So, this is what I'm thinking…

So I had the last week off work. I had to work New Years day which was tediously boring, even though there was an active Known Issue alert which affected only West Australian customers which had to do with WA no longer observing Daylight Savings Time. The code works fine if you’re north of the equator or if you always observe DST, but since WA is south and we only trialled DST for three years we found there’s a bug when you change calendar years.

But it was all a non-event and I came through unscathed so after catching the train back to Mandurah we drove down to Dunsborough to visit my parents. Natalie and Dave were there which was cool too. Some of the highlights were playing golf at Simmo’s, and watching Star Trek on the large theatre screen. I doubt mum has ever seen TNG or DS9. She remembers the old series so seeing the familiar characters was a kick for her. My old nemesis Eric Bana was even in it. At Simmo’s we played a round of mini golf. Somehow Suzanne managed to beat me, but Jett had the best score of all, managing to pull off triple figures! Then we all had ice creams. We didn’t tell the kids that  we had a banana split at Simmo’s while they were out at the movies the day before with my mum watching Alvin and the Chipmunks.

The rest of the time down there was a mix of walking the dogs, hunting for golf balls, swimming down at the beaches at Dunsborough, Yallingup and Meelup. For some reason we didn’t get many photos while we were away.

But, like all good things it came to an end and we had to come home. On Thursday we visited Abingdon Miniature Village which is near us on Pinjarra Road. The grass was manicured to within an inch of it’s life and looked fantastic. It’s quite a surprising little place. I had my reservations about going and seeing some crappy little model houses, but there’s more to it than this. Besides the model houses, there’s a model railway with tunnels and bridges and waterfalls, there’s a nice hedge maze to get lost in, and a smaller “running maze” with no walls for the kids to play on. There was mini golf, a big sand-pit play area, an old heritage Tea Room (way overpriced, so we had McDonalds) and a little boutique. I had a better time than I thought I would have.

On the Friday we had some old-ish new-ish friends for dinner. “Old-ish new-ish?” I hear you ask? They’re kinda old for me and kinda new for Suzanne. I used to go to Church with Adam and Elissa many years ago, but lost touch. I found Adam on facebook a while ago, and our nosey wives also managed to communicate and make friends with each other. They’re on vacation here from their home over east and so we had arranged to meet up mostly so that Suzanne and Elissa could commiserate and comfort each other about having such nerdy, quirky husbands.

Explaining my relationship with Adam is strange… He was (and always has been, funny that) a couple years younger than me so I can’t really remember have that much to do with him in Church when I was young. I do remember, though, that he was into Star Wars when I was also into Star Wars. I can’t remember who invited who, but  I remember attending some Star Wars fan club meeting with him at some school. I think it was in Maylands…? There was munchies and a quiz and talk of collecting and rumours of new movies; I’m pretty sure it was before Return of the Jedi. I remember Elissa and my sister Natalie hit some kind of jackpot one afternoon when they made a call from a public payphone near our Church meeting house in Greenmount. They dropped their coin in and the whole coin box opened up spilling 20s everywhere. I lost contact with both of them for the longest time until about 6 months ago. I remember hearing rumours that he was a Bishop or a Secret Agent or something like that. Adam joined in on a couple of my idiotic facebook status updates, Elissa and Suzanne compared notes on which of us was nerdier.

Anyhow, I was happy to have them and their family over for dinner and take them crabbing. I appreciate that they took a night out of their valuable holiday time to catch up with some guy they haven’t seen or heard from in twenty years and meet his family. Their kids are cool and seemed to be alright playing with mine. Their oldest can even quote Lord of the Rings which ain’t bad. I think they all enjoyed crabbing, which was strictly catch-and-release only. I’d be glad to have them over again so we can compare collections in more detail.