Back and Baking Happy 2006! We just got back from our fabulous South Australia trip this afternoon. We had a crazy, adventurous and fun time blazing trails all over the southern bit of Australia. My plan is to post three post-event blogs over the course of this week - - one for each location we visited. However, I have a personal rule of not typing, or being near anything that emits even the slightest bit of heat, when the temperature is over 100. And since it was 112 today here in Sydney, and hit 117 yesterday back in Adelaide, AND as [View Full Entry]

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Of Arrivals and Riots Well to begin with, of course, the big news is that my parents arrived yesterday! And, after flying from Miami to LA, LA to Honolulu and finally Honolulu to Sydney, they walked through the custom’s gate last night none too worse for the wear with only their roller boards in tow. I will admit that, out of an entire jumbo jet, they were almost the first people thru the gates because they were the only people who hadn’t checked luggage. So score one for Dad’s carry-on-only rule, we’ll see if all the other luggage related factors go [View Full Entry]

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Some of you have been asking us about the riots that have been occurring lately in and around Sydney. While they have been in beach towns, so far they have been south of us. The closest town experiencing the problems is Maroubra. Though it’s only a few miles south of us, it’s not within walking distance of Bondi and it’s not part of the chain of beaches that we frequent. The problems are racial and primarily driven by young gangs with nothing better to do then text message each other about places to have riots. Schools out, it’s summer, the holidays [View Full Entry]

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Kookaburra Sits on the TV Antenna Since we’ve been in Australia I’ve seen two Kookaburra. And they were quiet and very still. But in the past two days I’ve seen four and yesterday afternoon, right in the middle of town, we saw two more. Rather, I should say, we heard them. When a Kookaburra does its laughing thing it is an arresting sound. Both Abby and I froze and looked up and around. There, on top of the Video EZ’s TV antenna were two of them, each trying to out laugh the other. I’ve read that they sound like laughing donkeys, [View Full Entry]

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Well, at about 11:30 this morning it stopped raining. I’m not holding my breath or anything. It’s been raining pretty much straight out for three weeks now, but the sun and crisp air have a feeling of permanence that they haven’t had during their brief appearances over the past many water logged days. My hope is that we can actually hit the beach, instead of the mall, this afternoon. When it’s cold and rainy I’ve been all about the coffee and especially the Gingerbread Latte, but with the return of summer weather, I quickly reverted to my new found addicti [View Full Entry]

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Happy Birthday Mom!! Today (Sunday) is my Mom’s 60th bday, and while I realize we don’t generally give out ages, big milestones aren’t included in that rule. So happy birthday Mom and we’ll see you in three weeks!! I hope everyone had relaxing and fun Thanksgiving weekends. Unfortunately we weren’t able to feel too gloaty about being at the beach instead of in the cold north, because it rained every day this weekend. We took a few walks with umbrellas over Abby. But those always ended up with everyone wet and frazzled. As a result, we pretty much stay [View Full Entry]

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Sculpture By The Sea Here’s a disclaimer right up front before we even get into anything further. Les and I are not great art aficionados. We like some art and are happy to have nice paintings and photographs on our walls, but we don’t regularly go to galleries, and the last time we went to an art museum was to see the traveling Monet exhibit in Philadelphia. It was our first date in the early summer of 1992. But here we were 13 years later with a major art exhibit essentially in our back yard. Each year there is a huge [View Full Entry]

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"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!" I am starting to think Lewis Carroll wrote that with Australia in mind and he just wasn't sure what the official name were for the various things that bit and had claws. Early this past week Abby got attacked by a horde of ‘sea lice’. These feisty organisms are really nasty little worms that live in birds, and then jump ship to snails where they do the whole egg/larvae thing and then they look for another bird to invade. [View Full Entry]

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Ordinary Days Well, we had just another ordinary weekend. You know the type - - daily trips to the beach, a few hikes over sea-side cliffs, a Guinness Book bungee attempt, the world’s largest airplane and of course a battle with a new nasty bug. Just your basic weekend down under - - where nothing is done on the small scale. We had read that there would be some sort bungee jump attempt down at the beach on Friday morning around 8 am. So we hustled ourselves together and got down there around 7:45. Sure enough there was a decent sized [View Full Entry]

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A Brief Discussion On Processed Food Down Under Each time I’ve tried to buy frozen chicken tenders or frozen fish stick I’ve come home only to read on the box that the cooking instructions are actually that. Cooking instructions. Not thawing - but cooking. Why? Because all the frozen food meats down here are raw! Can you imagine? No throwing some chicken nuggets into the microwave. Those bad boys have to be totally cooked or you’ll be serving up some E-coli Nuggets. It’s been exasperating since, if I’m going to go through the effort of cooking someth [View Full Entry]

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