Weekend report

Got our computer back on Thursday. They still hadn't looked at it (a week later) when Ian called after work. As he told them, they'd had it longer than we had at that stage. They said they'd get on to it and rang back later to say it was good to go. Seems ok so far but we'll see . . . any more trouble and I'll insist on my money back.

Friday night we went up to Jamie's school to see the musical. Jamie is working as stage crew. The musical they are doing is "Into the Woods" (Wikipedia entry) and it's a 'fractured fairytale'. It involves the Baker and his Wife who, in order to have a baby, need to go into the woods and collect one red cape (from Little Red Riding Hood), one snow white cow (Jack of the Beanstalk's best friend), some hair yellow as corn (from Rapunzel) and a golden slipper (Cinderella's). All the fairytale folk are in it; the Big Bad Wolf and Grandma, Prince Charming and his brother, the Wicked Stepmother and Stepsisters, the Giant.

A friend's son is playing one of the princes ("I'm charming, not sincere"). He's a tall, handsome boy with curly hair and dark eyebrows which he put to good use, hamming it up with the audience. Adam planted his feet on that stage and owned it; he was very funny. He and the other prince, a friend of Jamie's, sang a duet that quite stole the show (unhappily, Jamie said last night Adam was off-key for that song which brought Matt undone too and it was not good). The cow was also hilarious.


(Hope that works, if not go to: YouTube video )

At the end of the show everyone went home happy. The Baker and his Wife had collected everything and were to have their baby and the Princes had found their Princesses, Jack had been reunited with Snowy White the Cow.

Only it wasn't the end of the story. Just the intermission. After the break, the Princes were not so enamoured of their Princesses (Rapunzel was constantly in tears), the other Prince had a crush on the sleeping Snow White only couldn't get near her because of the dwarf guarding her, Charming fancied the Baker's Wife, Little Red Riding Hood's Granny had gone missing (again) and the wife of the giant that Jack had slayed was on the rampage looking for Jack.

It was all good fun and Ishbel has a crush on Adam now I think although her highlight was seeing Jamie each time he rushed across the stage, moving props.

Saturday had Ian and Jamie up at the crack of nothing to be across town for his AFL game. Jamie apparently played well and got a Coach's award : "James Coquhoun played his best game of the season and is this week's deserved recipient of the prestigious "Green Car" award". You can read the full Under 18s match report here. (No idea what the Green Car thing is . . .)

Rob went off up to Katoomba yesterday afternoon to the annual Winter Magic Festival with some friends. He stayed overnight at Leigh's house, Ian and Jamie are just away to fetch him home just now.

They are also taking home Ishbel's friend, Britney, who stayed the night. Only lots of threats (from both sets of parents) got them asleep before 10pm. Ishbel has had a lot of sleepovers, either here or at her various friends' houses lately, I think we may have to have a break for a week or so; she's just not getting enough sleep.

This afternoon I am off up to Katoomba for my book group meeting. We are having a fundraiser quiz for the MS Society in addition to our usual book chat. The fundraiser is called Throw the Book @ MS and all we had to do was register with them and they sent out all the questions. We held the quiz night with my Springwood book group at the beginning of the month and raised over $150. Unfortunately, we had to pay back Catherine $77 of that for wine prizes that she'd bought so next year we'll either not borrow, or make donations of prizes.

That book group we opened up to friends and family. We charged a $5 entry fee then I managed to squeeze extra money from people by charging 50c each time they called out an answer (they had to ping and then wait for me to invite them to answer), charging 50c each time they got a wrong answer and by charging $1 if they wanted to buy an answer or point - they were collecting sweeties - each correct answer, or $1 fee earned a sweetie with the team with the most sweeties being declared the winners. The Katoomba group weren't wanting to open up the meeting but we decided on a $10 entry fee and when I told them how I'd squeezed the extra out of the others they agreed to the extra squeeze so hopefully we'll raise a fair bit more for MS.

I started reading one of those Cyprus books of Shirley's this morning. I hadn't got around to it before because of the reading I need to do for two book groups. I've only read a few chapters but I must say I'm enjoying them. I'm looking forward to getting on to Google Earth this evening and having a look at the villages she talks about. I suspect things are not quite so quiet as 1984 when they first moved back. Harry's pictures are great, but I would have loved some photos of the house they built and some of the village characters. I'll email Shirley later on and tell her I've started reading.