I did try to catch her, but she flew above my hands and over me.  Why doesn't she just let me catch her?  It would be a lot safer for her.

Cate said that my house was nice and very well cared for and that I have lovely things from all kinds of eras and they mixed well.  She felt very comfortable sitting on my lounge and enjoying the coolness of my house.  The one thing that I wished was that she could have come upstairs and seen the home office; which she couldn't do because there were too many stairs.  But Cate did get to see outside my back door and said that my yard looks nice despite the fence looking like it's about to fall down.  

Once I watched to make sure she found her way out (as I've seen many people get lost finding their way out of my unit complex), I went inside to organise myself for dinner.  I thought a pizza would be a good thing to tonight.  However, once I got it home, I found it didn't smell right.  Something in it wasn't right and I couldn't put my finger on it.  Then, it occurred to me that somebody had cut up something on the same board as they did the meat and it had rubbed off on my pizza making it smell like raw meat and rendering it inedible.  So, there went my pizza night.  I didn't take it back as I was too tired and didn't with to make a complaint against the pizza place about something they really should've been keeping an eye on.  Instead, I made a vegetarian BLT and watched 'The Brady Bunch' and 'Doctor Dolittle 2' and then jumped on here because there wasn't anything worthwhile to watch on television... jeez it's really getting bad when people are turning off their televisions at 8:30pm isn't it?  Well, until my next post, take care, keep warm and safe and remember, I'm always here.