2009 for us was ushered in quietly. Both of us were on call for our respective places of work on New Year's day - my phone mercifully stayed silent!! The end of 2008 ended with a tinge of sadness as we said farewell to one of our dear friends who finally lost her battle with cancer. Thus ended a tradition of spending every New Years Eve with her - something we had been doing for at least 10 years if not longer.. .
As for family, all children/young adults remain at home with the oldest starting a phd in physics, the middle one temporarily abandoning a communications degree in favour of a job in the hospitality industry, and the younger one completing her HSC and successfully auditioning for a musical theatre course thus beginning to make her way into the shaky industry of the performing arts. Is there a support group for parents of budding actors, I wonder? Looks like we may be financially supporting our children for a few more years to come.
This year will have to be the year of the house and maybe the year of short distance travel. Our bathroom is leaking and moisture is appearing on the walls of the hallway...a little too close to powerpoints for comfort. The carpet is threadbare so, heavy sigh, we will look for new floor covers. I like polished boards but I'm not sure they are entirely practical for this house.
Last Friday we decided to fly to Melbourne to see the Broadway Musical, "Wicked". The advantage of living where we do is that our little regional airport hosts cheap direct flights to and from Brisbane and Melbourne. We flew out at 6.00am and were eating breakfast in a very nice little cafe by 10.30am having checked into the hotel and ridding ourselves of the encumbrance of our luggage. It was very cold, I have to say - 16 degrees C, and as we had come from 35 degrees C, we had not expected the cool change and searched for a warm venue to fill in a few hours before the show. Melbourne is a lovely city and there is plenty to do. We decided against browsing the book shops as we both felt we had a number of books still waiting to be read at home, I abhor clothes shopping (which is apparently good in Melbourne), so we elected to visit the new Antarctica Exhibition at the aquarium. Several interesting (and warm, dry) hours were spent there followed by one or two hours of reading in our hotel room (with siesta) before heading off to see
Wicked.
The last large musical production we had been to was "Priscilla" which was fabulous. This show did not disappoint us either. I was familiar with the music as both daughters had been playing it at home for over a year. It is well worth a visit to Melbourne to see it - I believe it is coming to Sydney but the dates are not confirmed.
The next morning we walked our breakfast off in the
Royal Botanic Gardens (which has an impressive number of mature oak trees - my favourites) and we were home by early evening.
On Thursday, we again packed our bags, this time for an overnight stay in Sydney City. Geoff's staff had given us tickets to see Le Grande Cirque at the
Sydney Opera House. The show was very entertaining although being a physiotherapist, I had difficulty watching the women stretching themselves into positions that defied the workings of the musculoskeletal system. I have a horror of what this may do to their joints with age. There appeared to be more international tourists in Sydney this week although I think the numbers are down with the world economic downturn. Our hotel surprisingly had a large number of guests from the USA - always nice to see US tourists as they are generally very appreciative of our scenery as are visitors from Japan. Being such a huge country though, I wonder where their tours take them - it would be impossible for example to take in the Barrier Reef, Uluru, wine growing areas. wilderness, cities all in one stay.
Yesterday we managed to fit in a walk through the
Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney on our way to the Art Gallery of NSW in order to finally see the
"Monet and The Impressionists" exhibition. As many visitors to this blog know, I have been a supporter of British actor, Richard Armitage's work for some time and was captivated by the BBC mini-series of The Impressionists where he plays the young Monet (see post
here). I had also studied art at school so to see the paintings in real life was incredible to say the least. We spent a fairly long time looking at the paintings firstly close up and then at a distance in order to appreciate the works from all angles, light and colour changes.
Back to work next week - the lawn needs mowing, a movement development checklist I am creating is in need of tweaking and finalising, the cupboards and bookshelves need cleaning, one of our elderly relatives needs help t move into an aged care facility and finally I am subdeacon next sunday so there are intercessions and readings to practise. (The Dean of our Cathedral retired on December 31st, so the Bishop is standing in until the new Dean arrives from England).
PS: I'm still having trouble working out how to format and text wrap images on typepad. I don't post often enough to learn, I feel. The blog has also received a number of hits for
this post and part 1 in which I wishfully proposed that Richard Armitage would make a great Bard the Bowman in Peter Jackson's new Hobbit movie. It is to be made in 2010 and would certainly be preferable to his re-inventing poor old Guy of Gisborne in a fourth series of BBC Robin Hood.
