Meeting - part 1

I'll have to do the last 4 days in parts, otherwise the post length could get ridiculous.

Thursday night was a bit crazy. Did some last minute cleaning and organising. T sent me a text from the airport to say he was boarding the plane. I drove to my girlfriend's place to give her my spare key so she could feed the cats while I was gone. When I got home half an hour later, my phone went off with T's ring tone. Not a good thing to hear when he should have been somewhere above the clouds by that time. Luckily it was just to say that he was on the plane, but they just hadn't left yet.

I expected to meet him at the baggage claim, but it appears we still let any old person into the boarding lounges here, so I got to sit and wait for him at the gate. I didn't feel ill or nervous till his plane arrived. And it sat there. And sat there. And sat there. Nobody was getting off. Eventually, the doors opened and people started pouring out. He was one of the last to come through the door. I think we had a total of about 3 seconds of feeling unsure (although that's not even the right word to use) before we relaxed. Talking each night for an average of three hours for the three weeks prior helped a lot! It was just strange that he was there in person. I don't think we actually let go of each other till we got in my car. It felt a bit surreal, like if we weren't touching it might not have really been happening.

The drive home was easy. My cats, who are scared of everybody, liked him straight away which was really interesting, because they don't normally warm to people immediately. One of them is very protective of me though, and she spent most of the time either carrying on for attention or giving him the most guilt tripping 'who are you and what do you think you're doing to my mother?' look. I haven't seen her behave like that before, so it was pretty funny.

For all the organising I managed to do, I didn't get around to packing my clothes till the Friday morning, and we left just after lunch time. I drove straight through to Ballarat, which is one of the more cold places in the state, especially in Winter, and bought some lunch. In mid November though, we didn't expect to be damn cold and having to wear sweaters.

From there, we drove through Ararat then on to Halls Gap in The Grampians. The drive was easy and we talked the entire way. In fact, I didn't play one cd in the car for the whole four days. Quite amazing considering I can't normally go too long without listening to music.

We got there early evening, checked into our cottage (just as well we got on really well!), unpacked the car and went out to dinner in a nice little restaurant in the town. The only bummer with that was that his meal was a little too rich and made him slightly ill, so the rest of the evening was pretty sedate.

I think I must have looked like a dork most of the time, because he said I was smiling a lot. I just hope I looked happy rather than slightly mentally unbalanced.

So that's the first 24 hours. More to follow...

Ooh, ooh, I forgot to mention something. I think I already said in a previous post that he's a geologist. Instead of bringing me flowers, he brought me two really cool pieces of rock with gold in them. Ok, so that might not impress the majority of people, but I think it's unreal. I like more unconventional 'offerings' like that. Way better than a bunch of flowers and will last a lot longer too.