/karen/

Un-invited

Monday, 05 December, 2005

Ben went to NTE last Friday and Guan and Mary invited me over to stay at their place. “Cool!” I thought—I've never been invited to sleep over at a married people's place before. Ben dropped me off at work where I spent the day writing a CHN about calendars and a very frustrating almost tear-your-hair-out sort of article which still isn't finished so I shall go and tear my hair out again tomorrow.

After work Guan and I stopped into the CBS/Unichurch office and I met Ben S for the first time which was pretty cool because I'd only ever spoken to him on the phone or written to him via email regarding CBS-type things. He and his wife Alex had invited Guan and Mary for dinner and very graciously said yes when Guan asked if I could come too.

The cool thing about Kingsford is that everything seems to be within walking distance: the office, the shops, friends' places, etc. We went over to Ben and Alex's place just before the storm starting rolling in and watched the clouds bank up from their balcony while Ben started cooking us these really yummy steaks. Fortunately everyone liked theirs medium rare because it became impossible to cook any more on the BBQ when the rain really started bucketing down.

After the very yummy dinner of steaks and salad, they introduced me to a board game called Ticket to Ride Europe—a train game where you earn points for laying tracks between cities and completing objectives (e.g. linking up London with Berlin). There are special rules for tunnels and other routes featuring locomotives. It was fun once you got the hang of it! Mine were blue (the trains of Peace and Tranquility), Mary's were yellow (the trains of sweetness and light), Alex's were green (the trains of envy?), Ben's were red (the trains of cutesy-wootsey love) and Guan's were black (the trains of DOOM!). Guan won. I came last. But it wast still fun!

The following morning I slept in for a long time—so long, in fact, that Guan and Mary were able to go out, do the shopping and come back before I even got up. It was a very nice relaxing morning with all of us just lazing around the lounge room, knitting, reading, etc—the kind of relaxing weekend you wish you had every weekend but you only get on very rare occasions. Mary made this really yummy pasta thing for lunch and then we all hopped in the car and drove out to Glossodia for the MM Christmas party where there was more relaxing, sitting around and chatting. I got to meet all the spouses and a number of the kids. I kind of realised fairly late in the year that Stephanie, author of Their God is So Big and the Teaching Little Ones material, is actually married to Ian, our Operations and Financial Director (duh, Karen!)

We ate a very yummy dinner and then gathered around for a group photo. Then Tony gave out the annual Matthias Media awards and I won the much-coveted Golden Underpants Award! (Unfortunately I can't remember what the award is actually for but nevermind.) Guan scooped the Leanne Davies Memorial Award for Best Lunches for the second year in a row and the prize was a plastic cockroach which Mary immediately claimed.

We drove home making up stupid stories in the car and guessing song lyrics and they dropped me off at my house. Thanks heaps, guys!

Twitter

Blinks:

Feeds

• Full posts
• Full posts and del.icio.us feed
• Excerpts only
• del.icio.us feed only
• All comments

Social media

• Flickr
• Goodreads
• Last FM
• LibraryThing
• Listal
• Pinterest
• Ravelry
• This Is My Jam
• Twitter