Kim has spent the last five (what, only five?) days in Sydney and we have had such a grand time together. Initially, she came here to see The Griswolds for their Sydney show and to meet me, but it turned out to be bucketloads of fun with Jeremy Neale and The Money Go Round, and lots of other funstuff.

Kim and I actually met on Twitter via The Griswolds, one of our favourite bands. More so Kim’s than mine — because I’ve officially declared my favourite to be Hey Geronimo. Argh, stuff it — it’s too hard to choose between them and The Griswolds. Anyway, it was about a year ago, maybe less, that Dan was trying to get The Griswolds’ question/ask box on Tumblr to work, and he just couldn’t figure it out. Because I am apparently super fast at replying and have a fair bit of experience with Tumblr, I jumped ahead and told him how to do it. It must have worked and I must have given him the correct instructions because this is what he said:

THIS CHICK @georgiecel IS THE BEST CHICK. Such a babe, such a brain. Follow her.

— THE GRISWOLDS (@wethegriswolds) August 9, 2012

It was then that Kim followed me on Twitter; I followed her back and we became really good friends. Most of the things we have in common are our favourite bands and music. When the Griswolds announced their next tour, she decided to fly over to dreary old Sydney from Perth, all the way on the other side of Australia. Skipping all the boring bits, we met last Thursday in none other than the co-op bookshop of my university. And because why? The first line of Co-op Bookshop by one of our favourite bands Hey Geronimo is I’ll meet you in the co-op bookshop, I’ll tell you everything that I know. I didn’t realise there was a second co-op bookshop and it turns out I was in the old one and she was in the new one, but I found her anyway. :P

We were so excited we had to suppress our squeals, and a lot of those squeals were definitely present during the past few days. Containing our excitement, we walked around the city, and I took her to Utopia, where she spent somewhere near $200 on vinyl records. They’re cool. I don’t blame her, and she has mentioned that Perth is quite a hole, and it’s so hard to find good record stores there. I had taken the Thursday off work and we spent the day walking around the city, mostly shopping and eating good food. (Mad Mex, yoghurt and cheap Japanese!) I hadn’t been shopping in a while so I got some new tights, rings and a phone case out of the trip. We walked a lot that day and it made us feel better about the food we ate, LOL. Everyone likes pictures of healthy food so here you go.

We hung out at her hostel room before heading to see The Griswolds that night. It was so much fun. It was just awesome having someone there that I knew, and not only that, but someone I like (hahaha… err… not saying I’ve been to gigs with people I dislike) and someone who loves the music just as much as I do. We missed the first band, but we saw the second (Panama), and they got us into a dancy mood. It was a long wait for The Griswolds with the curtains shut, but we weren’t too fussed since we saw all the boys before the show started. We were just super pumped and impatient for The Griswolds to actually play. I don’t remember much of the insanity that night, but we took to the front of the stage and sang our hearts out to all the songs and danced and headbanged and whatever other fun stuff happens. It was just insanely fun, and towards the end I felt like crying so much because it was going to be over soon, and we had such an awesome time, and The Griswolds were soon heading to America (where they are now).

It ended, but it ended amazingly. We hung out with Riley and Dan outside before they headed off, and Kim got to meet Andrew (Hey Geronimo) and J (The Money Go Round) at the show as well. We were trying not to fangirl inappropriately, but we still got way too excited. Some photos below, more at my photoblog.

On Thursday we saw Jeremy Neale play. I adore his music because it’s so real, jazzy with a sixties sort of sound, and his voice is just gorgeous. As Kim puts it, he’s just an “all-round talented babe”. I second that. We had so much fun dancing at his show, and I bumped into Jess – a photographer I met at a gig some months ago – and her friend Heather. It was so sweet of Jeremy to acknowledge us and hang out with us afterwards, then he ducked off to pack his gear. Kim and I were still pretty much dying to see him again (what did I say about containing ourselves? Impossible!) so we headed to the door, squishing among the large crowd that was dancing to whatever the DJ was playing. Just our luck he came down the stairs from the green room, so we took some happy snaps, told him how much we loved him (it’s never enough) and because security were really bitchy, they told us to stop hanging around the stairs.

After Kim and I decided to wear high heels that night, our feet were nothing but impossible to feel, and it felt weird to walk down the stairs. We were walking behind Jeremy and his friend and what should I do but misstep? To stop myself from falling and instantly humiliating myself, I just held onto the person in front of me, who just happened to be Jeremy. I was so bloody apologetic for just grabbing him but he asked if I was okay and was so ecstatic that I had survived. /um We had to head out and he had to go back upstairs, so we farewelled him. I reminded him that we had to head off so I could catch my last train home, way far out into the western suburbs. Before we left I quickly asked if he was playing on Saturday again, and he told me he would be on at 10pm and to let him and Kim know when I got home so they knew I’d be home safe. Awwwwww such a sweetheart. ♥️

Here’s my favourite photo I took, but, of course I took a bunch more.

When Kim and I walked outside she immediately pointed out that Jeremy had pretty much saved my life, and if he wasn’t walking in front of me I would have fallen to my death (or something just as bad). We laughed over the situation like crazy, and we sang The Griswolds and Hey Geronimo really loudly as we walked down the street at what was probably midnight. I think we’re too cool. I’m going to cry when she leaves. WHO WILL SING WITH ME LOUDLY DOWN THE STREETS AFTER GIGS? 😢

I didn’t see Kim on Saturday but I went to see Jeremy Neale while she went to see Gung Ho and Step Panther. I had a great time seeing Jeremy play again, and Go Violets put on a delicious set that night. Couldn’t stop dancing. It was so cute seeing Jeremy and his band dancing to Go Violets. I had to ask to join them — I said I felt like an idiot dancing alone. It was lovely seeing everyone else dancing too.

For some reason I got only an hour of sleep. Oh, right, I was just looking at all the photos I’d taken. On Sunday, Kim and I went to a little community festival in St Ives (up north). We knew The Money Go Round were playing, and that was the main reason we went. There weren’t many people at the music stage, since most of the people were families or had children, so they were watching the dog show or going on the rides. We walked around the stalls and most of the time we spent as the only two people in front of the stage, dancing and singing to all the music. It was so fun just dancing freely and using all the space we wanted. Sure, there were other people, but they were just seated on chairs, far away from the stage.

After seeing The Money Go Round (disappointed they didn’t play Silicon Girl though!) we went to look at the kids’ activities and decided to paint some plaster models. I didn’t want to at first but I gave in because it just looked way too fun. Kim painted a really awesome skull with a spider.

I painted a little knight/guard and eventually named him Jeremy. He was just the first person I thought of — when I think knight I think victory, and Jeremy says that all the time… I was going to paint him TARDIS blue but there was no TARDIS blue paint, and I tried to mix colours to create it, but got it the Tumblr blue instead. Oh well. I also kept changing my mind what colour to paint him, which is so typical of me…

I’ll see Kim one more time tomorrow for fun sticker photo times before she goes back to her “hole” in Perth. NOOOOOOOOOOOOO :( Kim I hope you enjoyed your stay here and come here again soon! 😢 ♥️

I would have named this blog post with “part I”, knowing there will be more adventures to come, but why label part one when you can always label part two? Yes.