As the years go by it’s hard to not lament another week passing me by. Saturday morning I put the dogs out to pee and noticed the light in the sky nice and pink, it was about 7am and the sun was peaking and colouring the sky.
We decided to take advantage and jumped in the car to head up the hill in the hope of getting a nice shot of Bacchus Marsh with the sun lighting it up nicely through the mist and fog. But by the time we got to the top of the hill, less than five minutes, clouds had moved in and ruined the shot! Abandoning the plan rather than freezing our butts off we head to Foodworks to get some supplies for breakfast and home to make some bacon and eggs.
While David was cooking the sun came out like a kid at a rave on ecstasy, it lit up the sky with pretty colours. I grabbed my camera and ran out to the street, bare feet on cold, cold asphalt is no fun, but I managed to grab a couple of snaps before my toes froze completely.
After breakfast we had to go and get some dog food, we bought the dogs some Supercoat the other day when they had no food left and it’s really just crap food. It’s like dog candy and not really any good for them, the “output” is far greater from this crappy (pun intended) food than the more expensive less additive foods. We have actual evidence of this. So off to Best Friends Pets in Melton. They didn’t have the brand we usually buy, Holistic Select Dog food with fish so we had to pick something else. The doggins, well Bill mostly, can’t eat other meat-based foods, his ears get all buggered up and goopy but he seems fine with fish-based foods. So we decided to get the dogs some Black Hawk Dog Food. Australian-owned, Australian-made dog food that it seems the dogs love.
On the way home we stopped at Foodworks for the second time to get supplies for David’s snacks he was making to take to Troy and Renae’s place. He ended up making rocky road and choc-chip biscuits. We had a bit of a look around and tried to make good choices with the chocolate we bought for the treats. It was hard, very hard to buy Fairtraid chocolate, the best we could do was UTZ which is kind of the same thing.
UTZ is as I said, kind of the same thing… just different, yet another certification program because it seems it’s hard to have one defined certification program, instead let’s split the money across multiple foundations, probably paying the people at the top some nice money.
Home and David got busy making the treats, I helped out with the preparations but he did all the work and the treats were delish.
When the treats were set and cooled we head out earlier than we needed so we could stop at the local football in Ballarat to take some photos before going to Troy’s for dinner.
Eastern Oval in Ballarat hosted a match between East Point and Darley, we arrived just as the teams were returning from halftime. It was freaking cold and windy and about halfway through the final quarter it started to rain so we returned to the car to grab a couple of plastic bags to cover our cameras and keep on shooting. I think i did a little better with the photos this time round, even with the frozen fingers, but more practice and maybe a look for a longer lens is in order.
The Darley boys huddle before the game.
East Point’s forwards head to their end of the field
A bit of a biff breaks out
Wet weather gear
The game finished just after 5pm, Darley prevailed 78 to 108 over East Point.
Arriving at Troy and Renae’s place it was so different from the last time we visited, the vacant lots that surrounded their home now built up with houses. We caught up, I played some games with Austin on his android tablet then Mario Kart on the Nintendo WiiU before sitting down to an awesome dinner. Lamb shanks on potato with veggies, the lamb so tender it feel of the bone. Renae followed this up with an amazing orange cake with an orange sauce and cream. Were I not in company I swear I would have licked the plate clean.
When the kids had gone to bed we broke out what should become the best strategy board games in 2018, as far as I heard. Starting with Settlers of Catan. The game seemed complex at first but once we were into it it all came together and was a fun game to play. We might have to get that one for ourselves, maybe the Star Trek version? I did OK, the game ends when the first player makes it to 10 points, at one point Troy Renae and I were on 9 points before Troy picked up a development card to take the game.
We followed this up with “Ticket to Ride” a recent game of the year pretty much all over the world. It’s another fun game. Basically you collect tickets which have two destinations on them and you then have to join a path between the two. You have a minimum of two tickets and any you don’t complete you lose the points for. The game ends when someone runs out of train carriages. Troy collected a few tickets throughout the game and amazingly he managed to complete all of his routes. He won for the second time of the night.
A good night, a good catch up, a full tummy and a great introduction to some cool board games. We’ll have to practise and organise a rematch.
We ended up getting home about 2am.