A night out on the town

Journal_Date:

6 Mar 2010

I recently signed up on a website named 750 Words. The idea is to write 750 words a day. For some people this can be a personal journal or an exercise in writing. I've been using it a few days in a row now and have found it very satisfying. It also gives you some feedback when you're done - like how many minutes it took, your total word score for the day, how many minutes it took you to write your days text, and how many words you type a minute. My current average is 38 words a minute! Because of this excellent exercise, you may be seeing more blog entries from me as a direct result of getting stuff out of my head and onto 'paper'. While what you type on the site remains private (unless you choose to share it), you can also export your writing so you have your own personal copy of it. This will be great for just getting into the habit of writing regularly and also sharing some of my writing with you. What follows are excerpts of what I wrote Saturday morning.

NOTE - some of the links and videos below are NOT SUITABLE if you're easily offended or at work!!

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Last night Rod and I went to see a couple of shows that are part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival. What a great night! Even though I ended up walking 8.33km - or 11,744 steps - each of which wasn't pain free, it was a fantastic night.

We left a little later than I'd been planning for, and then the car park we were planning to use wasn't really available since they closed at 10pm and we knew we'd be out later than that. So we had to find another car park and then walk to where the venue for the first show we were seeing. We'd planned to have tea at the Asian food court at the Central Market but since we spent so much time looking for a car park, that was now out of the question. We found the venue and then went looking for a place to eat. We were hoping for a cheap snack bar type place but instead found a rather nice Chinese restaurant (named simply 'Beijing') just a half block from the venue. We didn't have time to savour a full meal, but instead ordered three appetizers to share and tide us over. What a very nice place. Soft carpet, subdued lighting, generous spacing between tables, tastefully decorated and a menu that looked very appealing. The appetizers were excellent as well. We'd like to go back there sometime for a full meal in the future. And, what a neat way to check out a restaurant without having to pay a whole lot to get to see what it's like and what their food quality is. The waitress was also excellent and took our entrée order when asking if we were ready to order a drink.

We had our food and I took some pain meds and by time we finished we only had a few minutes to spare before the show started. Our seats were about 5 rows from the front and dead centre. We saw the Ronnie Johns Half Hour (which was an hour). It was various skits with about 4 or 5 different comedians including of course Ronnie Johns. He saved his most famous act for last, which is an impersonation of Chopper Reid. There were some great moments - loved every minute of it and my face hurt from laughing so much.

We then walked to the 'Garden of Unearthly Delights', which was quite a long way to walk but the alternative was walking in the opposite direction about the same distance to catch a tram. We got there in time to check out the park across the street that had some weird lighted tents (Amococo) plus a couple of the giant space people that are part of the theme of this years Fringe. Photos were taken, but I need to get them off my camera before I can link to them.

The Garden of Unearthly Delights was very much like a carnival. They set it up the same as they have in years past. We had a good wander around and had Yiros to eat before the next show. Our show this time was the Axis of Awesome which is three guys doing comedy with music. One of the guys, Jordan was also part of the Ronnie Johns show we saw earlier. Busy guy! Very funny goofy songs and one of their best bits was a dumb '3D' gag that we were given 3D glasses for. Dang if those bastards didn't want the glasses back at the end of the show - I could use a pair for something I saw recently on the Nets! Oh well. The other funny bit was a whole long thing about how all the chart hitting songs we ever hear are done in only 4 chords. And on the way home listening to the radio I kept pointing out songs - hey - 4 chords. Those guys are onto something!

After that show, we wandered around a bit and I got myself a Chai Latte. OH, that was excellently yummylicious. We decided to head back to the car, which was a very long walk. We did get to see the now famous lights at Rundle Mall and I took a few snaps. Adelaide's little version of Time Square. LOL.

We made it back to the car park and the car by 11::55pm. I didn't bother looking at my phone to count the steps till we were on our way, but later discovered my estimate at the time was off by a couple thousand. Thank god I had a heat bag stashed in the car for my back. It felt SOooo good.

Here are a few videos representing the acts that we saw. As above, they contain language and may offend so don't watch if you're at work, church or just can't cope with use of the F word or gross stuff. You've been warned!!

Axis of Awesome: