Chantelle arose early enough thanks to the fact that she needed to get ready for work and of course, being the concerned boyfriend that I am, I did my best to keep her in bed but sadly to no avail. So instead I got up as well, snuck in an early Easter egg from the little hamper mom had given us and set about waking up with a nice strong cup of coffee and some early morning TV.
With Chantelle eventually out of the flat, it was time to once more roll up my sleeves and dig into the mess that currently was the kitchen. Although we had got a good start in on the kitchen over the course of Saturday evening there was still a lot to accomplish, so I pretty much had to complete the “crap-pack” job by unpacking, wrapping and then moving all of Andrea’s junk out of the remaining cupboards and then set about restocking the cupboards with all of our crockery and cups that we had brought along – which meant I got EVEN more unwrapping to do. Oh the joy :(
Despite the job wearing on for more than a couple of hours, I stuck to the task at hand and eventually was rewarded when I stepped back and could actually see more than half of the counter top space, including our nice new shiny Russell Hobbes kettle and toaster in their full glory! Of course, this newfound visibility did come at a price, with the other side of the flat holding all of Andrea’s stuff threatening to burst its banks any minute now. Oh well, as long as I’m out of the flat before that happens! :)
With the last little tidying up bits and bobs done, it was time for me to start heading back, making my first stop the guest house in order to return Chantelle’s flat keys. On arrival she treated me to breakfast by preparing a fabulous toasted cheese and ham sandwich (more like a brunch by then to be honest) which I then supplemented by wangling one of the guesthouse’s muffins out from her iron-fisted grip. My goodbyes said and a “last touch” later, I was back on the road heading down to Ryan’s place.
While I was a bit tired and lethargic by the time I reached 3 Spolander Street, Ryan was the complete opposite, being a radiant bundle of energy as he bounced through the house after having seen Terrance’s Xbox 360 perform on both his TV and LCD monitor. With those two final tests complete and a lot of happy bouncing later, Ryan navigated straight to Kalahari.net and placed his order for one of these beasts (currently on a massive special), thereby welcoming him at last into the next generation of gaming. (If I wasn’t buying furniture and appliances at the moment, I might very well have joined him on this slippery slope mind you!)
Actually, the reason for being at Ryan’s place was in order to pick him up so that we could travel through to Dean’s place for a planned Sunday afternoon braai, though Dean’s place this time being not so much as his and Zania’s place but rather his mom’s house in Kraaifontein seeing as she was out on honeymoon having just been wed on Saturday! As they say, when the cat is away, the mice will play! And seeing as his mom does have such a nice house set up for entertaining guests, we simply could not turn this opportunity down!
We got there a little later than expected thanks to Claire arriving at mom’s place just as we were leaving, which was a little bit of bad timing as she had driven all the way through from Newlands just to pop in and say hi to Ryan. Of course, we did invite her with for the braai, but instead she shunned our offer and locked us outside so that she could play with the cats or something like that.
Seeing as Sunday was an absolutely stunning, heat-soaked day, I was more than pleased to find Dean in the pool when I arrived, meaning that I immediately pulled out my own swimming trunks and joined him, having had packed them in just in case such an emergency situation arose. It wasn’t more than a couple of minutes before Ryan and Evan joined us in the pool and as men will be men, we were soon tossing an oversized beach ball around while Ryan tried to drown me every time I wasn’t looking. Sneaky bugger. Also, Evan managed to look a right tool by forgetting his sunglasses on and going under, much to the amusement of the rest of this mangy bunch!
There weren’t too many of us at the braai, only really Dean, Zania, Terrance, Evan, Ryan, Zania’s sister (eventually. She only came to eat and run) and myself, but it was more than enough to be able to waste the day away with throwaway chatter and bubble blowing. Yes, bubble blowing. It turns out that Ryan seems to have somewhat of an obsession with blowing bubbles and we left him to his own devices armed only with a kiddy’s bubble liquid pack to amuse himself for the rest of the day.
Despite all my trash talk concerning Dean’s braaing, once again he did an excellent job and produced meat far superior to what I could ever produce myself and we all hunkered down on the patio to enjoy a delicious (if somewhat strangely timed – ‘luncher’ perhaps?) lunch that was followed up by the perfect dessert for a hot day in the form of jelly smothered in cold chocolate mousse.
When Evan eventually departed so that he could go off to his sanctioned computer game league match, the rest of us pretty much followed suit (much to the relief of Dean I imagine because he had specifically rescheduled the braai earlier because he has an early drilling job out in Saldanha on Monday morning), though I did make an concerted effort to at least grab the last two beers out of the fridge, the only remainders of my six pack of Amstel that no one but me had touched the entire day! I drove Ryan home and we quickly ran an ingenious test on his TV-in card to see if it would allow us to play the PlayStation 2 off the PC monitor, something I am looking into for my move to Gordon’s Bay (because Chantelle watches a lot of TV and I don’t feel like stuffing a TV into my small “man room”). Thankfully it works perfectly, so that is the route I’ll go (thanks for the idea Ryan) and to sweeten the deal, Ryan even let me borrow his Vodacom modem expansion card with its aerial to test out the next time I am in Gordon’s Bay because I get such crappy reception with my own Vodacom USB modem.
By that stage of the day I was knackered, the long day in the sun, all the beer and the labour of Saturday and Sunday in the flat taking its toll on me, so I said my farewells and went back to the flat, intent on going straight to bed… which turned out to be a lie because I ended up chatting with Chantelle on the phone and then packing three boxes of kitchen stuff first! Oh, and squishing in a little bit of blog writing as well.
C’mon 31 March, I want to move in already!!