Dinglow
I've only had four hours of sleep plus a half hour nap a short while ago. I don't feel so good now but damn was it ever worth it! Dragged b_dingo out to have fun and much was had by all, especially the guy in question, which makes it all worthwhile. :> I'm going to give my account of it here before I probably try to take another nap to shake off the sleep deprivation. Hopefully dilph and Bingo will give their own accounts too, just cos I like seeing things from another perspective. ;>
I probably should start with how the plan for the night came together, then go over the night in detail (or as much as I can remember, at any rate).
Bingo alerted me on Sunday to the fact that it was his birthday this week. Well, that's not quite accurate. He mentioned he was going shopping for his birthday so I asked when it was. My first thought was, "We gotta organise a birthday bash for him." The event has passed without much notice (at least in this circle of friends) the last couple of times, and that just doesn't seem right to me. More's the pity that our friend Belinda (who used to organise these sorts of things) moved to Sydney. And as an aside, usually I keep better track of when my friends' birthdays are. I should get a little more organised. ;>
So I had an objective: Do Nice Things for Bingo, cos he's a cool friend. First I had to find out whether there was anything organised or not, and that was made difficult due to pretty much everyone who'd know was at a video night. :b (And as another aside...I realise I'm not a part of that group but I probably would have enjoyed that night if I'd been invited. But I wouldn't have invited myself either, so that's all there is to it.) But to cut a long story slightly shorter, I checked around and as I'd suspected there was nothing happening, so I bounced a few ideas off Dilph, got a "HELL YEAH!!" from Kelvin and sent around an email. Then I went gift shopping on Wednesday and found this:
It was hanging up on the wall of a tourist-trap souvenir shop in the Queen St mall and the sheer coolness of it hit me right there! Not only does the shirt grab you by the balls and twist (to borrow a phrase from Dilph), it throws you up against the wall and demands to know why the f**k Bingo is not already wearing it!!! I mean, dingoes - blatantly obvious connection there! It glows in the dark, and we all know how nuts Bingo is over glowy things. :D Not only does it have the dingoes and the glowy bits, it's also got a pair of wedgetailed eagles soaring in the background! I mean, how can you go wrong with wedgetails??? But the feeling I had then and there was that Bingo MUST have that shirt by the end of the week! And it was a euphoric find. :D
I didn't have money on me so I picked it up Thursday morning. Thursday evening I met up with Dilph in Indooroopilly shopping centre and we cruised around there gift hunting, which was cool in and of itself. And in King of Knives we found this:
Our luck was running hot! There were two other potential gifts in the store as well (maglite torch and a knife with a circuit board in it), but the Photon light was definitely the pick (and yet we still had to think about the decision, left the store and came back just before it closed). Glowy blue thing!! Glowy shirt!! I mean, cooooool!
Not only that, we also wandered across a large-screen projection of The Matrix in the Harvey Norman computer section - and it was right before the lobby scene! Plus Dilph won $10 on a scratch-it and I caught my connecting bus home by a hair! Lady Luck was on our side that night. Plus I'd also had an interesting day at uni (communication skills workshop).
The final hurdle in the plan came about on Friday morning when I found out that Bingo had other plans for that night, but I managed to set him straight without giving anything away (and hopefully without too much arm-twisting). Kelvin actually called me a 'devious bastard' (in the nicest sense) for the way I'd planned this event. :D But it did all rely on Bingo showing up to the fortnightly game, and in all honesty the game is hardly an unmissable event, particularly it seems for Bingo. He looks rather bored and tired a lot of the time there.
After my project management review meeting that afternoon (which went well), I logged back onto IRC and Bingo showed up a short while later. I said I was bored, which was true, and I suggested we hook up somewhere. He vanished off IRC unexpectedly so I stuck around a little while longer just to see if he'd reconnect, then I decided to catch a bus into the city and phone him when I got there. I did and he said he was catching the next train, so I dashed off to Central station to catch the train to Geebung.
I got the 4:47 Petrie train but he wasn't on it. I did however bump into one of the guys in the D&D group, Jordan. He told me his brother was at a dance and he couldn't go to gaming either because his mum wouldn't let him. Yyyyyes! :D
I arrived at Wicked Games. No one was there, so I poked around the store merchandise for a while (saw Dragon's Winter in paperback for $6), then wandered back to the train station, then to the fish and chip shop where I bought a box of hot chips for dinner (cheap!). Ate the chips by the side of the road, wandering back and forth between Wicked and the train station, until Bingo finally showed. I forget what time that was, but it couldn't have been all that long considering I was only halfway through my chips. I couldn't eat all those chips by myself and I figured Bingo would be hungry so I shared them. I bought a ranger miniature for him to paint but he didn't have his paints with him and Wicked's free paint selection is crap, so I have a rather unfinished and uninspired miniature. Currently the hawk is all black (Bingo named it "Four And Twenty").
I can't be bothered mentioning what happened during D&D and it really isn't important. Bingo did fall asleep during it, and I was feeling quite tired myself. Woke at 7:30. Not as bad as 5am, mind you. ;> Kelvin did spill part of the plan, saying that we were going to take Bingo out after the game and do stuff in celebration of his birthday. Someone suggested that the first place we should hit is caffeine. Actually, I think that was me. "We should go to a Seven Eleven or The Coffee Shop." Something like that. "Caffeine?" asked Dilph, and I nodded. We were all feeling pretty tired.
So after the game, Kelvin drove us into the city and our first stop was a Seven Eleven (with perving at chicks en route, but that goes without saying). The guys picked up some caffeine and I pointed out the Dr Pepper. Dilph said something about DP being inconsequential in terms of caffeine content. I said something like DP does get me wired and they laughed and I think both Bingo and Dilph said in unison "Yeah, but that's just you," or that they expected that from me, or something like that. That did set me off, though, and I stared at the fridge for about a minute trying to decide if I was going to cave and buy DP, or find something else with real caffeine (there was no Jolt), but in the end I decided to f**k buying anything and I sneaked outside. The guys eventually paid for their purchases and found me waiting there. I trailed behind the group as they made their way to the gaming arcade and tried to look okay, but I was suddenly regretting being there, feeling as though I'd made a mistake and wasn't really a part of the group and trying to think of a way to escape... social anxiety, in other words. I'm not sure why I fell into that mood, and I was trying to break out of it, at least for the sake of not ruining the evening and trying to feel better. I guess it was a combination of tiredness and my occasional tendency to take a friendly jest as an insult. This was my low point of the night. They walked into Gamezone (or whatever it's called) and I deliberately held back, also partly because I'd mentioned earlier that gaming arcades were not my thing, especially not after midnight (and it was nearing 1am at that point). When they stepped in the door I took off down the street. I rounded the corner so that they wouldn't look back and see me, and there were a few stagehands/roadies, or whatever they're called, packing some musical instruments into a truck, effectively blocking my escape router. If it wasn't for them, I don't know what would have happened next. So I stopped and leaned up against the building, trying to regroup myself. Fortunately after a few moments I started feeling better and walked back. I tried to detach myself from the situation, which helped a little more. My friends were standing outside the arcade looking for me, and I shouldn't have worried them like that, but at the same time I had to regroup and I don't think I had a lot of choice. I was only gone for a minute or two, fortunately. I didn't give them an adequate reason for my sudden disappearance at the time. It's my damn self-defenses again. I recovered pretty quickly from that episode and managed to enjoy the rest of the night. :>
I wasn't up for the first game they played, which was Metal Slug 4 (first time I'd seen it, actually). I joined in as a cleric for the D&D arcade game, and that was pretty cool, although it's the first time I've played that game and I didn't do too well. We played Daytona next and that game always kicks ass. :D Dilph, Bingo and I played in the first game (which I won - BOOYA!!), and Kelvin joined us for the rematch (Dilph won that and I placed a close second).
After we left the arcade we hit a pool hall to play doubles. Bingo and I paired up and I quickly demonstrated to my friends that I had skillz. ;> It also became apparent that Kelvin had skillz too and both Bingo and Dilph were badly out of practice. I concentrated too hard on a couple of shots in the first game and I had my tongue hanging out, which must've looked pretty doofy. :p Kelvin and Dilph joked about how I had a soft touch, I had the tongue action happening and I was the quiet type, which raised the question why I was still single. :D And that's cool... I was having fun, they were having a chuckle and everything was fine. Sometimes I can take the joke and get a smile or laugh out of it, and sometimes not. I don't know why. I guess it depends on how silly the joke is...maybe. But thanks to my skillz, Bingo and I won the first game, then Kelvin's skillz kicked in and they won the second game fairly easily. Bingo accidentally sunk the 8-ball in the third and we decided to consider that a win to them but we continued play with the balls on the table as they were, and we won again. The scores were locked 2-2, so I suggested we play a tie-breaker. Kelvin sunk a ball on the break, but that was just about the only thing that went their way that game. :D I sunk three in quick succession (they were nicely lined up!), then Bingo finally hit the spot and sunk three more (including one amazing fluke shot where the ball rebounded out of the lower right corner pocket and sunk in the lower left). A couple of rounds later I got snookered but pulled off a good shot with the cue ball rebounding off the rail and hitting our ball from behind, which sunk in the side pocket. Lucky, yes, but my next shot to sink the 8-ball was skill. :> So Bingo and I won at pool. :D
It was back to Dilph's house for the remainder of our night, and it was around 3am then. Kelvin brought along some Southern Comfort rum and Dilph had vodka. We also opened a bag of pretzels, then started with rum and coke (except Dilph, who drank vodka and orange juice instead). Dilph gave Bingo the Photon light, and needless to say he loved it. :D And it was blue!! We had a toast and then I gave Bingo the shirt, and he put it on, and it fit him well. We also tested out the glowiness of the shirt. I ended up having three rum and cokes, a vodka and orange juice, and two vodka and Lift mixes. I think we all ended up drinking roughly the same amount, though Dilph probably had the most. We were quite drunk by the end, around 6am. Bingo slept for a short while at some stage (after he'd had his sixth drink). Not that I was actually counting. :P Other than a lot of chat and jokes, I don't remember a lot else happening. Oh yeah! -- Bingo's quotes. :D Dilph can probably explain this better, but Bingo's first memorable quote was "Red and green are the same." Well, that's true if you're red-green colourblind, which Bingo is. (One of my brothers is, too.) The second had something to do with a philisophical conversation Bingo had with the bathroom mirror about mirrors. The third...
Bingo got up off the couch and I walked over to the window to see how light it was outside, then I stumbled back and flopped down in Bingo's spot on the couch. He came back and asked what I was doing there, but I was actually feeling somewhat wasted and I didn't bother moving, so Bingo sat down next to me. He tried getting comfortable and that didn't seem to work so he asked me to move again, but I still wouldn't budge. He said something like "Get out of my bed or I'll give you head". :D I don't know what he actually meant by that, but the obvious meaning...heh.
Kelvin took the mattress in the spare room, Dilph went to his room and ... sketchily remembered conversation I had with Bingo ensued, and he took the couch in the other room. I then thought it'd be fun to jump on #Feathers and go nuts there. That's a noisy keyboard because both Bingo and Dilph came to investigate. Bingo grabbed the keyboard as well. The interesting thing was that my typing was perfect and Bingo's was shocking. :D
We eventually peeled off back to bed. Kelvin did say to me before he went to bed that it's a good idea to drink lots of water after alcohol and I did. I did feel pretty queasy before I fell asleep, and I dragged the munchies bowl over to the couch in case I needed to puke. :b Luckily I didn't, and I slept until 10:30.
When we'd all woken we mobilised for the final part of the plan. The plan was to meet up with invited friends at Roma St station at noon, collect pizza from Windmill Pizzas (across the road from Hog's Breath Cafe), and eat the pizzas in the parklands. This didn't go as planned for two reasons:
1: When we arrived (ten minutes late) at the station, only Stev (Bingo's housemate) was there to meet us. antheawuff arrived late, Stephen (Quoll) arrived around 2:30 (!!), and there were a few no-shows as well.
We killed some time in QUT's "Innovation Train" (or whatever it was called), but it was quite warm in there, the carriages seemed to sway a bit, and I was starting to feel crook in my gut and head. When we came off the train and found a spot to sit and wait, I rushed off to the toilets, but I wasn't sick there or anything. I asked one of the gate inspectors where the nearest drinking fountain was, and he pointed me to Platform 10 (near the entry to the parklands). The drinking fountain there was broken, so I bought a bottle of softdrink instead (the fizzy lemon/lime natural spring water, whatever it's called). The guys were coming up the escalator when I was returning and they had Anthea with them. We looked for a spot to sit and then decided we should get pizza, but there was a "future plan" (non-existent) bridge across the train tracks so we had to walk the long way around. It was a good walk but this brings me to point 2.
2: Windmill Pizzas opens at 4pm!! We were there at 2pm. :/ That annoyed and disappointed me slightly, and there didn't seem to be much else around there in the way of food that happened to be open and reasonably priced. :b
I bought an ice cream from the shop next door and we wandered back to the train station and the food court there. (We ran into Stephen en route.) Amazingly they had a pizza joint there! And the pizzas were reasonably priced, and quite tasty!
The fellowship split. Kelvin was going to go home and install some hardware for his computer, Stev and Anthea had plans to go swimming and watching the AFL semi-final at the Gabba, and Bingo was going to visit his mum. That left Dilph, Stephen and myself. I was starting to feel pretty tired and kinda crook again. Dilph had some time to kill before work and we went into the arcade there and spent some money. There were storms in the area and it started to pour down rather heavily outside (lucky we weren't in the park!), so we decided to catch a train to Central rather than get wet. Funnily, the rain had stopped when we got to Central. :D At least we didn't get wet.
Dilph got changed into his work uniform and left us at five. I followed Stephen to make sure he picked up a job application form from McD's, we stopped by the Seven Eleven and then I caught the bus home.
It's a trivial point of interest that I started this event by meeting up with Bingo and finished with Stephen. We also had a lot of fun and this MUST be done again. :D
And if it hasn't already been said enough, Happy Birthday b_dingo! :>
I probably should start with how the plan for the night came together, then go over the night in detail (or as much as I can remember, at any rate).
Bingo alerted me on Sunday to the fact that it was his birthday this week. Well, that's not quite accurate. He mentioned he was going shopping for his birthday so I asked when it was. My first thought was, "We gotta organise a birthday bash for him." The event has passed without much notice (at least in this circle of friends) the last couple of times, and that just doesn't seem right to me. More's the pity that our friend Belinda (who used to organise these sorts of things) moved to Sydney. And as an aside, usually I keep better track of when my friends' birthdays are. I should get a little more organised. ;>
So I had an objective: Do Nice Things for Bingo, cos he's a cool friend. First I had to find out whether there was anything organised or not, and that was made difficult due to pretty much everyone who'd know was at a video night. :b (And as another aside...I realise I'm not a part of that group but I probably would have enjoyed that night if I'd been invited. But I wouldn't have invited myself either, so that's all there is to it.) But to cut a long story slightly shorter, I checked around and as I'd suspected there was nothing happening, so I bounced a few ideas off Dilph, got a "HELL YEAH!!" from Kelvin and sent around an email. Then I went gift shopping on Wednesday and found this:
It was hanging up on the wall of a tourist-trap souvenir shop in the Queen St mall and the sheer coolness of it hit me right there! Not only does the shirt grab you by the balls and twist (to borrow a phrase from Dilph), it throws you up against the wall and demands to know why the f**k Bingo is not already wearing it!!! I mean, dingoes - blatantly obvious connection there! It glows in the dark, and we all know how nuts Bingo is over glowy things. :D Not only does it have the dingoes and the glowy bits, it's also got a pair of wedgetailed eagles soaring in the background! I mean, how can you go wrong with wedgetails??? But the feeling I had then and there was that Bingo MUST have that shirt by the end of the week! And it was a euphoric find. :D
I didn't have money on me so I picked it up Thursday morning. Thursday evening I met up with Dilph in Indooroopilly shopping centre and we cruised around there gift hunting, which was cool in and of itself. And in King of Knives we found this:
Our luck was running hot! There were two other potential gifts in the store as well (maglite torch and a knife with a circuit board in it), but the Photon light was definitely the pick (and yet we still had to think about the decision, left the store and came back just before it closed). Glowy blue thing!! Glowy shirt!! I mean, cooooool!
Not only that, we also wandered across a large-screen projection of The Matrix in the Harvey Norman computer section - and it was right before the lobby scene! Plus Dilph won $10 on a scratch-it and I caught my connecting bus home by a hair! Lady Luck was on our side that night. Plus I'd also had an interesting day at uni (communication skills workshop).
The final hurdle in the plan came about on Friday morning when I found out that Bingo had other plans for that night, but I managed to set him straight without giving anything away (and hopefully without too much arm-twisting). Kelvin actually called me a 'devious bastard' (in the nicest sense) for the way I'd planned this event. :D But it did all rely on Bingo showing up to the fortnightly game, and in all honesty the game is hardly an unmissable event, particularly it seems for Bingo. He looks rather bored and tired a lot of the time there.
After my project management review meeting that afternoon (which went well), I logged back onto IRC and Bingo showed up a short while later. I said I was bored, which was true, and I suggested we hook up somewhere. He vanished off IRC unexpectedly so I stuck around a little while longer just to see if he'd reconnect, then I decided to catch a bus into the city and phone him when I got there. I did and he said he was catching the next train, so I dashed off to Central station to catch the train to Geebung.
I got the 4:47 Petrie train but he wasn't on it. I did however bump into one of the guys in the D&D group, Jordan. He told me his brother was at a dance and he couldn't go to gaming either because his mum wouldn't let him. Yyyyyes! :D
I arrived at Wicked Games. No one was there, so I poked around the store merchandise for a while (saw Dragon's Winter in paperback for $6), then wandered back to the train station, then to the fish and chip shop where I bought a box of hot chips for dinner (cheap!). Ate the chips by the side of the road, wandering back and forth between Wicked and the train station, until Bingo finally showed. I forget what time that was, but it couldn't have been all that long considering I was only halfway through my chips. I couldn't eat all those chips by myself and I figured Bingo would be hungry so I shared them. I bought a ranger miniature for him to paint but he didn't have his paints with him and Wicked's free paint selection is crap, so I have a rather unfinished and uninspired miniature. Currently the hawk is all black (Bingo named it "Four And Twenty").
I can't be bothered mentioning what happened during D&D and it really isn't important. Bingo did fall asleep during it, and I was feeling quite tired myself. Woke at 7:30. Not as bad as 5am, mind you. ;> Kelvin did spill part of the plan, saying that we were going to take Bingo out after the game and do stuff in celebration of his birthday. Someone suggested that the first place we should hit is caffeine. Actually, I think that was me. "We should go to a Seven Eleven or The Coffee Shop." Something like that. "Caffeine?" asked Dilph, and I nodded. We were all feeling pretty tired.
So after the game, Kelvin drove us into the city and our first stop was a Seven Eleven (with perving at chicks en route, but that goes without saying). The guys picked up some caffeine and I pointed out the Dr Pepper. Dilph said something about DP being inconsequential in terms of caffeine content. I said something like DP does get me wired and they laughed and I think both Bingo and Dilph said in unison "Yeah, but that's just you," or that they expected that from me, or something like that. That did set me off, though, and I stared at the fridge for about a minute trying to decide if I was going to cave and buy DP, or find something else with real caffeine (there was no Jolt), but in the end I decided to f**k buying anything and I sneaked outside. The guys eventually paid for their purchases and found me waiting there. I trailed behind the group as they made their way to the gaming arcade and tried to look okay, but I was suddenly regretting being there, feeling as though I'd made a mistake and wasn't really a part of the group and trying to think of a way to escape... social anxiety, in other words. I'm not sure why I fell into that mood, and I was trying to break out of it, at least for the sake of not ruining the evening and trying to feel better. I guess it was a combination of tiredness and my occasional tendency to take a friendly jest as an insult. This was my low point of the night. They walked into Gamezone (or whatever it's called) and I deliberately held back, also partly because I'd mentioned earlier that gaming arcades were not my thing, especially not after midnight (and it was nearing 1am at that point). When they stepped in the door I took off down the street. I rounded the corner so that they wouldn't look back and see me, and there were a few stagehands/roadies, or whatever they're called, packing some musical instruments into a truck, effectively blocking my escape router. If it wasn't for them, I don't know what would have happened next. So I stopped and leaned up against the building, trying to regroup myself. Fortunately after a few moments I started feeling better and walked back. I tried to detach myself from the situation, which helped a little more. My friends were standing outside the arcade looking for me, and I shouldn't have worried them like that, but at the same time I had to regroup and I don't think I had a lot of choice. I was only gone for a minute or two, fortunately. I didn't give them an adequate reason for my sudden disappearance at the time. It's my damn self-defenses again. I recovered pretty quickly from that episode and managed to enjoy the rest of the night. :>
I wasn't up for the first game they played, which was Metal Slug 4 (first time I'd seen it, actually). I joined in as a cleric for the D&D arcade game, and that was pretty cool, although it's the first time I've played that game and I didn't do too well. We played Daytona next and that game always kicks ass. :D Dilph, Bingo and I played in the first game (which I won - BOOYA!!), and Kelvin joined us for the rematch (Dilph won that and I placed a close second).
After we left the arcade we hit a pool hall to play doubles. Bingo and I paired up and I quickly demonstrated to my friends that I had skillz. ;> It also became apparent that Kelvin had skillz too and both Bingo and Dilph were badly out of practice. I concentrated too hard on a couple of shots in the first game and I had my tongue hanging out, which must've looked pretty doofy. :p Kelvin and Dilph joked about how I had a soft touch, I had the tongue action happening and I was the quiet type, which raised the question why I was still single. :D And that's cool... I was having fun, they were having a chuckle and everything was fine. Sometimes I can take the joke and get a smile or laugh out of it, and sometimes not. I don't know why. I guess it depends on how silly the joke is...maybe. But thanks to my skillz, Bingo and I won the first game, then Kelvin's skillz kicked in and they won the second game fairly easily. Bingo accidentally sunk the 8-ball in the third and we decided to consider that a win to them but we continued play with the balls on the table as they were, and we won again. The scores were locked 2-2, so I suggested we play a tie-breaker. Kelvin sunk a ball on the break, but that was just about the only thing that went their way that game. :D I sunk three in quick succession (they were nicely lined up!), then Bingo finally hit the spot and sunk three more (including one amazing fluke shot where the ball rebounded out of the lower right corner pocket and sunk in the lower left). A couple of rounds later I got snookered but pulled off a good shot with the cue ball rebounding off the rail and hitting our ball from behind, which sunk in the side pocket. Lucky, yes, but my next shot to sink the 8-ball was skill. :> So Bingo and I won at pool. :D
It was back to Dilph's house for the remainder of our night, and it was around 3am then. Kelvin brought along some Southern Comfort rum and Dilph had vodka. We also opened a bag of pretzels, then started with rum and coke (except Dilph, who drank vodka and orange juice instead). Dilph gave Bingo the Photon light, and needless to say he loved it. :D And it was blue!! We had a toast and then I gave Bingo the shirt, and he put it on, and it fit him well. We also tested out the glowiness of the shirt. I ended up having three rum and cokes, a vodka and orange juice, and two vodka and Lift mixes. I think we all ended up drinking roughly the same amount, though Dilph probably had the most. We were quite drunk by the end, around 6am. Bingo slept for a short while at some stage (after he'd had his sixth drink). Not that I was actually counting. :P Other than a lot of chat and jokes, I don't remember a lot else happening. Oh yeah! -- Bingo's quotes. :D Dilph can probably explain this better, but Bingo's first memorable quote was "Red and green are the same." Well, that's true if you're red-green colourblind, which Bingo is. (One of my brothers is, too.) The second had something to do with a philisophical conversation Bingo had with the bathroom mirror about mirrors. The third...
Bingo got up off the couch and I walked over to the window to see how light it was outside, then I stumbled back and flopped down in Bingo's spot on the couch. He came back and asked what I was doing there, but I was actually feeling somewhat wasted and I didn't bother moving, so Bingo sat down next to me. He tried getting comfortable and that didn't seem to work so he asked me to move again, but I still wouldn't budge. He said something like "Get out of my bed or I'll give you head". :D I don't know what he actually meant by that, but the obvious meaning...heh.
Kelvin took the mattress in the spare room, Dilph went to his room and ... sketchily remembered conversation I had with Bingo ensued, and he took the couch in the other room. I then thought it'd be fun to jump on #Feathers and go nuts there. That's a noisy keyboard because both Bingo and Dilph came to investigate. Bingo grabbed the keyboard as well. The interesting thing was that my typing was perfect and Bingo's was shocking. :D
We eventually peeled off back to bed. Kelvin did say to me before he went to bed that it's a good idea to drink lots of water after alcohol and I did. I did feel pretty queasy before I fell asleep, and I dragged the munchies bowl over to the couch in case I needed to puke. :b Luckily I didn't, and I slept until 10:30.
When we'd all woken we mobilised for the final part of the plan. The plan was to meet up with invited friends at Roma St station at noon, collect pizza from Windmill Pizzas (across the road from Hog's Breath Cafe), and eat the pizzas in the parklands. This didn't go as planned for two reasons:
1: When we arrived (ten minutes late) at the station, only Stev (Bingo's housemate) was there to meet us. antheawuff arrived late, Stephen (Quoll) arrived around 2:30 (!!), and there were a few no-shows as well.
We killed some time in QUT's "Innovation Train" (or whatever it was called), but it was quite warm in there, the carriages seemed to sway a bit, and I was starting to feel crook in my gut and head. When we came off the train and found a spot to sit and wait, I rushed off to the toilets, but I wasn't sick there or anything. I asked one of the gate inspectors where the nearest drinking fountain was, and he pointed me to Platform 10 (near the entry to the parklands). The drinking fountain there was broken, so I bought a bottle of softdrink instead (the fizzy lemon/lime natural spring water, whatever it's called). The guys were coming up the escalator when I was returning and they had Anthea with them. We looked for a spot to sit and then decided we should get pizza, but there was a "future plan" (non-existent) bridge across the train tracks so we had to walk the long way around. It was a good walk but this brings me to point 2.
2: Windmill Pizzas opens at 4pm!! We were there at 2pm. :/ That annoyed and disappointed me slightly, and there didn't seem to be much else around there in the way of food that happened to be open and reasonably priced. :b
I bought an ice cream from the shop next door and we wandered back to the train station and the food court there. (We ran into Stephen en route.) Amazingly they had a pizza joint there! And the pizzas were reasonably priced, and quite tasty!
The fellowship split. Kelvin was going to go home and install some hardware for his computer, Stev and Anthea had plans to go swimming and watching the AFL semi-final at the Gabba, and Bingo was going to visit his mum. That left Dilph, Stephen and myself. I was starting to feel pretty tired and kinda crook again. Dilph had some time to kill before work and we went into the arcade there and spent some money. There were storms in the area and it started to pour down rather heavily outside (lucky we weren't in the park!), so we decided to catch a train to Central rather than get wet. Funnily, the rain had stopped when we got to Central. :D At least we didn't get wet.
Dilph got changed into his work uniform and left us at five. I followed Stephen to make sure he picked up a job application form from McD's, we stopped by the Seven Eleven and then I caught the bus home.
It's a trivial point of interest that I started this event by meeting up with Bingo and finished with Stephen. We also had a lot of fun and this MUST be done again. :D
And if it hasn't already been said enough, Happy Birthday b_dingo! :>