Seeing as I had slept over at mom’s place following the badminton the night before, Friday morning’s drive through to work was a lot shorter than normal and seeing as the students are currently writing exams, my walk up to campus is now a lot shorter because I simply steal of their parking space!
The day in the office actually flew by, most probably thanks to the super duper long meeting I had with Rethea (the UCT web manager) and her main programming man after she had organized to drop by and learn a little more about how things get done in terms of the web here at Commerce. However, in the end I ended up learning more about the UCT site and it’s CMS than what they did of mine and the meeting soon devolved into a nice old chat that even covered anime, manga and Reader’s Den of all things!
The rest of the day was productively spent downloading Eli Stone for Chantelle and working on the SAN help pages and by the time it was 15:00 I was chomping at the bit and ready to go. After a quick pit stop at Somerset Mall, it was time for some well deserved relaxation and I ended up spending most of the afternoon curled up on the couch reading comic books, with Olympus sitting on my shoulder and Coco occupying my lap/leg/knee – she couldn’t really make up her mind so much. Actually on the topic of the cats, both of them are proving to be rather well behaved, and apart from accidentally stepping on Coco when she was underfoot, we haven’t had any problems with them whatsoever. Heck, they even enjoyed their outside frolics on the grass from day one!
Chantelle returned home in the early evening after having returned from an enjoyable day out with Retha, making the most of her friend’s availability before she leaves for Spain in a couple of days time. She suggested we go out and watch Deception on the big screen, the newly released thriller starring Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman, for which she had heard the ad on radio a bit earlier. After a mad rush to get there on time, it soon became horribly apparent that the only deception about Deception was that the advert that C had heard for it, having made it seem like a far more interesting movie than what it actually is! As the final credits rolled, we both dashed out the cinema, unable to belief that such a predictable, clichéd movie had ever been allowed out of scriptwriter’s hands in the first place!
I was hungering for Subways again, and so we caught a late night snack attack supper, with me devouring down a 6-inch Chicken Mayo sub while Chantelle drank coffee with a chocolate muffin on the side. (Shame, the poor girl needed all the comfort food she could get, after nearly knocking herself out after slamming her head into my elbow just before we had left for the movie!)
Back home the kittens were tearing about the place as usual (funny how playtime is always late night!) and after a minor disturbance at the flat above us where I had to threaten calling in the cops to get the buggers to settle down, we sunk into the couch to watch some shows off the computer…
…which would explain why we only got to bed at 01:30 and why at 09:30 on Saturday morning, Chantelle was still FAST asleep!
Unfortunately for me though, I had no such luxury of a relaxed morning ahead of me, particularly after I managed to trap myself outside after dropping off some smelly garbage inside the outside bins. Thankfully Chantelle could let me inside the house and I was soon hard at work with my trusty screwdrivers, removing the front door handle and messing about with the spring on the faulty bugger before finally getting the thing to work properly again. As it turned out, the door now opens easier than ever, but now I have that niggling worry that sometime in the future, that particular door handle may just finally give up for good, leaving us both trapped outside!
However, that wasn’t quite the start of the real work as the hard work was still to come. In a moment of brilliance we had decided to invite everyone over to our place for a fondue and games evening, forgetting that it meant that we would first need to give the place a good clean – a clean which in hindsight it actually desperately wanted. So for the rest of the morning and afternoon, it was clean up flat time and once we finally put our tools down, it was straight to the shops to get the ingredients for the party.
I love holding fondues because there isn’t actually any preparation to be done besides packing all the stuff out in bowls, and thankfully it turned out that this was in fact all that was needed from the two of us (apart from the mountain of pancakes that Chantelle made me make). So when our first guests in Karl, Terrance and Patricia arrived, we were basically all set, candle burning in the bathroom, and we got down to the all important nitty gritty of catching up on all the news :)
Wayne and Candice were next to arrive (delayed a little by Candice’s band practice) and after a long wait (Dean was still at work) the ever together pair of Dean and Zania eventually arrived on our doorstep. Of course, our new babies were the center of attention and everyone fell madly in love with the little furry bundles of joy. Little Olympus and Coco made themselves particularly at home on Karl and Pat’s laps and I won’t be at all surprised if Karl is going to be hearing “Can’t we get kittens” all week this week from a certain someone ;)
With everyone finally assembled, we broke out the food and it was a merry event as everyone fought over forks and lost cheese. Once again the evening’s cooking was a success, with everyone just about polishing all the food off, leaving the smallest of leftovers for our consumption the next day. And with the food and drink vanquished, and all the small talk behind us, it was time to get our game on, with the first vote swinging away of the old classic… Uno.
Amazingly enough, the first game passed in the blink of an eye, without anyone beating the other up over differing rules, and I was more than a little sad when the winner played out so quickly that I was still sorting the multitude of cards left in my hand! Stupid game. Next up was a friendly boys versus girls brawl over Pictionary, and despite the vetoing of my ‘blitz Pictionary’ rules, this game too passed by far more quickly than what it usually does, probably due to the superb drawing skills Wayne and Terrance once again exhibited. Shame, the poor girls were about a third of the board behind us, and we decided not to make them go through that agony again, breaking out the coffee and the gazillion pancakes that Chantelle had begged me to make in the afternoon instead!
As always, my ability as pancake master went unquestioned as my pancakes were devoured in a matter of minutes, again leaving only a few for Chantelle and me to tuck into the next day. My requests for a renewed battle on the 30 Seconds playing field went unanswered unfortunately, and I had to settle for some more talking and then eventually the waving and hugging of goodbyes as everyone pretty much called it a night at exactly the same point in time! We searched everyone’s pockets as they left, and although Coco tried to escape by hopping into Zania’s purse at the last possible moment, we waved the last couple goodbye, kittens locked firmly in our flat.
Knackered from a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable evening with all our pals, it was then straight off to bed, leaving only a pile of dishes rivaling Mt. Everest itself behind.
Sunday. And as a Sunday should be, we declared that this Sunday was to be a day of rest. So apart from the pile of dishes that had to be done, Chantelle and I (well Chantelle mostly) spent the whole morning and afternoon watching the brilliant Eli Stone series and lazing about on the couches. Of course, not a television watcher by nature, I supplemented this couch sitting with lots of game playing, blog entry writing and comic book reading as well :)
We eventually stirred our lazy asses out of the house in the early evening, grabbing our tennis racquets and hitting the tennis court for some laughable attempts that cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called tennis. Still, it was lots of fun and it looks like our summer pastime for the upcoming season has been settled. And seeing as we were touring the facilities anyway, we checked out our squash court as well and after a few rounds of illegal indoor tennis, I can safely report that it is in fact a pretty nice squash court after all! So you can guess what our winter pastime of choice is going to be then!
Seeing as Friday night’s movie was a little bit of a letdown, Chantelle was quite keen on making good on that particular flop, and suggested we go out to catch The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian for the evening’s entertainment. Of course, I’m not sure whether or not her actual goal in suggesting this was the delicious Subway sandwiches we had for supper or the movie itself, but thankfully this time around she enjoyed the movie more than the popcorn.
The movie was pretty long and by the time we finally got home, it was basically time for one last cup of hot chocolate and then lights out, as we settled down and got some much deserved snooze time at last.
(okay, so maybe the ‘much deserved part’ is a bit of a lie! :)