Tuesday, 24 december

[robbat2]

woke up earlier this morning, due to a very strong wind blowing in the windows, and slamming doors, as well as a pesky Indian Mynah bird that came and sat on my windows and chirped at me quite loudly.

today has been uneventful compared with yesterday, my father and I took the rental car to an autoglass place to get a quote on replacing the window, and then back to the rental place, they fretted over who was going to pay the insuracnce as my father opted to use the insurance from his north american credit card instead of paying extra for their insurance. the quote from the place was for R960, which I think is quite reasonable. they were fretting over that instead of wanting to organize a new car for us. my father set them right for the moment.

after that we went back home, I checked some email and wrote a few replies and then we went out to buy some cold meat and groceries for the next few days since the stores are closed over christmas and boxing day here. we wanted to get proscuttio, so we found a supposed italian deli, but they only had a parma ham that wasn't much like what we wanted. found that wrapping paper is hideously expensive here now, R23 for a 5m roll!

had lunch, now my parents are taking a nap and i'm typing this up on my father's laptop instead of directly into my palm. i'm listening to 1.5gb of mp3 I brought with me on a little hard drive, and catching up on the days of diary writing that I haven't done.

Heading out along the M4 again, to pick my brother from Damian. the speed limit is 100km/h, but evrybody is doing at least 120km/h, us included.

After picking up greg, we went to visit the Jacksons again, as they claimed to have surprise for us. It turned out to be Helen and Megan, having snuck in from Australia, giving even the family this side only a day's notice that they were coming. Helen's eldest daughter was already here to visit granny, and she knew about the surprise visit, but she wasn't divulging the information until she was finally prompted to.

Sat around and had another impromptu braai for dinner, just a little salad, some bread rolls, and lots of red meat. i took some nice photos of reflections and the sky, the sky photos are to show the plethora of stars that we have here.

I drank some of the bottle of Sambuca that I left here 18 months ago, it'll follow me around for a while, and get left in somebodies cupboard again for me to drink from on my next visit to south africa, if I don't finish it while i'm here, which is a possiblitiy since it's only 1/8th now.

Went home and crashed quite soundly again.