Murphy's Law rules
We woke up to a steady rain falling, the second time in less than a week. Honestly, we almost never have rainy days around here. We normally have a bit of rain, clouds, sun, more clouds, rain, sun…ad nauseum. I hardly ever use an umbrella due to this environmental feature. Even more interesting is that we’ve already had one really rainy day this year. Our rainfall for today stands at 48.8mms (1.92 inches), which is more than the average for the month of April around here.
The rain wasn’t really a problem since we’ve been expecting it and it will save us watering the garden later. The story of our day actually goes back a day to when the Scientist arrived home and realised he had left a required portable hard drive at work. A plan emerged to drive down to collect it today, go into Perth to eat lunch at one of our favorite eateries, then return home to relax. The family waited in the car while I checked doors and windows and activated the alarm system. As I got in, the Scientist commented that he wished he had known we needed petrol. That was my fault because the fuel gauge had just dropped down as the kids and I returned from the Game Fanatic’s science class yesterday. I never went out again and completely forgot.
We stopped to get petrol and discovered orange cones blocking our way and no activity within the premises. Very odd…we drove off and found another station and benefited from the much lower price but had to wait some time to reach the pump. So twenty minutes after departure, we were on our way. The remaining drive towards Perth was uneventful aside from the rain and worsening visibility. We moved onto the freeway where traffic was fairly heavy for a Saturday and the visibility was now quite poor. I was assisting by turning on the a/c defroster to clear the windshield every few minutes. We reached our exit ramp and discovered traffic was backed up to the freeway. We covered less than a kilometer to arrive at our destination fifteen minutes later. It seems there was some sort of regatta carrying on in the rain.
The kids and I sat in the car while the scientist rushed to the building to get the hard drive and return. A couple minutes later he had returned empty-handed. He had the keycard to enter the building but had left his office key at home. Yikes! All that travel for nothing…Off to the next leg of our journey, into the city…
Traffic back into Perth was reasonable considering the volume and we arrived at our location within ten minutes. Our Lego Lover, who doesn’t eat the vegetarian Indian fare at Annalakshmi, was getting hungry and cranky about where his food was going to be found. We arrived to see no lights on at the upstairs establishment so I got out and rushed through the rain to check on this while dh circled back around to pick me up. It is closed on Saturdays for lunch. Okay.
We escaped the city as quickly as possible and found ourselves at a local shopping centre. It was crowded, which made movement a nightmare, especially for our Lego Lover. He wanted fast food and, of course, chose the place with the longest queue. The other two went off to get food from another part of the shopping centre. When we finally met again, the Scientist had a calzone that he’d been wanting to try and the Game Fanatic was going to wait until he got home. I had nothing so stopped at a Japanese place and ordered food. Seating was unavailable anywhere so dh took LL to the car to eat. The Game Fanatic suddenly gave in to hunger and ordered food with mine. We ate in the car. The good news was the rain had stopped. The bad news was that the food was filling but not at all satisfying. Next stop: home!
The Scientist had to go back to get the hard drive because his boss will be stopping over tomorrow to have a program installed. He has just returned with that plus a couple programming books. Now he can relax. This trip was completely uneventful.
