Sunday, Sunday ..

A beautiful clear, still Sunday morning in Melbourne, Oz, today. Apart from the 9 am tolling church bells, a little while ago, you could hear a pin drop! Complete silence!
Soon I must get moving. Wash the dishes, tidy myself up & shower, before heading off to the city centre. A group of us are meeting at a Little Bourke Street (Melbourne's China town) restaurant for yum cha, to celebrate the Chinese new year. It's the year of the rat! Very auspicious I'm certain!

It's still Saturday in Germany

Have a great new year's celebration!

My program for tomorrow will probably be breakfast and Sunday morning paper. A long hot shower. Later on a short walk. The weather forecast is great and feels almost like spring

Good morning, urs!

It feels like spring already in Germany? Come to think of it there's a sort of chill in the air here. (But, of course, it won't last.)

Lovely leisurely Sunday you have planned. Enjoy!

I'm sure I'll enjoy the celebrations. The dragon, the fire crackers ...! But mostly the yum cha! :wink: Yum!

No dragons and fire crackers in Balingen - well, it is a rather small town

We have cold nights at the moment and sunny days so it gets quite warm. Today it was around 9°C and it felt a lot warmer in the sun.

And what is yum cha?

The sun (at last!) must feel fantastic, urs!

Yum cha is sort of moving Chinese "smorgasbord" affair (That's a funny way to put it! ) You sit at your table & waiters arrive (trolley after trolly!) with serves of the most delectable food (in small portions), which you then choose from. It is absolute heaven! But you have to pace yourself, so's not to fill yourself up to early! :wink:

I will report back later.

I'm now half-way through the dishes as I A2K. One washing glove on, the other off ....!

I think I like yum cha!

Waiting for your report.

Meanwhile, I guess I'll be going to bed.

Get those dishes done and then go and have fun!

Sleep well, urs!

And I must run!

10 am church bells!

Finally, an almost sunny day in Sydney, after weeks of rain!

I've done a heap of laundry, while helping Penny the Hamster prepare her PennyAroundTheWorld report - she's here with me at present.

This afternoon, if the rain holds off, we're out and about to see some of Sydney, and probably some more excessive indulging (we did the Chinese New Year thing last night!) (and the Spanish celebrate birthdays thing the night before) Probably better if I nibbled on a lettuce leaf today!

Non-stop rain. You're so lucky! (I mean it!) Check out our gardens here.

I've just arrived home after the Chinese new year celebrations in the city. I think I've eaten enough tasty little morsels to last me a couple of days ... or three! .. <burp>

Little pork dumpling thingies, followed by little fish thingies, followed by roast duck thingies, followed by Chinese Broccoli thingies, followed by ....
Then dessert! Mine was a mango jelly concoction, but others had the sago thing, but then others had ....

You get the picture. A lot of food!

Everyone will be fasting tomorrow, I'm certain! :wink:

But getting to the restaurant was such an ordeal. It (the restaurant) is situated right on the corner of Little Bourke & Russell streets, where the dragon procession was going on .... seriously, we could not move! A huge crowd.

Then the fire crackers (to ward off evil spirits) nearly destroyed our ear drums!

What an achievement to be finally seated & eating! (At this point I was starving!)

Towards the end of our meal <burp!> the big Chinese dragon (with about 20 bodies carrying it) actually made it's way around the diners' tables in our restaurant. Everyone stood & applauded loudly. Very auspicious for the restaurant owners & very auspicious for us! :wink:

It'd be good to hear a few Sunday reports from some of you northern hemisphere folk who lag behind us, in terms of time! :wink:

I realized, when I checked out this thread this morning, that no one had had an interesting (or other) Sunday since 2005!

I ate at a Chinese buffet for the new year. Many choices and so different from my usual eats. As for my Sunday; it is just beginning. Watched a movie called Stand By Me during the first hour of the day. Will spend the next few hours of this Sunday sleeping As soon as I get away from a2k that is! Then spiffying up the house. Last but not at all least will be chilling with family here in the northern hemisphere. :wink:

The hot shower was great this morning. Breakfast was very good. I bought three different kinds of cheese yesterday. Wonderful! I read half of the Sunday paper and will now go out for my walk. The sun is shining!

friend was over to make chinese dumplings for the new year, we watched Devil Wears Prada. Now organizing/cleaning up my computer, updatig LinkedIn contacts, considering catching up on multitude of emails I owe, taking notes from one book ahead of me, laundry, intemittend kitchen cleaing, some writing later, conference call at 9pm. Maybe catch up on Lost and Grey's Anatomy....but alas, Sunday has too few hours.

I'm listening to NPR and intermittently working on my two final master's papers......

I'm drinking beer and playing poker while tossing darts at a photo of Dick Cheney.

It's 74 F here and gorgeous. Naturally I was outside potting around
with the flowers, and I've seen that those darn coyotes ate all my oranges off the tree

While a coyote may, if hungry enough, eat an occasional orange, it is not their habit to do so, and they certainly do not climb trees in search of such a thing, as it seems you are implying.

Something else is eating your oranges. Why don't you set up a camera and catch the culprit in action.

And, by the way, Jane, it sounds like your weather is quite exceptional. I am about to venture out into the elements and the wind chill is approaching the 50 below range.

what are these 'weekends' you speak of? I have not heard of such wonders...I had to work all day

So you guys (apart from Aldistar, poor thing! ) have Sundays, too?

How weird to hear about them after returning home from work on Monday!

No, seriously, it's nice to hear what you folk get up to during unwind time. More next Sunday, please!

Sunday arvo, a bit after 4 pm:

I've had one of those "getting jobs done" Sundays. Early rise (because it was forecast to be - & became! - a hot day.

Lots of much needed gardening work done while the air was still cool .. including watering my plants (poor, tired things, some of them! ) with my saved buckets of grey water. Then tackling the monster vine! A most alarmingly intrusive weed! I've removed lots of lethal tentacles which have been trying to smother & strangle other plants, but I'm afraid (on a less windy & hot day) that I'm going to have to resort to poison, something I really hate doing, but .....

After much enthusiasm with my early morning gardening efforts, as it got progressively warmer, my cat disappeared to one of her cool hidey-holes & I won't see her again till dinner.

Apart from that, I've washed dishes, done a couple of wash-loads (which dried in no time on the clothesline in the heat), read today's paper, watered all my plants in pots (note: the tomatoes are almost at the end of their productivity for this summer - the worst year for them that I can recall) ... continued to sort through books ruthlessly (!) for the opportunity shop (being side-tracked now & then by one or two I'd forgotten all about & which were incredibly interesting! :wink: ), Played all 3 discs of Cosi fan tutti (Lovely!) & A2Ked as the afternoon got warmer ...

All that's left to be done today is dinner, which I have decided will be a sauerkraut & potato & many other ingredients soup! (I found what looks a good recipe in a book I was about to discard.) Yes, I know it's not soup weather, but I must get rid of this German sauerkraut in my fridge before it's use-by date!

Looks like being a hot & sticky night tonight, with all doors & windows open to let in the cooling evening breeze.

A pretty exciting Sunday, huh? :wink: