Good Things

In no particular order:

'The Elegance of The Hedgehog' by Muriel Barbery.
I love this book. True love.

Monday night French class.
This class is just good fun. Adult classes, in my experience, can often be quite torturous, depending, of course, on the group. This crew of French talkers are hilarious folk. We get together mingling and mangling French and English over vin rouge in a plastic cup and a little fromage. The classes are offered by our local Alliance Francaise, of which I have somehow become Treasurer (I don't know how that happened). This week we learnt the handy phrase. 'Elle est passée à la casserole. It means 'She got laid'.
Our French teacher, well, we love her because she's cheeky.

Book group.
Our group has been going for nearly seven years. We've shared births, marriages, deaths, moves, new jobs, and lots of laughs and books. Last Monday there were the great ladies, red wine, wagon wheels, Tim Tams, of course (there are always Tim Tams) and big laughs. We didn't discuss the book much. Instead stories were performed with big gestures and funny voices. The book for this month is 'The Spare Room' by Helen Garner.
An excellent read.

Breakfast table.
When I got home from bookgroup, all the Smiths were asleep and the breakfast table was set and the uniforms laid out ready for an organised morning. The luthier told me that his grandma (she was the country kind that always had coco pops AND fruit loops and made meringues with the egg whites and custard with the yolks) always set the breakfast table, and even on the night she passed away, cutlery and crockery were laid out, ready for morning. (I bet she had one of those net milk jug covers with the beads to weight it down.)

Bloggers meet.
A local gaggle of bloggers got together over a work day lunch at the QVMAG at Royal Park (one of my favourite places) this week. Organized by Tanya from Suburban Jubilee, it was a pleasure to put faces to blogs, to see bloggy friends and to talk about the who, why and how of blogs and blogging. An incredibly stimulating chat with a joyful bunch of people. Thanks Tanya, I hope it becomes a regular thing.

Saving.
Money is not a usual topic for my blog but I am chuffed to have reached a little savings goal. The Barefoot Investor is definitely a good thing. Excellent, simple financial advice having nothing to do with budgets. To me, the word 'budget' has the same effect as the word 'diet'. It makes me want to immediately spend all my money on something utterly superfluous and/ or eat a whole packet of biscuits. So after a lifetime of being unfeasibly useless with money, the advice of the clever Mr Pape has brought us to the point of having savings and a plan. Not just good, bloody miraculous really!

The luthier has finished a violin and nearly finished two violas. They are beautiful. He is not too shabby either.


Blocks of Lindt chocolate are on sale at the supo. The 'Coconut Intense' is my current fave, and when they do that 2 for whatever deal, it would seem rude not to buy at least ... 4.

And today on my midweek weekend, the sun shone brightly and I got to hang with my dear old friend while our girls put on too much blue eye shadow and lip gloss.

Life is full of good things.