Saturday started with a three hour choir rehearsal for the concert for me, and a trip to First Colony Mall for Helena and Col.  Helena had come with a list as long as your arm, of things that other people wanted her to pick up.  So, off they went to clear out the Hollister store, while I practiced with the gang.

For lunch, we hit up Chilis, which fared a little better than Outback, but not a whole hell of a lot.  The ribs were pretty much room temperature and the microwaved re-heat left the ribs tough and horrible.  Not cool at all!

We did a quick walk-around in Target, picking up some groceries for both choir food and our social gathering food.  Helena discovered the joys of the $1 and $2.50 bin, her ‘It’s only $2.50!’ exclamation was priceless, especially when I informed her that it was only $2.50 if she bought 1, if she bought 10, it was no longer $2.50! LOL!

We made a quick pit-stop at home to throw on the food for the SingStar night, before bundling back in to the car and hitting up Kohls for some shopping (I came out empty handed for the first time EVER!) followed by a trip to our newest ‘Dollar store’, the 99c store on HWY 6 and Dulles, which, as it turned out, wasn’t 99c across the board, but I DID strike gold there when I found tins of coconut milk for only 99c (which would have been great if I’d not just bought some full-price in Target!) and some tin foil trys for 99c too! Score!! Yes, I get excited about the small things in life! LOL!!

That night was our first Singstar night in MONTHS!

I took a slight risk for this one, I decided that it was time to mix my worlds – eek! The fatal, social faux-pas!! I brought the choir folk to the SSA/SLB folk, cooked some grub, opened a tin of Roses, crossed my fingers and hoped for success (and not a polarised living room).

We had around 15 people, on the SSA/SLB side we had Col and I (Duh!), Helena (by proxy of being my sister) Cindy, Tim and Theresa, we also had Ben and Frances (who are on that ‘side’ simply because it was through an SSA lady that we met, though, despite my best efforts, they aren’t SSA/SLB) and on the choir ‘side’, (I have to say I was very surprised at the turn-out) we had the UNAIC President, my friend Cam Sa, her hubby David, Stephanie, Annette and her daughter Caroline, Nicole and her hubby Joe.

The singing didn’t start until later, when a bunch of the choir people had gone home, and, it was restricted to pretty much Helena, me, Col, Frances, Ben and Caroline as a few people didn’t want to sing ahead of our concert – but they vowed to come back and sing when it wasn’t the night before a concert! LOL!!

Most people had a good time (I think), the food went down well (we decided to cook, instead of ordering in Pizza) and the two worlds mixed very well.

I think because most people in the choir are also ex-pats, or have had some kind of experience with the Oil industry, Stephanie works for Shell, Caroline works on the rigs for BP and Cam-Sa and her hubby both work for Exxon Mobile, so it made it easy to find a common ground to start a conversation.

I can’t wait to throw my next one and have the choir folk actually sing, they all seemed interested and eager to come back – not to mention, they all showed up with a great selection of yummies (and one of them even brought me a gift! 😉 LOL! )

Can you believe I took ZERO pictures for this post?! :O Shame on me!!