Kim retired from Sale of the Century Temptation at the top of her game, after 3 consecutive wins. Tonight, her final night, she again kicked arse!
In the final minute, where it's all rapid-fire questions, she killed her opponents (figuratively speaking!) coming from 20 points down (where each correct answer is worth 5 points) to win by a massive margin.
Wisely, she decided to take the stereo system and retire a winner, rather than try and win some motorbikes.
Nice work, Kim!
Five minutes before the end of the show, when she was deciding that she was going to leave with the winnings, I got a call from another friend in Queensland.
"Hey," asked Tam. "Are you watching Temptation at the moment? Did that girl... go to your wedding? I swear I've seen her before, and it's been bugging me all night while I've been watching!"
Sunday we went with Eva and Steph to the Rocks Coffee Festival at the Rocks and First Fleet Park and had four coffees over the course of the afternoon and they were pretty cheap only $1 each since they were espresso sized and I had four of them and they didn't make much of an impact which was good cause normally when you have two or more and then you stop you get a real caffeine downer sort of almost like an addictive drug I guess and Kathleen reckons I should go stop drinking coffee at work and I think I should too since it hurts the ol' wallet a bit but not that much people smoke and look how much money they blow through so its not too bad an imposte the queues were pretty bad at the festival and there were sheeple lining up for Gloria Jean's now why the hell would you go to a coffee festival where you can try all sorts of different roasts from different places you've never tried before and go and get something generic and samey that you can get every single day of the week at stacks of outlets all over Sydney come on wake up sheeple its like people who travel overseas and don't like eating the local food why would you travel all that distance if all you wanted to eat is what you can get at home that's so dumb and then Steph and Eva's power went out at home so they came over to our place for dinner and it was a pretty fun day in the end despite the grey the rain and the cold.
And the four coffees didn't even affect me I was able to get to sleep fine that night.
Our friend Kim has just won two nights running on Sale of the Century Temptation, including a heart-stopper on the first night, when the carry-over champion was up by 11 points with 10 seconds left, but then she got two questions right, he pressed his buzzer on the siren, got the answer wrong, lost 5 points, and lost the lead to Kim!
She was fantastic under pressure! It was so inspiring watching her, I think I need to go to more pub trivia nights now to get the trivia bug out of my system!
At the start of July, I went to the US for two weeks. I was there to attend my best mate's wedding as his Best Man, and tacked on a visit to San Francisco and Chicago (two cities I'd never been), where Kathleen and I have friends.
San Francisco
San Francisco is an amazing city - wherever you go, you can glimpse the water, and there's a real vibe about the city that generates a feeling of optimism. This was going to be a great holiday!
In San Fran, I went up to the Coit Tower for an absolutely incredible view of the Bay Area, the city, out beyond Alcatraz to the Golden Gate Bridge. Had dinner in Chinatown, went to Haight Ashbury, home of the counter-culture revolution of the late 60s, had a look at the Apple iPhone on its launch weekend in the US, saw Postcard Row near Alamo Square, went to Lombard St.
I stayed with my mate Kanka and his wife in San Fran (they lived about an hour out of the city by BART, in Walnut Creek).
The Wedding
I arrived in Memphis to find Troy and Katie wound up with a little bit (!) of pre-wedding stress, trying to organise the last minute details for the wedding, as well as organising to pick up everyone from the airport! Poor Troy's luggage decided to not arrive until two days after he did, and he'd gone right off his food... but judging from the type of food I saw in my two weeks in the US, that's not surprising.
The bucks night was a great success, organised by a capable and efficient best man. We got Troy dressed up in an Elvis-style (what else in Memphis?) white satin jumpsuit, complete with wig and sunglasses, drawing a heap of awe-inspired Americans passing by to ask Troy whether the Elvis Tour of Memphis was a regular thing. He even got someone passing to slap a dollar tip on him at one bar! The evening came complete with a couple of games of 8 ball, a visit to Rendezvous Ribs, apparently one of the best place for Southern-style ribs in the US, followed by a pub crawl down Beale St. Finally, we were kicked out of the hotel pool at midnight by an irate desk clerk. Fun was had by all.
The day of the wedding saw Troy actually commence writing his speech. Poor fella was too busy to even look at it before! The wedding itself went off without a hitch, again likely due to the best man, who managed to remember the rings. A solitary tear of happiness ran down Troy's face as Katie walked down the aisle towards him, a sign of emotion which is always a hit with the ladies (the big sook!).
And then it was on to the reception, cutting the cake, speeches (Troy's was fantastic, despite or perhaps because of the last minute scribble), dancing, and Troy and Katie's getaway. The happy couple kicked on to wherever they went for their wedding night, while the rest of us were forced to kick on to Beale St for drinks and celebration. I think I got home around 3am.
Oh, and I did get to see Graceland and the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel (where Martin Luther King was assassinated). Apart from that (and the wedding!), there was SFA to do in Memphis. Plus I found the people, especially bar and hotel staff, lazy and surly.
Fourth of July
No planned parades or activities during the day in Memphis - only fireworks that night. A complete downer, but then again I did assume that there would be at least something going on. That'll teach me to assume.
I did, however, see the President giving his Fourth of July address:
"There're folks spending Fourth of July away from their families, in Iraq... (that little pause and puzzled look he always gives as he tries to remember what comes next)... I know that."
Can there be a finer public speaker in the world today?
Chicago
After the wedding, the only place I wanted to be was ABM - Anywhere But Memphis. Jon, Jen and I even toasted it on the last night - "Let's never come here again!" Luckily, Chicago was as incredible as I'd hoped. The four days I stayed there were hot - in the 30s every day, but I was too busy to worry.
I stayed with my friends Jen and Dale, who I knew from our time in Japan. The major change in their lives since we last saw them was the addition of a son, Shirou, who's cute as, and incredibly talkative once he forgot that I was a stranger.
And then, it was straight back to work on the Monday, back in Sydney's wet and cold winter...
