Retro Post #2 - Afterhours fun in Dudstown

My Bowling Get Up

Winter arrived.  We had been really lucky with all the sunny and warm weather up until Monday when it was legitimately chilly and snow was forecast (although fortunately did not appear).  After my experience last year walking around Dunedin in the ice and snow, Yak Trax are high on my list of "must-haves" and with the knowledge of how cold Dunedin can get in winter, blogging beneath the heat pump will quickly become my preferred way to spend the day.

The winter months (last year), where there was actually ice and snow, were July and August mostly.  I traveled very little and tried to stay warm doing things close to home.  The International Film Festival lasted from the end of July to early August.  I finally started going to films on my own!  This was a HUGE step for me.  I used to consider going to movies alone a clear sign you had no friends.  However, my horizons have been broadened and my narrow-minded-ness cured.  

The first movie that I went to alone was out of pure necessity - everyone else had already seen Black Swan and I hadn't so I went on my own.  Shockingly, I loved the experience and I didn't have to feel guilty about wanting to stay until the end of the credits!  I only ended up seeing a couple foreign films on my own.  One was an Israeli film, Footnote.  It was the first film I'd seen spoken in Hebrew and within the film they watched 'Fiddler on the Roof'.  Listening to a musical sung in Hebrew when I know it so well in English is a bit trippy!  My favorite films were actually an American and a Japanese film.  Melancholia, which came to mainstream theaters a few months later, I surprisingly liked a lot.  I saw it with Matt Tucker and Anna Penguin.  They thought it was crap but for some reason I really liked it.  I'm pretty sure I will make my Dad happy with my other favorite films: Gantz and Gantz 2: A Perfect Answer, Japanese films.  They're based on a manga comic and although long, like many a Japanese film my Dad watches, not slow!  All in all, an excellent foreign film festival experience.

Sary's shoes - my socks :)

After the excitement of the film festival, I needed something else to look forward to over the end of the wintery months. Fortunately, Ceire and Sary's birthdays are only a couple days apart so we planned a bowling night as a birthday party for them.  It was epic.  As were my socks and Sary's bowling shoes.  There was a large group of us from work donning borrowed shoes and rolling up our pants to show off our socks.  Pre-bowling stretches were performed, beers purchased and bowling commenced.  After the initial teaching moments for the first-time bowlers and the "it's been sooo long" bowlers, we got into a bowling groove and I do believe I won the first game (woohoo!!).  Then my arm apparently got tired...or the beer kicked in and I came in second in the next game.  Tragic, truly, but still a good time.  There was more excitement as our ball-retrieval system had some issues and had to be tended to a couple times.  Seeing the inner workings of the ball whoseewhatsit is rather interesting!  As the games progressed there was a marked dip in the "effort" department as alternative tactics were used to get the ball down the lane and more attention was paid to posing for the camera than aiming for the pins.

The Pre-Game Stretch - A True Teaching Moment - Ball Selection is CRITICAL

Our excellent bowling form plus trouble with the ball whoseewhatsit

The degradation of our bowling

Post bowling, we decided to head to Di Lusso for some birthday drinks.  Despite the fact that it was a Tuesday evening (possibly a Monday?) and therefore not a big night in town, we did manage to stay out past midnight and create quite the atmosphere for the other bar patrons that evening.  Guy, Ceire's husband, and I talked cars and music and worked on appreciating spirits on the rocks, sans mixers.  Ceire and Sary started appreciating the music and expressing themselves through the art of dance...good times :)  Our evening lasted much longer than I had anticipated, but good conversation and good friends will do that to an otherwise boring and cold winter's night!  Here's hoping there's a repeat this winter!