Free Hat!!!

Headed down to adelaide today with my new best buddies (haha, maybe not but they are a awesome couple) sarah and luke for the day and this afternoon we stopped in at a pub for a couple beers and luke and I scored free hats with each jug (aka pitcher) of beer we got! We were in the "big city" today to check out the adelaide fringe festival... kind of a music, art, comedy, street fair thing. but i think we kind of missed out, more of a night time festival i'm guessing because not much was going on.
Work this past week was a bit of the same old, same old. A little lab work, a little crushing, and a lot of cleaning... actually spent most of my time in the bottling hall, first programming the label machine then helping label over 900 cases of Cab sauv. missed out on most of the grape crushing though... seems like they needed my untrained expertize in mastering the unknown elsewhere... yet still found a way to send that crew home just in time for me to clean out the press of all the grapes skins that get crammed in every corner and seam! Jerks! ha, just kidding, i'll get them back someday.
Near the end of last week i got some sad news, my friend Rach was quitting her job and going back to melbourne and then on to magnetic island in the far north queensland. She was the one i took out for valentines day and have been hanging out with a lot. Her job has been kind of been giving the whole vintage cellar crew the run around, offering only a couple shifts a week after telling them they needed to be her the end of january... and after over 4 weeks of little work and again promising that grapes will start to come "next week" as they have for the past couple weeks, rach decided she had enough. I'm going to miss her. I had friday off so in the afternoon i took her to Sevenhill Cellars for a little wine tasting (which i still hadn't had a chance to do) and then gave her a personal tour of the all the cool little sites around the winery, church, crypt and old stone buildings around the property. Then met up with other friends and headed out for a fun night out to say goodbye, first at the blyth pub (dinner and karaoke), then middle pub (drinks outside) and finally the bentley (more drinks [butcher of port?] and music).
Got up saturday morning just in time to run over to rach's and say goodbye as she drove away. afterwards i spent the morning downtown walking around, got a iced coffee and toastie... closer to lunch i got a beef pie (i love these pies, i'm sure they are very unhealthy but once a week i can treat myself) then met up with krys, will, luke and sarah to go for a 30 minute drive out of town to watch some tennis. kry's team was short 2 guys so she bribed will and luke to play for them with a 6 pack of beer. it was funny both hadn't played for years and both lost their games 6-0, but as a doubles team only lost 6-1. also saw a the old folks of the area playing a little lawn bowling, which must be huge here because every town seems to have a bowling club and field. took saturday night easy, a little worn out from the night before and day in the sun.
Today was a great treat in adelaide though... when we first arrived we found a place one of their friends suggested for dim sum! we were very lucky to get a table because soon after we sat town the queue (aka line, ;-] ) was out the door. if you don't know what dim sum is, well you sit there and servers come by with platters of different small portions to choose from... like steamed dumplings or fried shrimp or bbq pork ribs, just enough so everyone gets a couple of bites to eat then wait to see what comes next. its actually kind of exciting! It was amazing food and we ate till we were stuffed! we thought it was going to cost a fortune! but only ended up being about $75 to split between the 3 of us. after lunch we felt like a little dessert and found a bubble tea place and got drinks... i love bubble tea! ran to catch a bus to a part of the festival called, "the garden of unearthly delights!" which i can only imagine gets outrageous at night... but during the day it was mostly families. but we did catch a "freak show" but really more of a collection of stuffed animals with birth defects :-/ like a 2 headed calf, 1 eyed chicken, 1 head and 2 body duck, fish monkey boy... not what we expected but not bad for $5. watched a street performance with a guy stacking buckets and standing on them like 15 feet off the ground then juggling 3 daggers. then headed out for a afternoon drink... got our free hats... we met up with one of their mates, Sebastian and his lady friend (both from france) and we all went out of dinner at a noodle restaurant... mine was really spicy! but yummy.
now i'm exhausted and ready for bed! perhaps a big week coming up. We should finally be getting in some Shiraz fruit this week which i'm very excited about... RED FERMENTS! and we should also be racking all the whites we have pressed and getting those fermenting. oh and i think i heard there was going to be some filtering and bottling... %-) oh boy... not what i like to hear, crushing and bottling!!!