It has been a busy week, and will only get busier from here on in until Christmas- already looking forward to those five days of nothing between Christmas and New Year.
On Thursday we went to Latin American night at the Barracks- a small shopping/ food area near my work. Sangria, kind of south american nibbles and some latin dancing instructions. It turns out that Greg and I are not destined to set the world alight with our salsa dancing ability. Sigh. But it was fun, and I would consider going to dancing lessons at some point.
Friday was reasonably quiet, we stopped by Purple Palate to try a couple wines and to pick up some Pinot Noirs (70 + wine bottles and apparently all the pinot we has gone) for Greg to drink. Then home.
Saturday we went to the Coorparoo markets, which have started relatively recently. Just off the main crossroads in Coorparoo- the suburb where I live, there is an old big box store- one of the earlier furniture superstores. It has been closed for years, and the other businesses in the building struggling. It will be torn down in a few years for the busway, but some enterprising person has set up markets in the main store area. It is pretty good, quite a few food places downstairs, and an upstairs area of non food market stuff. We have been once before, but it was close to closing.
The food stalls are a nice variety, and we have gotten some pretty good bread and meat from there. The main floor is a bit of a mixed bag. There are some interesting stores with handmade bags and stuff, and a great fabric store called Voodoo Rabbit, which stocks fabric not available elsewhere in Brisbane. But there are also the stalls full of junk from China and the stalls selling “wonder” products no one wants to buy. I had an interesting conversation with a lady at the bag stall- they also have a stall at the much more established South Bank Markets and it sounds like the Coorparoo operation is still a bit miss for them- not yet enough people coming through. It was certainly not very crowded, but more people than last time. It helps a lot that everything is undercover- it’s been raining a lot at the moment.
We also hit up a couple of Garage sales on the way home, and now have a few more phones- still trying to find a landline phone that works well- the last one made the internet slow. At the second sale we bought a sewing machine (elna!) and a whipper snipper (apparently we need one).
We had a few people over (help clear the wine) and that will be the quietest Saturday night for a while. Today was fairly relaxing, despite a foolish visit to the shops (a few needed items including whippersnipper wire) where there were no parking spaces.
Laundry was a bit hard- the rain-sun-rain pattern today kind of made the whole hanging laundry outside to dry pointless ( but we did it anyway). But it needs to be done because the next few weekends are going to be busy. Friday and Saturday engagements all the way through. On the plus side, a bit of time on the internets and we are almost completely done with the Christmas present shopping!
