marion madness shopping safari

marion shopping centre back in the 70's

We turned what could have been a very long and very boring day into a complete bonus shopping adventure. Granted it was still a very long day, and it ended up being a very tiring day, but totally worth it.

I didn't get to bed until around 2:30 thanks to a sauna trip of questionable effectiveness (it was pretty much half good and half bad, but at least it was free) and then woke up at around 6:30, so I've been on the go pretty much ever since (until 8:30 at any rate) on only four hours sleep.

Yaaaay for slightly sleep deprived decision making.

We did the usual supermarket wanderings... although I hardly bought anything since I'm going to be out at Fringe events on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday... so there didn't seem to be a lot of point in stocking up on too much stuff.

But I did stock up on a ridiculous amount of blackberries since they were going out cheap... mmmm so tasty!

By the time we were finished with all the supermarket wandering, came back here and unpacked everything and generally tried to work out what to do with the rest of he day. We had two Fringe shows to go to, the first of which was at 5pm... so there was a fair whack of day to deal with.

Neither of us really could come up with a plan, there wasn't anywhere we needed to go desperately, but given that the weather was none too pleasant, we really wanted to be out of my apartment and somewwhere nice and cool. We nearly went with a plan where Ma went home for a few hours... but at the last minute I suggested that we head down to Marion... we haven't actually been to Marion since before I hurt my back last year, so that's a good 10 months...

It turned out to be an excellent idea. Although as Ma commented at one point, we were almost behaving like we were on holiday... although we don't tend to buy quite so much kitchenware when we're on holiday.

It all kind of started because I broke my sieve on Monday night when I was making pancake batter... and then when I mentioned it at work, someone asked if it was one of those canister ones where you wind it or grip the handle... which made me really want one of those (even though I pretty much only sift flour for pancakes on Shrove Tuesday).

You wouldn't think it would be that hard to find one... but it kind of was... so much so that after looking in about four different places without success, I bought the first one that I found.

But much later I found a nicer, cheaper, smaller one at General Trader (they were having a sale to get rid of as much stock as possible before they renovate the store)... so I bought that instead and took the first one back.

I also picked up two new red knives... the one I bought a while ago works really well and my knives are getting a bit crappy, plus these are red. I also found a tiny baby wok that was also red, plus the perfect size for a meal for one.

There were also SO MANY scantily clad young men wandering around Marion it was almost obscene. From the guy in Big W who lifted up his teeshirt so the whole store could see a good couple of inches of his flat belly and another couple of inches of the top of his grey Bonds underwear to the myriad of well shaped gentlemen with many and varied tattoos taking up a lot of arm and leg real estate.

That is very definitely one of the few bonuses to the hot weather part of Summer as far as I'm concerned.

We managed to kill a good couple of hours just wandering around Marion and poking around various stores buying things we didn't necessarily know we were looking for until we found them.

By the time we got back to my place it was very nearly time to head out to see things of a Fringian nature, so there really wasn't a lot of time to sit around.

Technically we were running a little later than I would have liked for the first show (a review of which will follow tomorrow, it's too late and I'm too hot to write two reviews tonight), but we still ended up getting a front row seat, so that's the main thing.

And there also seems to be a disturbing trend emerging... I don't think that I voluntarily spoke to any other Fringegoers last year, or the year before that. But so far this year we've been to two shows and I've talked to two different groups of people.

I'm not sure that I like the precedent that that sets up.

Between shows we wandered around The Garden of Unearthly Delights, grabbed some burgers from Voodoo Burger, ran into somebody we know, had some ice-cream and then headed off to the second show.

And you know what, it feels pretty good to be Fringing again. Okay, I'm pretty sure my chiro is going to need to do the MOTHER of all adjustments when I go to see her at the beginning of March due to the cavalcade of bad chairs I'll be sitting in between now and then, but it's worth it.

It was a very full twelve hour day... but an enjoyable one... plus there were knives.

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