Saturday

I posted early on Saturday morning. A lot more happened on Saturday so I feel I should update. I don't really remember what happened on early Saturday; I went and visited Nikki and played with the puppies a bit more. I went for a pretend-bike ride to the bus stop (I told Nikki I'd pick up her ute from the neighbours but I was too lazy to ride in the end so I got dad to drop me {it's a 7km ride}).

Brad helping out in a tackle

We got dressed and headed into town to watch Brad (Nikki's boyfriend) play rugby. League that is. He was playing for Gulgong and we expected to lose by a lot, which would have been sad because I hate watching people get flogged. But they didn't! They played really well and only lost by a couple!

Nikki bought me some crinkle cut chicken chips (my favourite) because I won't get to eat them for a year. We sat at the grandstand and I took some sneaky photos before I ran into Toby; haven't seen him for ages and promptly lost him - but not unlike the usual. I haven't seen Toby since the field days last year, and that was only for about one minute, so we had a bit of catching up. Nikki and Tegan totally cashed in and stole my chicken chips. I only caught them trying to replace them so they looked like they hadn't been eaten. Bitchez!!! Then sat and chatted to Haley Rhodes. She's so cool. She inconveniently (for me) left for the States yesterday for a couple of weeks so that was the extent of our catching up. Nevermind, it was still great.

Haley dropped me at Pop's and Tegan, Nikki and Brad were getting ready for tapas. I wasn't allowed to do my hair because we didn't have time. We got to tapas after a row about who's car we were going to take (one or two; ute or car). Tapas was delicious. We ordered one of everything and before everything even came out, we'd ordered a second round of everything as it wasn't enough to fill our bellies. Ryan (cousin from Sydney) and Sarah (Ryan's girlfriend) came too, which was awesome.

Post - tapas, (and extra olives for Nikki) we headed to Roth's Wine Bar. I'd previously heard great things about Roth's but had honestly never gone because I thought it looked too small. Turns out it opens up to massive outside/inside enclouse out back. THAT's where everyone sits. Mudgee's at the very bum end of the Hunter Valley and as such has wineries to boot. Roth's promotes them, I guess, by selling just about every winery's vintages by the glass or bottle. Delicious. I had Thistle Hill Sparkling Rose. YUM!

Roth's was a little pretentious for what we were seeking - TJ's last Saturday in town deserved a bit of non-pretentious dancing. Plus we didn't know one person there, which was weird for Mudgee (I lie; I knew two people but they actively snobbed me).

So we headed to the 'tah (Waratah Hotel). They had a pretty loud cover band on that played everything standard from AC/DC to Lady Gaga. We danced and drank and went upstairs to the back-to-the-early-00's music pumping very loudly on the restaurant floor-cum-dance floor. Dance dance, drink drink and the occasional (but much more rarely than usual) 'OMG HOW ARE YOU, I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU FOR AGEEEEEEEZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'.

Ryan is a musician and didn't go much on the Mudgee dance club scene music

Tegan, Sarah and Lizzie (Tegan's best friend) on the <very busy> dance floor

At 1am Tegan said that she wanted to stay and cry, just because she could. That would generally be okay I guess, but I was getting sleepy and I didn't really understand why she needed to stay and cry. Turns out, there were about two tears and they were mosly happy ones.

The crowd started petering off (is that how you spell petering, as in getting smaller and smaller?) and the band played their last song. We shuffled outside to the taxi rank which conveniently has a line a LOT smaller than any other large town's taxi line. AND they have two ladies in charge of making sure everyone stays in line. AND there are seats to wait on.
We got home at 2:30am and Tegan told me three times that there was a girl who she remembers that was in year 1 when she was in year 6. 'IT'S WEIRD' and 'SHE SHOULDN'T be allowed out'. Nevermind the fact that she's 18 and it's just us getting older and older.

Tegan was up before me in the morning (we stayed at Pop's; taxi's aren't an option back to our place!) which is actually a lifetime first. She was in a hurry to get to breakfast with Lizzie and told me I had to stay and search on my hands and knees for Pop's wedding ring in the garden. Fair trade... (?!?!?!) After consulting Poppy re: the location of the ring I immediately decided hand searching wasn't going to cut it. Instead I opted for the 'leave it til later' strategy and offered my services with a gold detector on Tuesday.