Quarter of a century years old (!)

Fully developed frontal lobe here I come...

I turned 25 on Wednesday, two days ago and as always it brought some existentialism that seems to be the only surefire birthday tradition I’ve really managed to keep up.

I must be doing something right though, because I felt very loved and very grateful for my friends and family who sent me flowers x 2, which I went and found vases for at the local op shop today.

In a big bad brave new city, finding my feet has been a daunting business and to be honest I haven’t made up my mind about how I feel about this place yet. What I do know is that I think where I live is frustratingly far away from many things I want to see and do. It takes me around 35 minutes to drive to the closest beach and today it took me about an hour and a half of total driving to get to the Adelaide hills and back. It’s a running mystery what exactly constitutes ‘the hills’ as everyone seems to define the geography slightly different with subjective and nebulous references. Somewhere east is all I’ve gathered. But hills proper, I take, is Stirling and Hahndorf (little touristy German-esque town) with all the mini mountains, Mt Roland and so on.

Today, Friday, I used half-day of birthday leave to drive to Stirling mostly with the intention of visiting a bookshop a South Australia youtuber I’ve long-followed has mentioned and featured in their videos. This bookshop called Matilda sits slightly tucked away from Stirling’s main street. I’ve forgotten how calm and peaceful independent local bookshops are, this one particularly was nice and cool (Adelaide summers are truly a force to reckoned with), and I took my time browsing. I love all bookshops but independent local bookshops (that and libraries) have always been where I’ve pictured spending my retirements years or if I ever became incredibly foolhardy and adventurous and abandoned capitalism to simply vibe.

I picked up a lil birthday present for myself, which I know at least one person reading this will be chuffed about. :).

I also had maybe the worst sushi in the entire world in this random little Stirling shop. I don’t know what possessed me to eat sushi of all things but it was indescribably terrible, the seasonings were strange and off, the rice mushy, and the fillings soggy. Having bought 2 rolls and made it through one, the second got thrown into the bin after one bite and a gag.

Thankfully, two shops down was very good ice-cream to make up for it.