Chats with Strangers, Writing Exercises, Italian Food, Leisure Suit Larry, and Bridge Climbs

[pssst, the photo is of me and Jorge @ his graduation from UNSW a couple weeks ago - don't I look like the proud mum? ;)]

Birthday Bonanza
Friday night was so much fun! Chad, all I can say is: You have really nice friends! It was excellent to see Shay, Fidelma, Bart, Sal, Amanda, Andy, and the rest of the crew @ Chad's B-day bash, as I hadn't seen them in ages, but what was funny was that I ended up hardly talking to anyone I knew that night and spent most of the night chatting with people I'd never met before. I hadn't intended that to happen and I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to the gang more, but I met some super new people. So thanks to Marvin, Rocky, Mona, Claudine, Ted, Jennifer, and Damian for being so much fun to talk to! [BIG thanks to Sal for being so incredibly, well, Sal! Her kindness and concern never cease to amaze me.]

Writing Frenzy
I finally turned in my writing piece for the "Can You Survive the Drive? writing competition for the Sydney Writer's Festival. The festival runs from the 27th of May to the 2nd of June and there seem to be a lot of cool things happening this year. I decided to enter one of the comps this year simply to use it as a writing exercise. I wanted to give myself a deadline to write a story and while I'm convinced my story is boring as hell after reading it 1000x, I met the deadline and that's all I care about ;) Thanks to Saint Kristen for helping me time the story - such the little actress!

Italiana!
Jorge, Ray, Kristen and I went to a great Italian restaurant in Leichardt on Saturday. I'll be damned if I can remember the name - it might have been Alba's? I seem to remember reading the name of the restaurant upside down on the bill. This funny woman with long painted finger nails and tight snake-skinned pants serenaded us with Italian and French songs on the accordion. It was very good, albeit loud. I was impressed she could play the keys or chords with those nails and I could hear my old piano teacher whispering in my ear, "Cut your finger nails, Lori!" The old woman threw a fit if she could hear my nails hit the keys. ;) Anyway, the food was amazing - just what I needed. I hadn't had red meat in ages and I was craving steak so badly, so I was such a happy camper!

Leisure Suit Larry
Is there a conspiracy going on here? At first I thought I was the only person who had never heard of Leisure Suit Larry, but so far it seems like it's mostly a guy thing. I might be totally wrong, so if there are girls out there who played this game, please let me know! Anyway, thanks heaps to Rammstein for being so sweet as to burn me a copy of Leisure Suit Larry 1-6! I'm so psyched. I popped it in when we got home last night and I LOVE it! I haven't gotten very far yet as I only had it in for like 20 minutes, as I couldn't figure out how to turn off the sound so as not to disturb poor sleeping K, but I can tell I am going to become addicted. It is hilarious! As Rammstein said, I will learn to love the polyester! I am going to make up for lost time now as from everything I've heard about LSL, it sounds so fricking funny - I feel very deprived. Just call me Leisure Suit Lori! :-)

The Bridge Climb
"Now I've....had the climb of my life.....no, I never felt this way before, yes, I swear, it's the truth, and I owe it all to you..."Finally. It's only taken me two years, but I finally did the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. It was fantastic! My lord is this thing organised! I've never seen a more organised tour in my life, and I've been on plenty of tours in my day. I felt like I was in some NASA training camp, getting ready to become an astronaut! So they were extremely thorough and thought about absolutely everything - there was absolutely nothing that could go wrong! And everyone who worked there was unbelieveably nice and funny. Really friendly and hilarious, without being annoyingly perky. Our bridge climb guide Anne, was so cool! She reminded me a lot of my friend Zoe.

The only drama we had was getting to The Rocks. Kristen and I caught a bus from Broadway and it took over a half hour to get there due to heavy traffic...we ran and ran once we got off the bus and just made it right on time. Phew! So, first we watched an instructional video and then we were herded into room where we had to sign a form saying we were in reasonable health and wouldn't sue anyone if anything happened. They had us take breathaliser tests to make sure no one was drunk. Hee hee. Then we were all given our jump suits which were oh-so-stylish. Seriously, compared to the flightsuit I had in New Zealand when I did my first sky-dive (I looked like a pregnant human banana!), I felt like a big ol' fashion plate! The jump suits were not bad at all. Then we got our gear - our harnesses, and our "parachutes" which turned out to be fleece jackets. Then we were off to get our "accessories," which turned out to be gloves, beanies, cords for glasses/sunglasses, and handkerchiefs. Hahahaha - yup, they even had hankies for us! How funny was that. Anne told us, "yeah, try to get a clean one!" She was kidding. The hankies, gloves, beanies (hats), absolutely everything had bands on them that went around our wrists like bracelets and could then be stuffed up our sleaves. Everything was attached to us or our suits somehow, so there was no way in hell anything could fly away. Finally, we each got radios and ear pieces so our guide could talk to all of us during the ascent and descent. "Astronaut Lori, can you please make your way to lift-off?" Seriously, I was so excited - I felt like a little kid walking around in astro-gear!

I don't know how I got to be first in line to follow our guide, but I did. I didn't think having the Super Klutz be the first to climb, but maybe I would show the team what NOT to do! As it turned out, I didn't do anything klutzy or embarassing, so all was well. The beginning which involved climbing up several ladders was a bit odd because only one person is allowed on the ladder at a time so my guide ran up the first ladder and disappeared and then I went next but she wasn't on the next level so I was like, "Umm, do I just keep going?" So I did, but there was no one ahead of me or behind me that I could see while I was climbing. When I got to the top, I looked at Anne who had flown up the stairs and said, "You little show off, you!" And she laughed.

The majority of the climb was easy as pie. It's simply going up and down stairs. You have your harness on the whole time, but really, there's no way you could fall off the bridge without the harness unless you were trying. You'd literally have to be trying to jump off. I felt very safe the whole time. Obviously, the view was absolutely amazing. Of course, my harness ring kept getting stuck through every little divet we went through, but I was able to pull my way free in about 1 second, so no problem. Now, to be honest, the Bridge Climb is NOT cheap. Pretty pricey, but the Sydney Harbour has to be the best damn harbour in the world, and you only live once, so why the hell not? I couldn't stop gaping at the scenery below. I've seen it all before, from the ground, and even from a helicopter, but this was still just as breath-taking as ever.

We had our pics taken and you'll be able to see the embarassing and highly unflattering pics of me very soon. It was very windy up there, winds reaching around 40kph, and we felt like we were going to fly off the bridge. Anne told us to stand and lean against the wind and put our arms out to simulate sky-diving. And it did really feel an awful lot like sky-diving. Very cool!

So, all in all, it took about 2 hours (plus an hour of prep time) but it just flew by. We learned a lot of history about the bridge and the making of it. We waved to George, the poor bridge-worker who is still buried within the bridge. He slipped and fell into some cement and wasn't discovered till he was buried to his forehead. There was nothing they could do, so they kept on pouring. So poor George is still a fossil within the bridge today. Something like 16 people out of about 1461 lost their lives in the making of the bridge during the Depression. Considering they had no safety precautions, I find that to be amazing. And we learned about this Irishman who fell off the bridge into the harbour and survived, but his boot soles pressurised into his feet and had to be surgically removed. The highest parts of his boots actually melded into his groin and also had to be surgically removed. Ouch! He had lots of internal injuries and broken ribs and whatnot, but he was back at work in about 3 weeks. What a trooper!

Anyway, you get the point - had an awesome time and I'm so glad we went. If you want a reminder of how beautiful Sydney is, give it a whirl! Afterwards, we went to City Extra for dinner - yum! So even though I had Fish & chips and bread and salad and an ice cream sundae, about a half hour later when we get home, I am starving. I just made myself 2 corn on the cobs - gotta love it!

Lastly, I just want to send lot of love and prayers to Heather and the Downies. My thoughts are with you guys - please stay strong!