All posts by Alistair Lattimore

About Alistair Lattimore

My name is Alistair Lattimore, I'm in my very early 30's and live on the sunny Gold Coast in Australia. I married my high school sweet heart & we've been together for longer than I can remember. Claire and I started our family in September 2008 when Hugo was born and added a gorgeous little girl named Evie in May 2010. You can find me online in the typical hangouts, Google+, Twitter & facebook. .

Phantom Of The Opera

Life, Music

This evening I was fortunate enough to see the world acclaimed Phantom Of The Opera at the Lyric Theatre in Brisbane.

I say fortunate, as I some how managed to receive a ticket on the back of a birthday present for Claire from her parents this month. It was pretty awesome actually, as Lucy and Michael wanted to go and see it another time so there were four excellent seats beside one another. Claire and Lucy had seen Phantom Of The Opera three times prior, Michael had seen it once before recently, while this was my first experience.

I don’t know how to describe it accurately enough to do it justice, other than to say that the detail in the set was incredible, the costumes are great and Anthony Warlow has a truly magnificent voice. The female lead for Christine was played by Ana Marina, who I thought had an excellent voice. There is a schene toward the start of the first act, where The Phantom is yelling at Christine to sing for him; it gave me goose bumps!

The show is only on until the 27th April 2008 in Brisbane, so if you can still get tickets to it – I would highly recommend it.

Lead Me Not Into Temptation

Books

While at the Garden City Shopping Centre in Brisbane today, I ventured into a Borders book store and it was a treat.

The first thing that I noticed when I walked into the store was that it was big, much bigger than most of the other book stores I’ve been in. As it turns out, the further I walked into the store – the more of the store became visible and it was much larger than I had initially thought. Next up the store was very clean, wasn’t cramped within the isles and was well organised. Did I mention that they had a coffee shop inside the book store; I had to indulge.

After getting a large, double shot espresso I promptly found my way into the computer section. While it wasn’t the euphoric event that is the technical book store in the Brisbane CBD, there were a hell of a lot of technical books in the section and they were quality books – not the standard ‘learn x in y days’ crap that most book stores stock.

I felt I showed great restraint not to pick up at least one of the following for some light reading:

Carnivore

Family, Food

Tonight a bunch of my extended family and I visited the Hogs Breath Cafe at the Q Super Centre in Mermaid Waters on the Gold Coast for dinner.

After working at a Hogs Breath for a number of years, I hold them in pretty high regard and also have pretty solid expectations of them too. We had a great waiter, who was more than happy to play and make jokes with Oliver (the toddler dining with us) and prompt service to boot.

I ordered a medium-rare Blackened Prime Rib with pepper sauce and I think it was one of the best steaks I’ve eaten in the last 6 months. Asking around the table, everyone was very happy with their steak – even the folk that normally order higher cooked steak where happy ordering one degree of rareness down.

We weren’t initially going to order any dessert, however as soon as one person went in for something sweet; everyone else indulged too. Mmm, sticky date pudding!

Great night out, good company, positively devine steak – just excellent.

Earth Hour

General

On March 31 2007, Sydney turned off their lights for 60 minutes in a movement called Earth Hour. The Earth Hour event was to raise awareness of the impact that coal fired power is having on the environment and in 2008, its spread and is now a global event.

Last night, Claire and I turned off all of the lights and fired up some candles. Princess wasn’t sure what was going on and the new fang dangled glowing things needed investigating. After a little bit of up close sniffing, she realised that they weren’t all that fun and felt obligated to have a cat nap after all the excitement.

To pass the time, it seemed like a good opportunity to bust out a board game; so we played Backgammon by candlelight for an hour. Pretty even actually, I got some lucky roles in the first game and Claire got a couple good ones in the second – it was a draw after the hour finished.