Mall rats. Today we took a train a good ways out of town just to go to a mall. Marjorie convinced me by showing me on their website that they had a Wendy's, my favorite fast food. It turned out to be really quite a huge mall, and we had big stupid grins on our faces as we arrived, which we attribute to our being American. There's something fundamental in the American psyche that requires an occasional mall visit, and it's been years for me.

It turns out that the Wendy's was an ice cream store. Phooey. The excitement of being in a mall wore off rather quickly, in fact.

In the Borders there, though, I finally found a copy of the November issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal in which I am mentioned on page 16 for the IOCCC thing. Aw yeah.

Cup day. Today is an officially sanctioned holiday here in Melbourne -- Melbourne Cup Day. Perhaps the only holiday anywhere that's based around a sporting event? Lots of big hats on the tram. I went in to work thinking there'd at least be some skeleton crew there, but there was nobody. So I left. Time to go play!

Two things I haven't seen in years, that I just saw:

A rainbow, on our way home from the dog park. Then, half an hour later --

Hail.