Friday, November 20, 2009

Another busy day today - we were able to borrow Julianne's car again which was great! After dropping her off at work, we went to find the Tourist Information place. We were on the right road, but we turned left instead of right and ended up going out of town. It turned out well, though, as we went by the 'Welcome to Hervey Bay' sign and so we were able to get a photo of that. We also took a pic of a 'Hervey Bay' sign which showed a whale as part of the sign (Hervey Bay is well known for their whale watching tours).  One of those photos is now on the top right of this blog page.  We are going to take some more photos of Hervey Bay next week so that you guys can see some of the places I am talking about in this blog. 

We did find the Tourist Information place and we were able to sign up for a 'Resident's Discount Card'.  It's called a Staycation card as well and we can use it to get discounts for accomodation, attractions and activities, dining, and businesses and services in the Hervey Bay area.  The idea is that they want you to stay in Hervey Bay for your vacation and so they give you discounts to all these things to entice you to 'staycation'.  There's really not many discounts that we will use, but it's nice of them to give these cards out to those of us who live here.  We also received a 'Welcome to Hervey Bay' package which had in it: local maps, guide pamphlets and booklets about local services, parks and visitor's guides, and a handy little pocketbook which has a yellow pages, white pages, maps and postal code directory in it. 

After that, we went and did some exciting shopping .  To Aldi's to get some canned goods, to Sam's Warehouse to get some sheets and a clock, to Big W to get Mike a swim shirt and to Coles to get the rest of the groceries.  We also went to the local butcher's and I asked the woman behind the counter if I had to cook my chicken right away and not leave it in the fridge when I bought it from the butcher's.  I told her how earlier this week I had bought some chicken on Monday and left it in the fridge 'til Wednesday and it went totally off.  She said that chicken will not last long in the fridge at all and that I should cook it today (which I did).  Since we didn't use a butcher when we were in Canada, I guess I am going to have to figure it out as I go.  I did talk to Julianne about it and she said that she freezes everything as soon as she gets home.  For now, we cooked the chicken tonight and the hamburger as well - we ate the chicken tonight and will eat it again tomorrow and the hamburger in spaghetti sauce on Sunday night.  It was frustrating to have to throw the chicken out last Wednesday, but I guess I have to get used to using it right away if I want to use the butcher since we only have a small fridge and no freezer.  The butcher's meat seems way fresher and the one that we go to has really good prices even compared to the major supermarkets.

After bringing everything home and putting it away and having lunch, it was still only about 1:15pm and we didn't have to be back at Julianne's work until 3:30pm.  I suggested to Mike that since it was such a hot day (31C today) that we get changed into our togs (bathing suits) and head down to the beach for a swim.  We decided to park the car at Julianne's work and then walk to the water (her shop is right across the road from the beach).  We weren't sure what kind of swimming it would be there (shallow or deep), but it didn't matter to us as we just wanted to cool off and enjoy the ocean.  It turned out that at the time we went, the tide was quite far out and so we ended up basically sitting in the water up to our waists.  It was really nice to just sit and relax and chat while we cooled off.  We were only there about half an hour, but it was very refreshing.  It's such a treat to us right now and I hope that we don't start taking it for granted.  On Monday, we are going to ask Julianne if we can use the car again and this time we are going to do our shopping quickly so that we can go and spend a few hours at the beach. 

I had to catch up on my emails today, so I spent some time this afternoon (after Julianne dropped us off) on the computer while Mike played some cards games at the kitchen table.  When he had played all the games he could, I told him I would get off the computer so that we could make dinner.  After dinner, we were taking down the swimming towels off the line when Chris and Christine asked us how we liked their new purchase.  They had bought a small pool to put in their backyard for when they get really hot and just want to take a quick dip to cool off.  We got to talking with them and after a bit they asked us if we wanted to sit down at their picnic table and try some of the hummus that Christine had made.  I told her we would try it but that I am quite fussy when it comes to food so that she was not to be offended if I didn't like it.  The hummus was made from chick peas, lemon and paprika and she served it with rice crackers.  It smelled good which is something I always do with new foods (if I don't like the smell, I don't taste it) and so I took a small bit of hummus on a cracker.  It actually tasted quite good and so I had some more.  We ended up chatting with them 'til about 9:15pm - they are a nice couple and we had a really good time chatting and getting to know each other better. 

When we came inside after our visit with them, we decided to put on another one of our movies that we had rented from Blockbuster.  Tonight's choice was 'Anchorman' starring Wil Ferrell.  I went to 'Rotten Tomatoes' to see what kind of percentage they got from that community and they got a 65%, 69% and 83%.  Well, for us, we couldn't even rate it as we thought it wasn't funny at all and stopped watching it after about half an hour.  I couldn't believe that people thought it was good or funny - to us it was just plain dumb and not even the funny dumb, either.  I am glad that we only paid 99 cents to rent it, that's for sure.