Tonight is the engineering revue, and all going to plan, I would right now be picking up my brother from the bus and taking him for a slightly rushed pub dinner on the way to the show.
Do I really need to say that all is not to plan?
Handsome B. Wonderful missed the bus. He and my mum said it's because our dad gave them the wrong information. I'm not sure, since my dad gave me the right information, and typically, if he's going to give out wrong information, he's going to give everyone wrong information. This kind of confusion is, uh, not unknown in my family.
Anyhow, I got a slightly panic-stricken phone call at three thirty (half an hour after the bus left Canberra) asking, among other things, could the tickets be swapped for Saturday? That would probably have been fine - they're technically not changeable, but when a similar issue came up a couple years ago, my friends in the show bent and broke some rules to get us in the night after the one we'd paid to see.
The problem was that, at the time I got that phone call, I was sitting in a pub with a friend from work, waiting for our steaks to arrive, and so not really in a position to start wheeling and dealing to change tickets around.
Eventually it was sorted out that my parents - who had been planning to come up tomorrow morning anyhow, as part of my dad's 50th celebrations - would come up earlier and bring Mr. Wonderful with them. This is all happening just before four, and the show starts at 7.30 ... best case scenario, it's a bit over three hours from Canberra to Sydney. Peak hour? It could take weeks.
I don't know where they all are now. I don't know when they're likely to be here. If they get here by about 7.10, then it's easier for me to wait here for them. If it's going to be later than that, I need to go to the theatre, because I have other people's tickets as well - and I need to get out the door before seven if I'm going to do that.
Right now I'm sitting at home doing maths in my head, and smelling the bolognese sauce that I'm going to leave for my parents' dinner when they arrive. It smells delicious, and I'm starting to forget that I'm still full from my mid-afternoon steak. It's not strictly bolognese, because I've added mushrooms and zucchini (I normally add spinach as well), but otherwise it's my usual, straightforward from-scratch recipe - garlic, onion, mince, tomatoes, basil. You get a fantastic flavour if you use fresh tomatoes - I scald them to get the skins off, then put them whole into the pan with the rest of the stuff. They cook down quite quickly and it's not as watery as commercial sauces.
As an aside, it's quite strange to be making bolognese to leave for my parents. That was what my mum always made to leave for us whenever we all had dinner at different times.
I'm also leaving Lebanese pastries in the fridge. I went to Lakemba this morning to pick up a kilo of them for my dad for a belated Fathers' Day gift, and picked up a second kilo. My expenditure this morning was as follows:
Bulging shopping bag of fruit and vegies: $8.70. I estimate that would have cost me a good $20 in the city, rather than the suburbs.
Fifteen bucks worth of petrol: $15. I can't bring myself to think of the paltry number of litres I got for that $15. Nearly $1.40 a litre (admittedly LRP, but still! Ouch!)
Two kilos of pastries: $32
I think we all know where the bargain in that is.
Do I really need to say that all is not to plan?
Handsome B. Wonderful missed the bus. He and my mum said it's because our dad gave them the wrong information. I'm not sure, since my dad gave me the right information, and typically, if he's going to give out wrong information, he's going to give everyone wrong information. This kind of confusion is, uh, not unknown in my family.
Anyhow, I got a slightly panic-stricken phone call at three thirty (half an hour after the bus left Canberra) asking, among other things, could the tickets be swapped for Saturday? That would probably have been fine - they're technically not changeable, but when a similar issue came up a couple years ago, my friends in the show bent and broke some rules to get us in the night after the one we'd paid to see.
The problem was that, at the time I got that phone call, I was sitting in a pub with a friend from work, waiting for our steaks to arrive, and so not really in a position to start wheeling and dealing to change tickets around.
Eventually it was sorted out that my parents - who had been planning to come up tomorrow morning anyhow, as part of my dad's 50th celebrations - would come up earlier and bring Mr. Wonderful with them. This is all happening just before four, and the show starts at 7.30 ... best case scenario, it's a bit over three hours from Canberra to Sydney. Peak hour? It could take weeks.
I don't know where they all are now. I don't know when they're likely to be here. If they get here by about 7.10, then it's easier for me to wait here for them. If it's going to be later than that, I need to go to the theatre, because I have other people's tickets as well - and I need to get out the door before seven if I'm going to do that.
Right now I'm sitting at home doing maths in my head, and smelling the bolognese sauce that I'm going to leave for my parents' dinner when they arrive. It smells delicious, and I'm starting to forget that I'm still full from my mid-afternoon steak. It's not strictly bolognese, because I've added mushrooms and zucchini (I normally add spinach as well), but otherwise it's my usual, straightforward from-scratch recipe - garlic, onion, mince, tomatoes, basil. You get a fantastic flavour if you use fresh tomatoes - I scald them to get the skins off, then put them whole into the pan with the rest of the stuff. They cook down quite quickly and it's not as watery as commercial sauces.
As an aside, it's quite strange to be making bolognese to leave for my parents. That was what my mum always made to leave for us whenever we all had dinner at different times.
I'm also leaving Lebanese pastries in the fridge. I went to Lakemba this morning to pick up a kilo of them for my dad for a belated Fathers' Day gift, and picked up a second kilo. My expenditure this morning was as follows:
Bulging shopping bag of fruit and vegies: $8.70. I estimate that would have cost me a good $20 in the city, rather than the suburbs.
Fifteen bucks worth of petrol: $15. I can't bring myself to think of the paltry number of litres I got for that $15. Nearly $1.40 a litre (admittedly LRP, but still! Ouch!)
Two kilos of pastries: $32
I think we all know where the bargain in that is.
posted by beck at 5:40 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home