{"id":106,"date":"2007-02-14T04:36:13","date_gmt":"2007-02-14T03:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/?p=106"},"modified":"2007-02-14T04:41:16","modified_gmt":"2007-02-14T03:41:16","slug":"february-14th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/?p=106","title":{"rendered":"14th of February"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are odd things in Melbourne today &#8211; heart shapes have appeared in lots of shop windows and there appear to be lots of men rushing around with flowers in their hands.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it&#8217;s some special Australian thing.  Either way I&#8217;m not needing to do any of that, which is&#8230; er&#8230; good?  Sort of?  Maybe?  No?  Shoot.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, Happy Valentines Day to you (but only in a platonic way, naturally *).  Hope you&#8217;re having a nice one. :-)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not having a bad one to be honest, despite feeling a little tired through a few bevvies last night with Jen, Kate and Welshy (none of whom I&#8217;d seen since New Zealand) &#8211; as I&#8217;m looking forward to more of a catch up this evening, which&#8217;ll be ace.<\/p>\n<p>Melbourne&#8217;s as it usually is, although with less flies &#8211; which is a big plus.  I&#8217;m just here for a week or so to plan and book the next month or so of my Big Adventure (got my eye on a 10 day 4&#215;4 tour of the outback from Adelaide to Alice Springs, for a start), then I&#8217;m off out on the Great Ocean Road (more hire car action here we come!) over to the Grampians and Adelaide.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m feeling pretty damned chilled out &#8211; apart from for about 30 minutes two days ago where I thought I&#8217;d lost my wallet in the library (turns out I&#8217;d left it in the locker in my hostel room), which was quite scary!  <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m staying in the Greenhouse Backpackers (which I&#8217;d previously recommended on this &#8216;ere blog, I seem to recall).  It&#8217;s bloody good.  Nice rooms, huge TV lounge, good kitchen, a &#8220;free food&#8221; shelf, free breakfast, weekly free BBQ (including veggie burgers!!!), free pancakes on Sunday&#8230; and slap bang in the middle of town.  Winner!<\/p>\n<p>Twas sad to say bye to Jersey on Saturday (as he went to Sydney from Tassie &#8211; he&#8217;s on a tour of Alice Springs etc as I type), as we&#8217;d been travelling together for 3 weeks and twas very odd thinking that I won&#8217;t see him again on my travels.  We&#8217;re of course planning on a cross-English Channel meetup later in the year, mind! <\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t feel as though I&#8217;m on my own here in Melbourne, as Chris, Welshy, Kate and Jen are all here (albeit in different hostels\/appartments).  Should be interesting on my solo trip to Adelaide&#8230; in many ways I&#8217;m looking forward to the freedom of &#8220;travelling fully independantly&#8221; (almost always been with other folk so far).  Let&#8217;s just hope it&#8217;s not too lonely.<\/p>\n<p>Anyways, back to planning stuff &#8211; and perhaps grabbing some food and a nice smoothy (yep, I&#8217;ve become addicted to them &#8211; which is better than being addicted to pizza I guess!  Mmm.  Pizza&#8230; ah, crap. :-) )<\/p>\n<p>Take care and Happy 14th of February!<\/p>\n<p>Toodles,<\/p>\n<p>Pat<\/p>\n<p><small>* Unless you&#8217;re Elisha Cuthbert in which case please consider the phrase &#8220;Happy Valentines Day&#8221; as my way to say I want to [CENSORED BY THE UNIVERSE] night long.  Thanks.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are odd things in Melbourne today &#8211; heart shapes have appeared in lots of shop windows and there appear to be lots of men rushing around with flowers in their hands. Maybe it&#8217;s some special Australian thing. Either way I&#8217;m not needing to do any of that, which is&#8230; er&#8230; good? Sort of? Maybe? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-melbourne","category-pats-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}