Weekend III

Heavy rain (accompanied by wonderful, moody, howling wind) has been steadfastly swamping south-east Queensland for the past few days. It is so grey that it looks like winter, but it hasn't been so very cold over the weekend -- a fact made evident this afternoon when my little bro ditched clothes and decked himself out in big brother's hand-me-down speedos to race outside for some puddle-jumping. It's good to have all this rain. Queensland needs it.

The weekend was a happy blend of busyness and relaxation. Saturday morning I up and headed out for a brunch with some girlfriends, sort of a combined birthday celebration for Linda and Rachel. There is something just so fun about going out for breakfast, and the cafe we ate at was delightful. It must be good; we had to wait a wee while for a table even at 9.30am. The food was scrumptious (seriously the best poached eggs ever) and the wait staff really cheery -- even on a Saturday morning! It almost made me wish we still had our cafe going (they were fun days).

Afterwards we all did some shopping together which was a fun logistics experiment (six girls bargain hunting) but, since I have promised elsewhere not to detail trips to the mall, I will say no more about it.

Saturday evening we headed into church for a benefit concert for the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students. Although the turnout was rather small, the program was a lovely selection of music roaming from the Baroque right through to the contemporary period. My favourite piece of all was a portion of Bach's third Cello Suite (for pure deliciousness, there's some video here). Delightful.

Sunday incorporated a hoped-for sleep in and late breakfast. It was a grey day (as they have all been lately) and we all just pottered our way through the afternoon before heading to night church for the third in the series on grace. It's really good stuff -- just what I have been needing to hear. This year, in particular, I've found myself seeking assurance in works or, worse, finding none because I'm just not good enough. It's been more awesome than I can say to be reminded that it's all because of Jesus.

Today it's my mum's birthday (yay!). The theme of the day has definitely been Good Food, with homemade croissants for breakfast and chocolate date cake with hot truffle sauce for dessert tonight. We had planned a bread and gourmet cheese (with ginger beer in glass bottles) picnic for lunch, but rain blew those plans. So we ate our picnic lunch in the lounge room and watched Bee Movie together instead, which was probably just as fun. All this, combined with a general feeling of not-quite-well-ishness, meant we put work on hold for the day -- and it's felt rather like a long weekend. Nice.

If your Monday is feeling rather too normal, here's a video to cheer you up. Improvised airport musical goodness, with thanks to Staish for the link!