IT. T2. The Weekend.

The award for most embarrassing call to IT went to me last week.

Turns out that this socket marked ‘HEADSET’ is meant for actual headsets and if you plug the handset into the headset hole you have the problem of being able to make calls and hear the caller only to have them not able to hear you. It’s always a special moment when the IT guy manages to diagnose your problem from the door of your office…

via google images

Landline phones that aren’t cordless are such a novelty these days that I even had to check with Google Images that I named the parts of an old school telephone correctly.

Meanwhile down at the local pub, Preschooler SSG and I walked past this racehorse in the beer garden. I presume he was there waiting for a drink in addition to / as a reward for doing a bit of promo work for the spring racing season.

From Ballina via a work mate comes this photo of The Big Prawn. She was there for work on Friday and thought we might like to share her view of that mysterious world beyond the wards. It was pure coincidence that we met for dinner that night and ate … prawns.

Order has been restored to the tea shelf in the wall cupboard above the kettle at SSG Manor 2.0. My T2 peppermint tea bags (all three bags of them) arrived on Friday and I can’t wait to be soothingly blanketed by sips of the brew when I get home this evening.

I’m trying something new for work lunches. These Peckish vegetable crackers come in various flavours including carrot and kale. I’m a big fan of their regular range so have high hopes for these. Will let you now how they go with sour cream and Continental Spring Vegetable dry soup mix dip (that’s literally what and all it is).

While I was at the supermarket I tried to find a red permanent ink marker and the only way I could buy one was in a twin pack with black. The stationery stockpiler in me was secretly happy to be able to add an eighth black marker to my stash.

In more exciting and very late breaking news… I’ve discovered Uber in a big way. My friend put me in one to get home on Friday, I downloaded the app that night and have spent the weekend Uber-ing.

While I have enjoyed the convenience, ride comfort and safety, some of the company’s shadier moments do trouble me. Hopefully the attention drawn to these incidents and decisions have precipitated change in the company’s practice because it’s a service that I’m pretty happy with so far and it seems to be giving many people a chance to make some extra money when it suits them.

Judging from my Instagram, the weekend was one of the most exciting ones I’ve had in a while. In addition to fronting up to the gym the morning after the night before, I was at a conference for work on both days.

I’d forgotten just how draining it is to actively listen to presentations and discussions in 90 minute blocks. It was a very rewarding weekend though on both an educational and social level.

The conference took place at the University of Sydney. I’ve worked next door for quite a while now and it’s only now that I’ve been able to take a bit of a stroll through it’s beautiful campus.

It’s always a bit disorientating and surreal wandering the campus of a university that isn’t ‘yours’. You have no idea where different faculties are, of the names of key buildings, where the canteen is, the various libraries people go to for both study time and a bit of a gossip….

Yet there’s something very familiar about the energy in the air. It’s stately yet young, full of tradition but also spiked with the now and the new. There’s also a sense of peace and reflection courtesy of the trees, statues and manicured lawns. It’s hard not to let your mind return to memories of your own undergraduate days. Some so vivid it really seems like it was only yesterday rather than the twenty or so years ago it really was.

With the last presentation under our belts by lunchtime on Sunday, cilosophy and I decamped to Surry Hills (via Uber, of course) for lunch at The Winery.

It’s just the perfect place to kick back for a couple of hours with a good friend or several and talk about everything and anything.

Wondering what these drinks were?

They were pomegranate and bubbly spritzers topped with Turkish fairy floss. I rate them at least an 11/10 and consider them a drink to revisit as often as possible. The kind you might even ask the bartender at another venue if they could kindly recreate for you just because. You’ll be the first to know if I can ever make that happen.