We stopped into the New Balance clearance store in Collingwood, hoping to find a new pair of shoes for me, it’s not easy to find shoes when you have big feet. It has been a bane of my existence since I was about 12 and had a size 13 shoe.
After trawling the shelves looking scanning for “15” in any style … beggars can’t be choosers and all that … I finally asked the sales staff and she said: “I think we have one, I remember seeing in on the invoice yesterday. It’s probably out the back I’ll go and take a look.”
And that’s when the wait begins, the anxiety of which shoe will she return with, just how ugly will it have to be to have been sent off to the clearance store.
While we were waiting David noticed a massive shoe up on the shelf, it looked like a prop of some kind, but today I got to understand what it feels like to have smaller feet. My size 15 next to a size 20!
My ‘tiny’ size 15 shoe.
When the sales person returned I was pleasantly surprised by the style of shoe she returned with. Of all the things on the shelf it was probably the one style I was hoping for. As David said, “Everything’s coming up Jamie” on this day. A rare find indeed and for only $140 for the pair.
I guess Instagram does work for advertising, because this morning we’re at a cafe that David found on Instagram; Bentwood Fitzroy.
Bentwood Fitzroy Menu
I started by breakfast with the Nutella Shake, it basically tastes like they liquified Nutella and put it in a glass for me. It is delicious.
Nutella Shake
Accompanying this decadent drink was the Hotcakes: Raspberry curd, strawberries, passionfruit syrup, meringue, and mascarpone. I added the side of bacon, though it certainly didn’t need it.
Hotcakes, they had me at “meringue”
I want to eat here every day… but man is it expensive when you’re done, so it will definitely be a sometimes thing.
Our office is our home, at the moment, and we don’t exactly get dressed up and put shoes on to “go to work”, mostly we roll out of bed, go to our desks, and work.
Being on tiled floors it’s best to have something on your feet less your feet dry out. Sometimes it’s uggs, but more often than not it’s socks… so we go through a few.
David has a thing about socks with holes so he attempts to throw them out while I’m not looking. But it’s waste that I never would have even considered as a kid.
When I was young the remedy for a sock with a hole wasn’t the bin: it was a needle and thread. I remember mum had a “darning mushroom” and we’d use it for mending socks and I actually used to love doing it.
My philosophy is repair rather than rubbish, so I ordered my own darning mushroom today.
Of course you can just sew the hole closed without one, but having the curved surface of the mushroom means you don’t end up with as harsh a sewing line, less irritation on the tootsies. I have a small pile of socks awaiting their resurrection. 🙃
I recently acquired an Elgato HD60S HDMI capture card device. It’s mostly used for streaming gaming, as seen from my recent streams of Zelda Breath of the Wild and Luigi’s Mansion 3 game play.
However, I thought it would be great for capturing the back of the camera when doing “how-tos” for photography stuff. I have a few planned.
In light of our recent meeting at our camera club about time lapses I put together a quick video about setting up the interval shooting for my Sony AR7 MkIII.
It’s also letting me get used to hearing my own voice… which I hate.
I guess I don’t actually know when I’ll get around to making all the content I want to make. Don’t be too hard on me. 🤓
I’m probably a very annoying person to be around. I pull quotes from movies ALL THE TIME! Usually in response to a phrase or word.
Just a very few of the many, many strange things I say, I can’t even think of most of them off the time of my head, they are triggered by events and just happen, but here’s a couple:
When someone says “Nothing”… I’ll reply “Nothing, nothing, nothing tra la la”- Labyrinth When I realise the front door has been left unlocked when we’re about to go to bed… “We’ll all be murdered in our beds come what may” – The Pirate Movie When someone says “Violated”; I’ll exclaim “Violated, you know what I mean, Violated?”- Chicago
Well, for the most part David knows what I’m going on about. He has either seen the movies I reference, or has osmotically absorbed the information by proximity via my repetitive viewing of said sources.
Turns out there is one movie I also quote, and one particular phrase that comes up more often than you may think… sometimes in response to a word being said, sometimes because someone is driving too fast, or sometimes because someone is walking too slow and I have to zoom around them…
I sometimes say… yes I’m weird, but I’m pretty sure most folk will know where that one comes from, but turns out you learn things about your partner all the time. Tonight I found out David has never seen the movie that is the source of that bit of dialogue that springs forth from my lips many times. I probably have not watched it in the last 22 years so unlike the others the has not been exposed to it by me, but seriously, who hasn’t seen the movie!
And there’s some insight into my brain; this little quirk, which I am quite sure is not unique, is certainly something that I do all the time.
The importance of entering competitions, hearing, and responding to the critique is important in our growth.
We all have our Instagrams with its easy “tap tap” *likes*… but it is through the critical eye of a judge, or those who would give you honest feedback, that we grow in what we do.
The plan was apparently to go to the Apple Store and for David to replace his Series 3 with a Series 5, he was looking the stainless steel or the titanium but wasn’t sure which one he wanted. He revealed this to me as we were on the way, which turned out to be a good thing. Upon getting into the car and opening my iPad, which I’d brought along for the adventure, I noticed the corner had a crack in the screen. I was a little devastated, until I remembered I have AppleCare+ on my iPad Pro.
Knowing I had to book in with the Genius Bar for an assessment of my device I looked up Chadstone and checked the next available appointment, it wasn’t until 3pm, then I checked Doncaster and they had an appointment at 11am, just over an hour’s time, and it would have been about 15 minutes after we arrived at Doncaster if we changed our direction. Doncaster also had the watches David was looking at in stock so the redirection was a no-brainer. I was also not-so-secretly excited for this change because there is also an official Lego Store at Doncaster, in fact it’s right across from Apple!
And there’s the Lego Store!
Well we got there, checked in with the Genius Bar and after a 20 minute wait was on my way to having my iPad Pro replaced, no questions asked, just had to pay the $85 service fee and AppleCare+ took care of the rest. The Apple staff was quite surprised I wasn’t really worried about the content of my device. I wasn’t sure when the last backup was, and she was like “well do you want to do one now before we wipe it and replace it?” and I was like, “nah, I’m not wedded to anything on the device, plus most of it is actually in iCloud.”
I also got to go to the Lego store… while David was thinking about which Apple Watch he wanted to get. I didn’t buy anything because while in there we kind of admitted what we’d known pretty much since we handed back our ceramic watches: We had buyers’ remorse remorse. We really liked the ceramic Apple Watch Series 5, and we decided we’d get them back again.
So off to Chadstone where they had them in stock. They aren’t stocked at any other store in Victoria.
We get to Chaddy and pulled the pin on our bank account and now have two new shiny Apple Watch Series 5 Ceramics. They are so lovely. I don’t love the cost of them ($2,088 each), but I do love them.
House next door is finally up for sale, no mention of the slab heave or the more than 2 years of work that’s been done on the house to mitigate the issue of all the cracked pipes and sewage leakage. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Of course according to the guy who used to live there, before he was silenced by his settlement with the building company, the official independent building report said the only correct way to deal with the issues of the house was to tear it down. I pity the poor folks who buy the turkey of a house.
He fought with them for 7 years, they moved him out a few times in over the years to do more extensive work and still they needed to do 2 more year’s work AFTER they finally settled with him.
