I tend to have weeks alone, then all of a sudden, several outings with friends all at once. On one hand, it’d be nice to stagger things more evenly, but I much prefer the casual spontaneity of getting together when the mood suits. Time with friends both in virtual and physical spaces, is time well spent. I had a lovely afternoon lunching today with a friend locally as I happened to have a couple of days off.

Caught up with another friend last night and we tried out a couple of the bars I mentioned yesterday: Midnight Special & Bar Racuda. Both were on the quiet side, fair enough given it was a Sunday night, though Hartsyard was packed so we’ll try it another time. Midnight Special do really delicious hot dogs, will happily return just for those. Otherwise though, not really my sort of space; it caters to a different crowd. Bar Racuda was mostly empty and my mate and I had a good evening sitting at the bar chatting to the owner. They did a nice old fashioned too. A comfy sort of space with a nice wooden, welcoming bar. Special was probably a bit too loud for me, whereas Racuda was better suited to chatting…or at least for a deaf bugger like me.

Friday was another night spent locally too: dinner at a pasta/pizza place on King St, followed by a movie at the recently re-opened Dendy. Finally saw Dark Shadows, which was ok and a little bit silly but the story didn’t really hang together very well. I’ve often said, and this confirms yet again, that Burton is a wonderful director who needs a really good writer. Movie was followed by a visit to the Townie which I used to visit occasionally with other groups of friends in years gone by. The fatal mistake of the evening, was that having started on red wine, I finished with a few ciders, not to mention a 2-3am stroll home. Saturday was spent very quietly at home and mostly, in bed :-)

The Wednesday prior was spent with the same group of friends and a few others, a couple of suburbs away playing board games in the Summer Hill Hotel.  Thankfully that wasn’t too late for a work night. All in all, a good round of hanging out with folk. I won’t have much time for socialising over the next couple of weeks. The Sydney filmfest gets underway on Thursday…and not Saturday as I had initially thought. Thankfully, a friend pointed this out to me on the weekend. I start with 2 films on Thursday evening and all up, I think there’s 30 films in my subscription, plus I’m hoping to buy some additional tickets for films outside the subscription series.