The days are just packed. On Saturday, golf with my soccer mates; I shot a 76. Okay, that was thanks to Calloway scoring; in the real world, I shot a miserable 110, and that's parring 3 holes. It's like, I'm playing at least once a year, but for some reason am not improving. Still lots of fun.

Sunday, our soccer match was an absolute classic, and reminded me why I still play. Fought back from 3-0 down against a bunch of prats; took a 4-3 lead, let them tie it again, then won the day with a late goal.

Last night we saw Ryan Adams from a far closer to the ceiling of the venue than the stage. Unfortunately he's still going through his tortured artist phase and played in near darkness all night; for the first two songs, I even thought the black silhouette of his backup guitarist was him. But they at least sounded amazing.

My trip home today took a little longer than usual.

I was leaving on our office elevator when it decided it didn't want to go any further. It clunked to a stop and the digital readout switched off. I looked at the clock on my phone: 5:35pm. There were five other people stuck with me; we called the emergency line and settled in for a long wait. One woman had just talked to her husband who was waiting by the curb. Another was on his way to a movie. Nervous jokes were made about how much air we had, how high up we were, etc. Everyone had cell phones and could connect out, fortunately, so there wasn't a lot to fret about. We weren't sure where exactly we were stuck, but had guessed in the basement carpark level, because we were only hearing noises above us. The repair guys made it there relatively quickly and the doors finally opened at 6:20. Turns out we were on the 14th floor. Not fun, but without plans for the evening, I figured I was better off than some of the others stuck with me. Forty-five minutes can't be too bad for elevator repair time.

We have a new nephew! Wesley was born to Marjorie's sister last night our time. A little before predicted, but well within the drop zone. Weighing in at 5.8 pounds. Huzzah!

On several occasions in the past I've used this forum to geek out a bit, but I usually hold back.

So for my birthday this year I bought myself a new website, with the primary purpose being to start a blog where I have free reign to geek out. I've spent a couple of weeks setting it up, and now it's pretty much ready to go. I also spent some time just writing down topics that I want to blog about -- I came up with about sixty-five, plus another dozen or so that could be attempted with a little investigation, so I'll have no shortage of things to write about!

The main theme will be computer programming, with occasional asides into astronomy, math, and physics. So I hereby annouce Computronium: the blog. Let me know what you think!

Took a nice long walk around Albert Park Lake today. Saw a rakali, which was cool; I've never seen a rat dive before!

During a stop for lunch Laika escaped and bolted off to confront a black swan. Bad idea. Luckily Marjorie was able to grab her lead, but not before Laika crashed into the water. The lady serving us lunch told us that these swans have a tendency to drown dogs by sitting on top of them while they're trying to swim.

Through a combination of nature shows and personal experience, we have learned that you NEVER mess with swans, badgers, hippos, cassowaries, or hyenas (besides the obvious poisonous critters).

There's a tradition in my family that whenever we would move somewhere new, I was always the first family member to need to visit the emergency room.

I kept this tradition alive since marrying, too -- in Singapore I had to go in for kidney stones. Well, today I got to visit my first Melbourne emergency room. Nothing serious -- I knocked heads with a guy on the soccer pitch and lost. Three stitches in my hairline at the very top middle of my forehead, and an ugly abrasion on my cheek. I think it's the first time in soccer that I ever went down and stopped caring about the run of play. Head wounds bleed, big time, so I as soon as I put my hand to my head, it came away covered in blood.

Luckily there's a guy on our team that used to do facial surgery. He set me up right, and got me on my way. I was in and out of the emergency room in just over an hour, and all covered by Medicare. I even was back to work the bar for the first team three hours later.

Today for my birthday Marjorie stayed home from work and cooked me a Thanksgiving dinner. How good is that? I skipped lunch just so I could make a bigger pig of myself. Turkeys are pricey down here but we get a lot of meals out of one bird. She invented a new dessert for the occasion, too -- she blended vanilla ice cream with Maltesers in the food processor and refroze. Yum!

Friday night we invited people from our respective workplaces out for drinks to celebrate citizenship. It was good fun, especially now that the pubs are smoke free. Marjorie led a quick "Aussie Aussie Aussie!" ("Oi Oi Oi!") cheer during a toast.

Sudden citizenship realization: we have a queen!

Aussie Aussie Aussie! Our nationality is now officially hyphenated. We had our Australian citizenship ceremony last night. Check out some random photos (sorry about the random ordering, but Flickr stupidly allows you to only create three photo sets for free, so those are retrieved by tag).

It started with the mayor reading a huge list of apologies from elected officials that couldn't make it. Then there were speeches from the two (besides the mayor) that did attend; one was Aborigine and talked about her ancestors, which was interesting. Then we did the swearing in, and the handing out of certificates. They pronounced my name as "Schitznius". *Sigh* We also got plants to plant, and a pin. Finally we sang the national anthem (badly).

There were maybe thirty of us who were getting sworn in, and surprisingly, twenty-one different countries represented. The ones I remember are: Vietnam, New Zealand, UK, Samoa, Poland, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Africa. I think we were the only Americans this time around.

They signed us up to vote straight away. There were tea and sandwiches afterwards, but we went out for a nice dinner at The Dogs Bar (sans dog) instead.

To infinity and beyond! I never understand people who denigrate anything modern, and pine for an earlier time, when art was better. They miss out on so much. I'm sure people like that will have ancestors who will look back on our time as a golden age, and continue to ignore the great works produced in their own future time.

Today we checked out the Pixar exhibit at the ACMI. I'm a big fan of all the Pixar movies I've seen (and am looking forward to Ratatouille). Even without the animated exhibits, this would have been worth attending, just for the artwork. The skill involved in their storyboards, color sketches, and close up studies is plainly evident. Add in the brilliant characterizations, story lines, dialog, and world-building, and it's clear that these movies will be timeless. It's amazing also to see how much work they do and later discard. One quote they had posted gave an idea of what it must be like to work on one of these movies; they describe it as everyone involved holding hands and jumping from an airplane, and then building the parachute on the way down.

The highlight, though, was the zoetrope. This video doesn't quite do it justice but you get the idea.

Back in my old hometown of Atlanta, they're tearing down the old party district, Buckhead. While I long ago outgrew it -- well before I even left Atlanta -- I must admit I had some excellent times there, back in my post-college, new in town, swinging bachelor days.

But now is not a time for talk of such things. Today marks the nine-year anniversary of Marjorie and I's [*] first date. Happy anniversary, baby! She's all sickly though so it doesn't look like we'll be doing much.

[*] Surely "Marjorie and I's" is wrong? But "Marjorie and my" doesn't sound right either.

My company had its end-of-the-fiscal-year party Friday night, which I had an excellent time at (well, I'm almost certain I did). It was held at the bowling alley downstairs from our office, and we had a tournament. I bowled out of my skin all night (136, 148, 144, and 115) and ended up finishing fourth. It was won by our resident Olympian (he actually has a gold medal for playing on the field hockey team for Australia) who was a no better bowler than anyone but turned it on at the end, finishing the final round with three consecutive strikes in the final frame. I guess that's why he's an Olympian.

There was a company bar tab, which I overindulged on, shall we say. Marjorie came to join me later in the evening but pretty much had to just rescue me. I don't remember anything after about 6 p.m., including the tram ride home and the pizza that Marjorie made me eat (bless her heart).

When I lived back in Orlando I famously passed out in the back seat on the way home from club hopping one night, and suddenly startled awake saying, "David Koresh!" for no fathomable reason. Well, I've got some new ones from Friday night; as I was passing out on the couch I apparently started saying nonsensical things, like "George Clooney is kind of creepy" and "Look, Tony got a split" (the latter apparently having something to do with bowling).

Bummed! I just went to buy myself an internet domain, only to find that it's already been taken. I had the perfect name -- schnitzi.us -- not least so that my email could have been mark@schnitzi.us, but someone just snagged it, only one month ago. That was my one and only idea for an internet domain. Phooey.

Weekend roundup: Friday night -- karaoke with some of Marjorie's work people. We signed up to sing The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" which probably wasn't the best choice for the crowd we were in (who were doing all sorts of cheesy 80's songs). Fortunately or unfortunately, they couldn't find the song, so instead we ended up singing Pat Benatar's "Love Is A Battlefield" (complete with shoulder shakes like the video), which had more of the proper cheesiness. Good fun, and we even stayed out past one (shocking).

Saturday night Marjorie indulged my current Gilbert and Sullivan obsession by going with me to see The Mikado. Despite being a small production, we thought they put on a damn good show. Of course, they had to modernize it a touch -- Ko-ko's version of I've Got A Little List was sung about a list he was keeping on his palm pilot, and the words were modified to talk about people talking loudly on cellphones, for instance -- but all in all it was a very good production.

Middle Park's soccer woes continued again this morning as we dropped yet another game. We played very well but couldn't score as usual, and we allowed a late goal on a perfectly struck free kick to lose it 1-0.

Clean joke.

A talking dog goes into a hardware store and says, "I'd like to apply for a job."

The owner says, "Um, we're not really hiring right now. Why don't you try the circus?"

The dog says, "Why would the circus need a plumber?"

How eccentric was my last Saturday? I went and saw The Pirates of Penzance by myself, then went shopping for ukuleles, and finished the day drinking port and playing Balderdash at some friends' house.

The next day we went on an organized lagoon around Aitutaki's lagoon with Aitutaki Adventures. Part of the tour was showing us all the places where Survivor: Cook Islands was filmed. We never watched the show, but by the accounts we heard, the Survivor people were very conscientious and everyone there was happy to have them. (The tourists, maybe not so much, because they took every free room on the island.) The tour even started from a jetty that the Survivor people built for the show and left for the islanders.

The tour itself was quite amazing. We started just by stopping out in the middle of the channel, where very large turtles (not sure what breed) were popping their heads up left and right. There was no wind, and the water was exceeding clear, so we could see them swim by with no problem. We could also identify fish species easily twenty feet down, and also saw a number of giant clams. The lagoon is full of patches of coral that come up and almost reach the surface, so one must be careful navigating.

We stopped by some of the outer islands, and saw some nesting birds (red-tailed terns) that are apparently very rare. The snorkeling was great; we stopped in four different places, and it was all just a big tropical fish tank. The coolest sighting was probably a spotted eel. They had a big spread of lunch for us too, which was very nice.

We headed back to Rarotonga the next day, and rented a car. I had a tip that the place to buy a ukulele there is at the prison; apparently the prisoners make them. So we tracked it down -- it's not that big of an island -- and Marjorie sent me in by myself to inquire (how could she not be curious about a prison on an island in the middle of the Pacific?). But it was a bad tip; all they had was cheap touristy ukes. There was another beautiful one I wanted to buy that I saw on our first trip through at the music store, but we came back through for Saturday and Sunday only, when all the stores were closed. Phoo.

We did a brief hike up into the hard-to-find Takitumu conservation area. If ever there's a place to spot dinosaurs, this was it, but instead we only maybe spotted the rare Rarotonga Flycatcher that's endemic there; we never got a good look at it though. Actually, if you see anything other than a mynah bird or a chicken on the Cook Islands, you're doing okay; the birding was disappointing.

We had another great snorkel experience on our last full day, just picking a spot off the side of the road. For some strange reason, I had a posse of fish that followed me around the whole time, and swam in a circle around me. It was really bizarre. We have pictures of it, which we'll post eventually.

Arriving back in Melbourne airport, we checked our messages to discover that the repairs on our toilet were far from finished. Lovely. Just what you want to hear after an eight hour flight; that you don't even have a working toilet to go home to. That killed any happy island buzz that we had accumulated, in an instant. Our landlord arranged a hotel for us, that we soon came to realize was the dingy Bukowski-esque down the street from our first short term apartment here, that we used to walk by and make fun of. To give you an idea -- our dog Laika likes to roll in dead birds and fish on the beach. When we took her by the hotel she immediately keyed on one spot on the floor and started rolling in it. Presumably that was where they found the dead junkie. We ended up staying only one night there, but keeping the keys just to have a place to run to for a working bathroom.

It was Tuesday night we arrived back home; they finally finished our bathroom on Saturday evening. Do you know how great it is to have a working bathroom again? One of the many things we take for granted.

After the last post, things went from bad to worse, as the next day the rain just, did not, stop. We had planned to get up early but ended up sleeping in past noon because we could hear it pouring down. There was no let-up all day. Even the lagoon filled up with silty run-off. We just putzed around in town again the whole day, and went to bed with a combination of depression and antzy stir-craziness.

The next day we flew to Aitutaki. More rain was scheduled, but from the moment we landed there was nothing but clear blue skies and bright sun. (Cue choir of angels.) Our resort, Etu Moana, is gorgeous and lovely, and we're right on the water. They have free bikes and sea kayaks for us to tool around on. The lagoon is turquoise and clear and full of fish.

The air is so clear here that at sunset you could even see the clouds that were partway over the horizon. After it went down I could see the Milky Way for the first time in as long as I can remember. We went to dinner at an outdoor cafe, and a cricket landed on Marjorie. Her shriek was relatively mild, but I'm still counting it. That's four down, three plagues to go.

We went for a (hot) jog this morning and now Marjorie is getting a massage, while I'm blogging from here down the street. (My massage is later.) Tomorrow we are going on an organised lagoon tour. Our spirits, as you might imagine, are much improved.

Kia orana from Rarotonga! This is supposed to be the driest month of the year but it's been nothing but gray skies and intermittent rain for the day and a half we've been here. Luckily the place we're staying has internet.

On the way out we spent a night in Auckland, which wasn't enough to see much (especially since it was Sunday night and everywhere was dead). So we just had dinner at (this is sad) Wendy's (hey, they don't have them in Melbourne, and there's nothing particularly notable about New Zealand cuisine) and a drink at some back alley bar. I was glad that Auckland seemed to have a very different vibe than Melbourne, or anywhere else I've been for that matter; it's hard to characterise, and I don't know if it's particular to Auckland or NZ in general. We'll be back before long though I'm sure to give it a proper visit.

Rarotonga, even when sopping wet, is pretty cool. It's completely surrounded by a reef, and huge waves have been crashing into it as long as we've been here. There's a mountain peak overlooking us that we may try to hike up to. The Cook Islanders look just like you'd expect Polynesian people to look; the women in colorful dresses with flowers in their hair, and the men big and strapping. Sadly, the only birds we've seen are mynahs and chickens.

Today we took the bus to Avarua, which is the only town on the island, and the closest thing to a metropolis for 1000 miles in any direction. Shopped, ate, drank, had ice cream, and befriended a local dog who followed us around through the rain (so I had to name him Tom). Saw the ukelele I want to buy, which I'll get on the trip back. The stores here sell coconut bikini tops like from the musical South Pacific; I've told Marjorie that when we get to Aitutaki, that's all I want her wearing. She thinks I'm kidding.

Hopefully things will be clearer tomorrow so we can get our feet wet and see some proper fish.

Marjorie's not the skittish type, but three times already this month, she's screamed.

Last week Laika pounced on a mouse in the kitchen, shook it, and mostly killed it. (I had to take a hammer to it to put it out of its misery. Ick.)

Then, last weekend, she found a dead rat in the backyard. We don't know if Laika killed it or not, but of course it was me again that had to dispose of it. At least it was dead and required no hammer.

This morning, on her way out, she discovered a large centipede in her purse.

That's three down, four plagues to go. Who knows what we'll encounter in the Cook Islands?

Down the street from us is the Rats of Tobruk House. Such an unusual name; of course I had to look up what this means soon after I noticed it.

Well, last month a big "Auction" sign went up on the house, which I thought was sad. But the story has a happy ending.

I had been so dreading the return to work on our company's contract with a certain maker of tourist guidebooks. The people were nice, but the project infrastructure was hell, and the commute was a total pain (especially with winter coming on). But now it looks like, due to an increasingly acrimonious dispute between our companies, that the contract is dead in the water. Deliverance!

Everyone still has a few personal effects out on their work site. The running joke is that this is like a breakup, and we're going to go out there to find all of our stuff thrown out on the lawn. All we have to worry about now is our company finding a "rebound" contract, or making drunken phone calls to them at 2 a.m....