Cherry Hill

Found some pictures on a real estate site of the house where I grew up (ages 0-10) in Cherry Hill NJ. Very evocative!

Front view - my bedroom I shared with Kevin on the upper right.  There used to be those super tall bushes in front of our window that I used to plan to jump out to and slide down in case of fire (fire was my big fear as a child).  Otherwise it all looks pretty much the same!

The view as you walk in.  The red color scheme is all new.  The biggest memory this dredges up is Danielle sneaking out of her bed and sleeping on the steps when my parents had dinner parties.

The kitchen has been remodeled too.  The phone hung on the wall beside the door in the right rear.  Memory for this one (among many): burning my finger on a popcorn popper next to the sink on the left (after being told not to touch it).

Family room, remodeled as well, but they kept the fireplace (even if they've painted the wood).  This was the fireplace where I tied the screen shut one Christmas eve with a piece of yarn.  When the yarn was still there in the morning, I KNEW.

The downstairs bathroom.  How's this for an early memory: I remember asking to use it shortly after being potty trained, and being told by my mom that I didn't need to ask.  Revelation!

The living room.  Piano was against the left wall.  Couch against the back wall.  Ceramic elephant and various chairs to the right side.  My parents used to have bridge parties here with folding card tables.

That's all!  Wish there were more, like pictures of the yard, or my bedroom.

Australians

Here are four Australians that are amazing, in my opinion.

Chris Lilley - Creator of Summer Heights High (which was picked up in the States by HBO) and several other Australian series. Amazingly creative in his writing, but on top of that I think he is maybe the best actor I've ever seen. He completely inhabits his roles like no one else I know, so much so that he can even play a schoolgirl and pull it off. Here's a sample, but be warned, lots of colourful language... clip

Terrence Tao - Mathematician. More than that, he's a mathematician's mathematician. A child prodigy, he's now at a level where other mathematicians compete to interest him in their problems. I read his blog but to be honest, don't understand much. Thankfully he sometimes writes simpler stuff for dilettantes like myself. He may be the best mathematician working today (though he would probably tell you that non-working mathematician is tops).

Tommy Emmanuel - Australia is also home to maybe the top acoustic guitar player in the world as well. I'm not usually a blues fan, but this clip is typical. My hands hurt just watching.

Tim Minchin - Comedian usually situated at a piano, and with eye makeup and no shoes. Marjorie might disagree with me here; we first saw him a couple years back and he was decidedly unfunny. But I've seen some of his recent work and it's amazingly clever. Some samples (be warned, plenty of off-colour language here as well): Storm, Taboo, If I Didn't Have You.

Home invader

Today's wildlife rescue. Got trapped in our house but just hopped on my finger when I tried to rescue him and didn't want to let go.

Balloon

So, yeah. We went ballooning for Marjorie's birthday, and it was amazing. Spent almost exactly an hour in the air, taking off from Fisherman's bend and flying over our old neighborhood. Totally peaceful in the air and not scary at all, despite ranging from maybe twice the height of the skyscrapers in the CBD (which we skirted just South of) down to almost street level. We practically landed on the roof of one of our favorite restaurants and then continued straight down the street it was on, to the amusement of many passers-by and people having breakfast on their deck. The city was particularly quiet since the previous night was the (Australian Rules Football) Grand Final (which ended in a tie). We set down in Elsternwick Park leaving several dogs nonplussed. This was followed by a champagne breakfast at the cafe in the botanical gardens.



More pics to come.

Hoddle Street massacre

A tragedy that occurred in our neighborhood 23 years ago. We walk Laika through this same area several times a week.

View

The view from my desk in our new office:


Looming up above is the highest office building in the Southern Hemisphere, the Rialto Towers, which used to have an observation deck (that Marjorie and I went to on our first visit to Melbourne) which is now apparently a restaurant.

Office

The startup Mark is working for finally has an office:


Quite grateful to be back working in the CBD - I wasn't too keen on working from home. Here's my desk:


I love that the windows actually open; that's rare in an office building. There's a little balcony out there too but you have to go out the window to get to it.

New Car!

After nearly eight years without, we finally have a car!


2010 Subaru RX hatchback. We're looking forward to the change in lifestyle.

Heart

After our last soccer match of the season, I went with a couple of teammates to watch Melbourne's new soccer team, the Heart, play against Perth Glory in Melbourne's new dedicated soccer stadium:





Small crowd but it was good fun and the stadium is fabbo. Bummer was that Former English Premier Leaguer Robbie Fowler scored a penalty kick equalizer for Perth in extra time, and the match finished 2-2.

New car... almost

So last week we went by the Subaru dealership and ended up putting some money down on a car that they had in stock at a different location, on the condition we could still reject it after it arrived and we had a test drive.

We had the test drive today, and everything was great, except that when we went to switch drivers, we smelled something burning. So we checked the oil, and it had way too MUCH. Some must've been spilling out onto the engine block, or something.

What can that do to a car? I'm not exactly sure, but now we are going to have an independent mechanic check it out before we buy. Bummer.

Soup

Had this soup at an Indonesian restaurant:


Any guess on the mystery vegetable? It was about as appetizing as it looked, and the flavor stayed with me all afternoon.

Balloons

Spotted this balloon hovering up the street:


Wow, that's really close, I thought. Then I looked up over our house and saw this:

News

We recently got some scary news about a family member, which I won't go into details on, but which today we were overjoyed to learn is not as bad as it could have been. It's an enormous relief. Enough said.

Running almost simultaneously to that drama we have been dealing with a tumor on our dog Laika. She got it removed two weeks ago but all the signs were bad. Last week we learned she had a stage 3 mast cell tumor, which is about the worst kind you can have - very aggressive. And today Marjorie took her to a specialist to find out more. An aspiration of her lymph node indicated that it indeed had spread, and so she got her first round of chemotherapy straight away, and has to go back maybe five more times. This will give her a 60% chance of surviving a year. We are still reeling from this, but will do whatever it takes to give her a full life in the time she has left.

So, whatever the Chinese calendar may say, we're declaring this the Year of the Dog. We've actually bought a car (contingent on a final test drive we'll take on Saturday) that will let us take her around.

Stephen Fry

We caught a talk given by Stephen Fry yesterday, which was fantastic. Just him on stage with a microphone for two hours and ten minutes. He was lured to Melbourne by a grassroots campaign, and the show we saw was a second one that was added after the first sold out (in a pretty big venue). Here's the article from the local paper about it, which is a little overly-fawning (but then so am I).

Did you know he played Lord Snot in that famous Young Ones game show episode? Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson are also down there with him.

Tortillas

I made these! Using actual lard. They rocked.

Trip

The more I have to blog about, the less inclined I am to do it. So you know this long hiatus means that a lot has been going on.

I'm still going to be brief about it. After Montreal we went down the Florida to see my side of the family plus Marjorie's sister's gang, including a fun day at Blizzard Beach, and the USA's awesome win over Algeria in the World Cup. Then to Atlanta to see Marjorie's parents and our old friends. I got to see USA get knocked out of the World Cup with a bunch of my old friends in a bar that was wall-to-wall people. Finally, we spent one last day in Los Angeles filling up our suitcases with cheap and hard-to-find-in-Australia goods.

My birthday was soon after we got back. Marjorie got me a slow cooker, which I'm excited about, though it tends to require a major grocery shop beforehand, which is difficult sans car. That's the other news, we're back in the market for getting one. It's been too long without.

I'll be posting various pictures from all this when I get around to it.

Montreal

We are in Montreal now, and enjoying it muchly.

We're hoping to have a refresher on our high school French as much as possible on our visit, and it's certainly a good place for that. I wasn't sure exactly how French it would be, but it certainly seems to dominate. What makes it a great learning opportunity is that just about everything that's written comes in both French and English versions, so it's like having flash cards everywhere. My vocabulary has been skyrocketing in just a few days here. And people typically will greet you in French, so you always have the opportunity to respond in kind. Unfortunately, we've typically been getting the polite thanks-for-trying smile followed by a response in English.

Yesterday was rainy and so we mostly just putzed around and did some shopping. In the evening we went to a lovely French restaurant, Restaurant Le Mas Des Oliviers, chosen largely because their menu posted on the street had no English translation, but again we were spoken to in English. They were very nice though - we have yet to encounter the notorious French snottiness - and the food was delicious.

Today we walked to the Parc du Mont-Royal overlooking the city. We had lunch at a Montreal institution, Schwarz's Deli, then hired public bikes and rode down to Old Montreal.

It's a shame that the winters are so harsh here; it might otherwise make a lovely place to live.

Pickles

Marjorie and a plate of pickles at Izakaya Den:

Bikes

I love this!


Rental bikes hit Melbourne.

Vet

Laika at the vet, for an ear infection:


Not her favorite place, of course, but she copes okay. I think it's the liver treats they give her.