Blue Mountains II

Michael and I spent another weekend in the Blue Mountains. He has updated his flickr bird album with all the birds we've seen lately. Here are a few photos from our hikes.

The first hike we took was down the Furber Steps and back up the Giant Staircase.

This waterfall is taller than it looks. The little specks on the rocks in the middle are people.

The Three Sisters in the background.

Here are a few from the Grand Canyon Track.

We also enjoyed another refreshing Devonshire tea at Bygone Beauties/The Treasured Teapot and a lovely breakfast at The Yellow Deli. Check out the "Why Yellow Deli?" section on their website. Anyway, last time The Yellow Deli got everything perfect, but for some reason they went too heavy on the butter today. Apparently they had people come and stay with them for three months from the other restaurants they run in the US in order to get all the restaurants on the same page. The woman who told us this sounded like she really enjoyed the people and would miss them, but it made me sad to hear this because even hippy commune restaurants have to deal with "corporate" coming in and changing things that don't necessarily need to be changed. I forgive you this time, Yellow Deli, but don't lose your Hobbiton-esque charm. Don't let the Americans make you put too much butter in everything when it already tasted fine to begin with.  Luckily my green chai with rice milk was unscathed.

Thankfulness minus the fullness

It's strange not to be home with family and friends for my favorite holiday of the year. For me, Thanksgiving is about relaxing and celebrating the fall harvest and being grateful for everything and everyone in your life (and not about the ridiculous idea that the Pilgrims and Native Americans were best friends and sat down and had a meal together). I also like that it is the least consumerist holiday, even though it is immediately followed by Black Friday craziness. It kind of celebrates something that the rest of the world makes fun of Americans for - eating too much and getting fat. I like to think that the idea is that it's a special day that you over-eat, you're not supposed to over-eat every day, if that makes it any better. 

Even though I can't celebrate with the people I wish I could see, I am reflecting on how grateful I am for all the opportunities we have had and continue to have. I am grateful for our family, friends, health, and education. I'm grateful for a lot of other things too, but you get the idea. 

Weekend Times

This weekend I've been cat-sitting for our trivia friends. Here's a selfie of us together:

We also celebrated our frisbee friend, Ali's birthday at Milk Beach, which is along the bay (as opposed to the ocean). The Napoleon Dynamite themed party was more up the hill from the beach since the sandy area is actually quite small. Here is the gorgeous view:

Also this weekend, we participated in the Game of Zones at the gym Michael belongs to. Basically it is a special event where they randomly put together teams of eight people and have them compete in the different kinds of challenges in each different area of the gym. To my surprise I was on one of the teams that tied for first. 

Today we saw Mockingjay, party 1. I think if we had not read the books we would have thought it was fine, just with less action than the other two movies. However, since we read the books, we know that they padded the movie with some extra stuff to lengthen the Mockingjay story into two parts. I hate how this is the popular thing to do now - splitting one movie into multiple parts just to prolong the hype and make more money at the box office. They're doing it with the Hobbit movies too. All in all, though, it was a good way to spend the hottest part of a hot day when you don't have AC at home.

If only the weekend could last longer. 

Won't you be my neighbor?

I feel like I heard a story or read an article at some point about one factor contributing to happiness being how many people you know that live within a close distance to you. I have tried to google it but can't come up with anything close. The closest related thing is an NPR story I listened to a few years ago about getting to know your neighbors that was quite cute, but not the original story I'm still trying to find. If anyone out there knows what I'm talking about, please send the link. 

Arachnaphobia

This is the second time in a week I have seen a large spider on my walk back home from the train station at night, but this one was sitting completely still. It was in a shadow in the middle of the brick sidewalk, so it was hard to identify, but judging by this horrifying chart it was likely one of the ones in the left column, probably the female trap door spider. Maybe I won't wear flip flops walking in my neighborhood at night so much anymore. Bring on the nightmares.

November Sun

Here's a rundown of the week so far...

Monday night, as usual, our trivia team did well enough to tie for fourth place and then lost the tie-breaker. Sigh. On the plus side, the host was sympathetic to the fact that we always do so well and then blow it at the end. He gave us a few free drink vouchers anyway. Perhaps being in the host's favor is as good as being smart enough to actually come in at the top. Almost. 

Last night, Michael and I were on rival teams in our Run Hard frisbee league. My team won, but his would have done considerably better if he had been able to arrive on-time. 

Today I had to ride the train an hour to the suburb of Blacktown for my suitability interview to teach in the NSW public school system. This is not an interview for a particular position, it is just to ensure that you generally know what you're talking about when it comes to teaching so you may be added to the list of approved teachers who can be hired. The day was pleasant enough, although, I hope to never need to go to Blacktown again for any reason.

Random recent discovery: my private health insurance pays for part of the cost if I get a massage. Awesome!

...and that's a rap. 

Bowling with a View

Yesterday for a friend's birthday we went to Clovelly Bowling Club, which probably has the most spectacular view of any bowling club around. They take caring for their brown grass very seriously, and don't let you walk on it with shoes or carrying glasses. One thing that made no sense, having bowled at Paddo Bowls near us, is that the lawn bowling balls are all almost the same color at Clovelly. It was dark brown vs. black. Paddo has contrasting bright colored balls, so it's no question which team is winning. We played the battle of the sexes, and it ended up being a very close game (probably because people on both teams were accidentally bowling with the other team's balls because they couldn't tell the difference). We finished off the night at the Beach Burrito Company in Coogee.

LOL

Last night we went to go see the comedian Arj Barker, and he was pretty funny. It had been a long time since we had been to a comedy performance, and it was actually Michael's first time seeing standup. The venue The Juniors, a large club with gambling and four restaurants in it. The one thing I saw at this club which I hadn't seen at any others was a room full of mahjong tables, and people were playing at some of them. The Juniors is in/near a Chinese neighborhood, so I thought that was cool, not to mention a smart business idea on their part. 

In other news, I got us little taco trucks to help us celebrate Taco Tuesdays.

Zip

Michael and I now have fitbit zips. As if Michael didn't have enough things to be competitive about from day to day, now there's one more thing. On an average day, though, I beat him by thousands of steps. 

We recently discovered the Dough Collective, which is a really good bakery located dangerously close to my work that always has delicious free samples. They have some unusual flavors like hokkaido azuki, Japanese roe, multigrain lychee, and chocolate walnut, as well as classic cheesy bread and scones. It's a good thing I'm tracking my steps so I can burn off all those extra calories.

Sculptures by the Sea

This was the last week of Sculptures by the Sea along the walk from Bondi Beach to Tamarama Beach. I like that in Sydney art goes beyond the bounds of museums and galleries. Imagine any one of the below sculptures with just a white wall behind it - something would be missing. 

Michael at the giant frying pan

I like lists, among other things

A great weight is removed from my shoulders when I am able to find pet-sitting for an upcoming trip. With all our short trips lately we haven't had to worry about it. We just put out the auto-feeder, an extra litterbox, and some extra water usually. My super sweet ex-coworker offered to help us out when we go to Thailand for the holidays and it just makes me want to do summersaults around the room - if my right knee wasn't super swollen and kind of permanently charlie-horsed. 

A guy ran into me last night during frisbee, his knee hitting me in the quad just above my knee. I can only bend it slowly and not all the way for now. I'm hoping it's just swollen from the hard hit and not a worse injury to a ligament or something. I figure (hope, anyway) if I was able to finish the point I can't be too seriously injured. 

In other random news, when I was on my lunch break today outside of the Bondi Junction train station there were Haribo people giving out free little packs of Star Mix. As Haribo and I have a long-term and happy relationship, this moment came in at a close second to making my week (second only to finding a pet-sitter). 

Third in making my week was discovering icreamy gelato. I usually get the lychee coconut sorbet, but they also have other good flavors I've tried like black sesame and white chocolate miso. They have a popcorn flavor I haven't brought myself to try yet. They can't beat Messina's daily specials, but their flavors are pretty solid. 

Right now I'm missing trivia with some of our frisbee friends, where Michael is right now. It's at a pub that is best accessible my biking, otherwise it requires lots of walking or taking two buses, none of which I was up for tonight with my knee in this condition. It's okay, we came in fourth (earning a free bottle of wine) at our normal Monday night trivia, so I got my fill for the week. I think this goes 4th on the list of things that are making my week. 

So, to recap:

Making My Week
1. Pet-sitting for long trip acquired
2. Haribo
3. icreamy
4. 4th place in trivia
5. Making this list
100+ ( The last possible thing on the list, or the beginning of an opposite list). Hurting my knee 

Is it bad that two of the top three things I am happy about this week involve eating delicious sweets? Don't answer that. It reminds of something I saw on Etsy recently:

 "Eat like no one is watching. Or dance. Whatever."


 

2nd Tuesday of November

We are nearing the halfway point of our time in Australia (halfway, unless we decide to extend our time by a couple of months or longer). I can't believe how fast the year is going by, mainly because the holidays and seasons I usually use to mark the passing of a year have been completely out of whack. Today we am missing election day, which gets replaced by Melbourne Cup day on the Australian calendar. Although, one could argue they have similarities - they are both heated races with sometimes cruel outcomes that make the public want to consume alcohol.

PAX AUS

We spent this past weekend at the only (one of four) Penny Arcade Expo outside of the US. This was the first convention both Michael and I had attended that wasn't somehow related to one of our jobs, and it surpassed our expectations. Everyone was just so friendly and creative, and we never got bored. Here are a few pictures...

Waiting in line to get in the first day. In the "Queue Room" there were big banners hanging from the ceiling with holes in them that said different things like "20 pts.", and lots of beach balls floating around. 

Michael got the high score at the app game, Nippy Cats, and won me a T-shirt. He actually topped the 47 and topped out at 119, but I wasn't able to get a picture of the chalkboard then.

Q and A with Mike and Jerry from Penny Arcade.

 

 

The Classic Gaming area had a huge library of classic games on systems from Atari to Sega Saturn to I don't even know what. It was really cute to see a dad teaching his young kid how to play the original Donkey Kong. 

Michael in the semifinals of the Bomberman94 tournament (third from the left)

 Cards Against Humanity panel

Drag Sailor Moon characters playing JS Joust, our favorite discovery of the expo. 

Melbourne skyline

In other new news we are an Aunt and an Uncle even moreso; our new nephew Sam was born just a few days ago. I don't know when we will be able to meet him, but we are looking forward to it.