Non-bike-related photos from the past 7 days

My mum and her partner John are visiting from Melbourne at the moment. So mum bought some presents and one of which was this hand-drawn picture by an artist called Wendy Cernac (one of mum’s friends at the time) from the 1970s of Paddington in Brisbane.

(I just then quickly photoshopped it a bit to clean it up because the paper had started deteriorating). Anyway I grew up with this image and loved it. I am so happy it is back here. I am actually going to try and find out exactly what vista this relates to through some investigation with perhaps some help from local historians. I will keep you informed.

On Thursday last week we went to Mel’s birthday at Ortiga. On the way we stopped with Jon for a drink at The Fox.

I love shots of neon cities after in the rain.

Then Dee and I had dinner at Wagaya. The two trips we have done to Japan where we ordered via touch-screen for the first time were truly amazing. It’s nice to do it all again right here in Brisbane.

More wet roads and misty-rain-clouded tall buildings

Token b/w arty bullshit. I thought the triple 4 looked cool.

We met some awsm new friends at Mel’s bday thing at Ortiga. This is Emily and Kylie and Dee. Naturally I got a bit too excited and talked too much. Really have to work on that “extreme-talking-bullshit-impulsive”. Yep.

On Sunday I had done all my bike riding duties — the 3 alleycats were done, I had visited Pushies Galore and then that morning I had led that bike ride over to Holland Park. So once home and with some food in me and the blogging done I called my sister and said I was happy to babysit Hugo — my nephew — for a few hours. She texted back saying, “Cool” a little too quickly! So suddenly Hugo was here and after showing him the frog pond and the jungle of palms out the back I decided to show him my Lego collection. And he just lost his shit. He was shaking with excitement. I remember that feeling.

So I showed him each and everyone of my Star Wars spaceships. And after the first one I was like, “You know what? I have another!” And then he jumped up and down and had a go at that one — putting the mini-figure inside and seeing how it worked. And then I said, “Well, do you wanna see another one?” And gradually he got to play with them all — and break them a tiny bit — but that’s part of the fun. I gave him a few of my mini-figures but made him realise it was up to mum if he could keep them. (Cause they aren’t officially playable by 4 year olds.)

Then we walked the entire way to my sister and her wife’s place. (About 2kms). I only had to carry him 3 times. We stopped at Milton Park and I could see people looking at me funnily — cause playgrounds like this are almost exclusively the domain of women — or men with a woman. So I assumed they had labelled me a DEADBEAT DAD on an access visit. LOL. And just saying, I wasn’t even trying that hard, but I was the only adult engaging with a very small child — all the other adults were standing back and just looking on seemingly destroyed from parenting and doing a bit of judgement. Whatevz.

Hugo made it that 2kms! And the final climb up his driveway was like a Tour de France mountain-top-finish! Good work lil’ dude. (I expect he slept very well that night!)

My prize from Global Gutz was this shirt for Dee. (I know I promised no bike-related-photos…but just get over it.)

My Nanna has just gone into a nursing home so I inherited these glasses she couldn’t take with her. They are beautiful. Thanks nan!

So my mum was here and I was showing her some stuff from my Poppa’s keepsakes. One was a telegram. I have never seen one before but this is what they look like. The original Twitter.