Queensland Roadtrip!

laaa!

so this past weekend was labor day here in OZ, i get 2 this year :) and it meant we got a long weekend. and so we flew away! well, drove but whatever.

it was origionally going to be the ninja turtle group (my dream made that title official, that and its now on facebook :P) but dan couldn't make it because he had a bio field trip saturday and couldn't (wouldn't, he can't lie) get out of it. SO it was me kate and mike with julie driving, and we left friday afternoon to drive the 5 hours to Mackay and Serina. We stayed with phill and nurell, part of julie's extended family, which was lovely. they had kitties! i am deprived of fuzzy things to pet and nuzzle. of course the joke for the rest of the trip was that i am in fact a pet of my friends, they let me out of my room a few hours a day to play and keep me on a leash and so on... i love my friends lol. anyway we got up early saturday to continue driving all the way down to Biloela, where julie and kate are from. we stopped by julie's house to meet her family for a bit and got to see kate's mum, who is going to southafrica soon. and then kate had her friend sarah's 18th birthday party to go to so we dropped her and her rum off and picked up julie's sister amy and her friend kelly before the drive to gladstone, where we met nick for bowling. hillarity ensued, here's some evidence:i actually bowled really well :) i won the first game with a 120 - though i don't think nick was trying. he worked at the bowling alley for a while so he was just havin a good time. by the end mike remembered how to bowl :P and as usual my abilities degraded. but it was a lot of fun. we got icecream after from cold rock (not cold stone.... better) and then played poker back at nick's house. i'm getting better at that game :P we eventually got to bed, and had to be up in the morning to meet julie's dad, who had brought kate and matt to us.

it was really cool getting to meet all the people i'd been hearing about for a few months - i'd already been talking to nick for a while particularly. we each had our own inside/practicle jokes to play on eachother. i did "whatever am i going to do with you" and matt used the force on me. nick was funny because he was just about extatic that he was taller than julie (for the first time in his life) and was surprised at how short i am :P and i think amy was just freaked out that julie actually hugged me :) sp much fun!

anyhoo we left gladstone for our longest day of driving yet on sunday morning, all the way up to Bowen (north of Mackay), so like 8 hours. we entertained ourselves with music, australia trivia from one of the rest stops, and before long julie broke out her pharmacy and anatomy notes for us to quiz her on. the girl's a little crazy when it comes to school work but it was fun torturing her with mitosis and such :P we made it to Bowen in good time, eating fish and chips in the car (crappy fish, its always a tragety when a costal fish and chips shop doesn't serve fresh fish...) and we stayed at julie's house there - not our julie but the woman julie was named after :) she made us tea and set us up nicely. in the morning we had baccon and eggs and delicious :D before we set off to find the dive shop and horseshoe bay. we got a good deal on gear and mike and i went out for a nice dive in the bay - he had to map it for his divemaster course and i just followed along for an enjoyable shore dive. it was great until the sinus ehind my left eye started to hurt with the depth - thats not one you can really pop. so i chilled on the surface for the last bit of the dive. we were going to go out again and snorkel but it started to rain and julie wanted to get back to uni at a reasonable time. we got things packed away and returned and popped back to julie's for showers before we made the quick 2.5 hour drive beck to townsville. we then proceded to invade dan's room for a few hours because we missed him :P

and since then the week's been good. we've discovered latenight shopping at stockland on thursday nights - great place to find the little tweens dressed like skanks and the kiddie gangs, but also convenient if we need to shop. picked up chips and salsa yesterday which we ate while watching grey's anatomy (omg!) and clerks 2 and drinking rum and coca-cola :) we bought a case of cokes for that purpose and left them in mike's flat as usual, but aparently someone decided it would be a good idea to steal them last night so we're out like $12 and all thats left is an exploded can outside mike's dore. great.

tonight is the diveclub pup crawl :) the theme is dressing as something beginngin with J so i'm jeramiah the bullfrog (frog PJ's and the stuffed frog bird sent me) julie is julius ceasar, kate is a jackass (jack written on her ass), and dan and mike are Jay and his hetero life-mate Silent Bob. its going to be a good night, hopefully no one will get pegged and have to deal with the green snorkel of death, i'm sure there will be pictures :P