Last night we saw "Bean". I wouldn’t quite call it "The Ultimate Disaster Movie", but "Bean" was pretty good. Put it this way - I judge any comedy that makes me almost spit out what I’m eating to be a good comedy.

But the real highlight of the outing was that this weekend’s celebrity spotted was Hugo Weaving, crossing the street with us in South Yarra. As you could guess, he looks quite a bit different out of his "Priscilla" garb.

Work is pretty quiet at the moment - in fact dead sometimes.

The other day some of us were discussing strategies for dealing with the quiet spells. Like learning to sleep with your eyes open. The theory is, if you leave one hand on your mouse, and run a program on your computer that would make the screen change a lot, nobody would notice if you fell asleep with your eyes open.

Things here are just too quiet for me, and having got wind of The Perfect Job(tm) being available out there in The Big Wide World Of Contracting, I’ve asked my boss to let me go at the end of the month. Call it time off for good behaviour.

Hopefully he will, in the spirit of the cost-cutting, economising culture surrounding the outsourcing deal that saw us all moved from the phone company to an IT company. And hopefully that IT company won’t want the very spiffy clock and groovy pen back that they gave us all as a welcoming present.

It has been suggested to me that I should turn up to work in ripped jeans and a t-shirt that says "The boss is a wanker" on it. But I’m not sure that would improve my re-employment prospects in future.

I forgot to mention my weekend. Saturday was just your average day, bumming around the neighbourhood, a little shopping in the city (oh, we did spot Poppy King skulking in Myer).

On Sunday we set out to catch the Steamrail Snow Train. It only stopped a couple of times before reaching Moe, and we went so so fast through the towns along the way that most of the time the station names were just a blur. But by looking out for other signs we did manage to see that we travelled through Bunyip and Nar Nar Goon.

Some people can lay claim to the fact that they’ve gone to some of the most obscure and weird places on Earth. Timbuktu… Nepal… Outer Mongolia. But how many people can honestly say they’ve been through a place called Nar Nar Goon?

At Moe we changed onto a bus, and rolled not-so-gently up into the mountains, to an obscure little spot called Mt St Gwinear. It’s not exactly well known, but for those of you who wondering where the heck it is, it’s kinda near Mt Baw Baw.

On Mt St Gwinear for a few hours we cavorted and danced and generally had a great time in the snow. Let me tell you a little secret - there is nothing more fun than tobogganing with a two year old. Sure, some things (such as those that you do in small groups of consenting adults in darkened rooms) may seem like more fun, but they’re not.

Okay, so I got a certain amount of snow up my leg. But that was a small price for being able to steer the thing. (If anybody can tell me a better method than dipping your Blunnie
heel in the snow, I’d like to hear it.)

It was brilliant fun. Add some packed picnic food, a mountainside sausage sizzle and a kiosk selling Mars Bar Slice, and you may well have found an approximation of what Heaven might be like.

The trains have been pretty crowded in the past week or two. My understanding is that government and unions are still squabbling ("We want this!" "Well you can’t have it!" "Can!" "Can’t!" "Can!" "Can’t!"…) and there’s some bans over train repairs so a bunch get cancelled every peak hour instead of getting repaired. The guys at the stations have even got sick of announcing that the "xxx service will not run due to a defective train".

So when the train does arrive we’re all squashed in like a bulk pack of sardines in a normal sized tin. It’s like one of those scenes from Japan, except there’s no guys in white gloves to push everybody in. Of course, there’s a good side… you get to bond with your fellow man. Whether you like it or not. Thankfully it’s winter. Not only do trains break down more in summer, but I suspect the pong from the sardines would be too much to bear.

All right Whitman’s, I give in. You’ve been sending your blimp after me for months now, it’s followed me so much that I can hardly look into the sky without seeing it proclaiming "Whitmans Chocolates" at me.

Well, I’ve had enough. I give in. I surrender. I have bought some Whitmans. And I’m eating them now. Here’s proof:

And yes, they’re delicious. Only problem is, at the rate I eat chocolate, I’ll be through the packet in no time. And they cost, gram for gram, more than twice as much as plain old Cadbury blocks. So I don’t think they’ll replace my Cadbury blocks. The box is very nice though. I expect I’ll put it away somewhere in the vain hope that one day I might be able to keep something in it, before throwing it out in a month or two.