The Mezzanine

Boyfriend broke up with me today.

:(


Hugs and prayers will be gratefully accepted.

Going to the Astor is rather like going back in time. It has balconies, and chandeliers, and lots of wonderful things designed to make patrons think of going to the cinema as a real night on the town.

It also has a weird colour scheme from about the sixties, but that adds to the charm.

The boyfriend and I went to the Astor last night, to see two anime features. I've been hearing about this place for years: a standard back-of-the-toilet-door accessory in share houses is the Astor's poster of upcoming features. But I've never been before.

One thing I enjoyed was the previews. I'm used to the LATEST 21ST CENTURY MOVIES!!! previews, but because of the Astor's unusual movie preferences, you're more likely to get previews for
a) foreign subtitled movies you've never heard of
b) really really old movies with corny STARRING THE RADIANT AUDREY HEPBURN announcements
c) really really old foreign subtitled movies you've never heard of
All very fascinating.


So - among other things, I have now seen Spirited Away, and my uni friends can stop bugging me to watch it.

- The locust plague is out in full force, happily suiciding into car windscreens all the way along the freeway. The latest trend in conversations among people who own cars: "How many did you hit? I hit at least three hundred this morning..."

- Spent several days in Mildura meeting the boyfriend's rellies. I have now met 6 aunts and uncles, 7 cousins, 4 significant others of cousins, and 3 kids of cousins. *is exhausted*

- Remembered to take my camera, but forgot to take any photos. I'm thinking of doing Project 365 next year, so I get back into the swing of photoing.

- One of the aforementioned cousins has a cook book (Womens' Weekly) that I really wanted to steal and smuggle home with me. Her mother has a cook book (home made) that I almost did steal and smuggle home with me. It's awesome! She gave me the "custard" page to try out...

- I'm sure I remember (and my family can back me up on this) being very outspoken about foods I simply could not eat because they were gross. Somewhere along the line I seem to have turned into someone who will eat everything that's put on her plate without complaining, will decide to at least seem to enjoy it, and then will actually enjoy it. Even the beetroot! Not quite sure how this transformation happened.

- Am very sunburnt from riding on the back of a ute. Still enjoyed the ute ride.

- Also enjoyed getting to ride on a humungous piece of machinery as it harvested lots of wheat. Hurrah!

- Melbourne has hills. I don't ever remember how many until I go to somewhere flat (like Mildura) and miss all my lovely hills.

- I also missed my cat! He's so wonderful! I came back and patted him, rang Mum, patted him, treated sunburn, patted him...


How was everyone's Christmas?

Bought a carseat. I can now drive nephews around! Hurrah!

Left Chadstone (big shopping centre) at 11, when all the parking spaces had filled up and people were starting to be willing to fight to the death over the chance to park their car. Three people converged on my parking spot the moment I left it - and a huge beeping of car horns erupted behind me...

Did gardening, in a vain attempt to make it possible to walk through my garden without getting smacked in the face by branches. I now have a massive stack of greenery on my lawn, and nowhere to put it for two weeks until the green bin gets emptied (and instantly filled again). It's an endless cycle.

Went to an afternoon of fruit platters, pink champagne, and buying jewellery for charity. Fun!

Went to a Carols by Candlelight in Knox, with the boyfriend. Arrived on the tail-end of the kids part: with Dorothy the Dinosaur and Friends singing manic songs about Santa and dancing frenetically. Stayed for lots of carols, Kate Ceberano, and pretty fireworks.

1) Bathed my cat this morning, then helped my housemate bath hers. Elf shrieked and wailed like a mad thing; Smudge started to freak out, and then realised that the water was comfy and warm, and tried to get as wet as possible.

2) Last night, I made scotch eggs - which are yummy and delicious, but far too complicated to make more than once every three years. We have leftovers in the fridge, and I'm trying to devise a way to reheat them without putting them in the microwave (which would make the eggy centre explode).

3) Got introduced to about 30 people today, all of whom have known the boyfriend for many years, and all of whom wanted lots of details on how we got together...

4) The church had its AGM this evening, which was rather fun. (My old church had AGMs in boring businessy style, that went on forever. My current church has a big dinner, and carries out the official business in between courses.)

Last night, the boyfriend and I went to an improvisational theatre performance.

For the first half, we listened to Jane Austen, Jackie Collins, HP Lovecraft, and... some other guy... as they told each other stories. (Yes, this was more exciting than it sounds.)

Jane Austen's tale involved Fanny Smithson and Harold Jones falling in love over mathematics and telescopes, while Lovecraft told a very creepy tale involving four masks - and only managed to get to three of them before the performance ran out of time, thus handily giving me nightmares about what the fourth mask would do.



Then, for the second half, we watched a court case.

They asked for suggestions from the audience of random objects that could be submitted into evidence. We suggested a rubber mallet - and they promptly decided that the defendant was a clown who had killed her fellow clown by substituting a metal mallet for the standard rubber mallet, thus causing a weight imbalance that made the clown fall to her death during the high-wire unicycle act.

So we listened to lots of circusy witnesses, telling us exciting tales of clown love, affairs with the ringmaster, the props master being seduced by the bearded lady, and malicious rubber mallet substitutions by all sorts of people.


It was wonderful fun.