Ask, don't tell

On Wednesday night Ivan and I went to the Pearl Jam concert at the Entertainment Centre. They did two shows in Adelaide and we weren't originally going to go but when I heard there were still seats available for the second show I thought it'd make a nice Christmas treat.

They definitely didn't disappoint. They did a fantastic set, doing half a dozen tracks off their latest album but mostly doing a stack of old favourites. The same as when they were here in 2003, the band seemed to be in a great mood and so performed heaps well for the crowd, with Mike being his usual show-pony self and giving the crowd something to enjoy along with Eddie's vocals. Next time they come to Adelaide we'll have to try and get seats closer to Mike.

The only downside to the night was the section we were sitting in sucked. Not view wise, we could see fine, but this one guy in particular was a real downer. I've been to plenty of seated shows before and you either stand with everyone else or you let them stand for a song or two and generally people sit down on their own (as happened the last time we saw Pearl Jam). The guy in front of me stood up for one song, and I followed suit, but the guy behind me, before the song was even over, tapped me on the shoulder and told me to tell the guy in front of me to sit down. Not asked, but told. This guy wasn't taking no for an answer. A few choice words were exchanged between the two guys, and then the rest of the concert was spent bopping in our seats. I simmered a little but wasn't willing to let the guy ruin my night, so I had a good time anyway, but concert etiquette appears to be a thing of the past. What was more annoying was looking around the Centre and seeing practically every other damn section standing. Perhaps it pissed me off more because he was so rude about it, demanding we do as he said.

After the second encore a few people in front of us left so for the last couple of songs we were able to climb over the seats and stand in this area that was clear at the front.

All in all, a fantastic show though, I highly recommend for others to go and see them when they get the chance. Here's a very bad photo taken with my camera phone in which you can't see a thing. I assure you our seats were not as bad as this photo makes them look!

EDIT: Having trouble uploading photo, will do my best to get it going from home tonight.

EDIT 2: Success!

Aunt Mel

I am very happy to announce that my sister is around 6 weeks pregnant and is expecting her first child in July! We were originally told to keep it quiet, but since she's been too excited and has blabbed to lots of people she's now given me permission to tell people too. I'm HEAPS happy for her and can't wait to be an Aunt! I plan on spoiling the little boy or girl as much as I can. Her and hubby have been hoping to fall pregnant for a little while now, and as a rule I'd stopped asking her if she'd had any news because as we all know, when people ask us annoying repetitive questions it doesn't actually help. So when she called me at work a couple of Fridays ago and announced the news I could barely contain my excitement. YAY!!!

In other news, I still haven't posted pics from my October camping trip or details on the last couple of LANs. Should I bother? The posts are now extremely outdated...

Got ID?

A couple of weekends ago I left work early on the Friday to drive up to Berri for the Riverland Wine & Food Festival (hereafter called the Festivus). The website promised frivolity and thus my expectations were high.

Bronwyn was kind enough to let me stay over her place over the weekend along with another Mel that she knows from the Barossa. We both arrived on the Friday night and Bronwyn, bless her, had cooked us a delicious dinner and we had a relatively early night, chatting and watching The Princess Bride which until then I had never seen before despite it purporting to be a classic.

On the Saturday Bron took us for a drive to Renmark in her new car, although it was a not-so-secret plot to get her car washed but we weren't up early enough to do anything constructive before the Festivus anyway.

Around lunchtime we met up with a couple of Bron's Berri friends and walked down to the riverbank for the Festivus of frivolity. I must say I wasn't disappointed in the slightest, it was a fantastic day! The weather was gorgeous, the atmosphere good, the music not-too-shabby, and the wine and food were very good indeed. The wine was so good, in fact, we kept going back for more.

Before dinner time had hit I think we were all... well... tanked. They dtopped serving the wine at 6pm, which was probably just as well, because none of us needed anymore. One of Bron's mates who is notorious for falling over took a tumble and smacked her head on the wooden table, blacking out for a short time. It was as sobering a moment as was possible but she was fine in the end and got home safely.

The rest of us went to the pub for a quick drink before walking back to Bron's place for an intermission. After getting changed and drinking lots of water in an attempt to sober somewhat, we made our way to another mate's place for some home-cooked pizzas before walking down to The Vines, the faux-nightclub the pub becomes after a certain time. I wasn't too keen on going as I'm over the nightclub scene but decided to go along after all.

My attitude re: not wanting to be there must have been evident somewhat as the git bouncer carded me for ID. I'm freaking 27!! Other people I've told this to said I must have been flattered but I definitely wasn't, I was more annoyed at the idiot for carding people that look nothing like they did when they were 10 years younger. Well, in my drunken state of preparing for the night, taking my ID with me did not even enter my mind, so I may have been partially at fault. But only very partially! Anyway, I decided to just go home and get to sleep, so Bron and Mel stayed on while I took the nanna way out.

On Sunday I woke up at some ungodly hour (it was about 6:15am) and pottered around waiting for the others to wake up. After they did I left quite early, visited Mum and Dad on the way home and came home feeling very tired and seedy. Was a great weekend though.

Right, so there's an update finally! After receiving a few subtle hints, now you can all shut the hell up about it :D

Science!

Well a couple years ago when I heard they were going to discontinue the Hubble space telescope program with nothing solid to replace it for a decade I was if not most upset, at least somewhat perturbed by the decision.

Hubble has done so much for us in cosmic mapping to this date and enhanced our understanding of the universe around us from an almost child like ignorance to where we stand today. (somewhere between ignorance and pre-school knowledge).

So for me when I read this article this morning:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061031/ap_on_sc/shuttle_hubble_8

... to say the least I was thrilled and a small hole of sentimentality which had eroded into me felt like it was beginning to heal once more.

What is probably just as interesting from a new safety standpoint is the second shuttle being on standby should anything go wrong with the first while obtaining or being in orbit since the first will not be able to hook up with the international space station.

NASA always seems to learn from her mistakes which is more than can be said for alot of operations around the globe and even makes some great decisions every now and then.
I heartily look forward to watching the progress of this mission in early 2008.