Allow me to set the scene for you. As I type this it’s raining, bordering on sleeting. I am wearing jeans, wool socks, slippers, two shirts and a sweatshirt. In addition, I have a hot water bottle on my lap and a mug of coffee in front of me. It’s dark . . .and for the first time in recent memory, I have a cold. Ah, the Northeast of America in March; home sweet home. Wondering how our flight home went? Well keep on wondering. Some things are too ghastly for even this blog. Let's just say that a certain airline [View Full Entry]

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New Zealand (written from Christchurch and Bondi) (Yes, another long vacation blog, but hey, it's my second to last one, indulge me!) There's a commercial running down here in New Zealand promoting dairy farming as a way of life. The ad features people from various former careers talking about their new glamorous life as a dairy farmer. There is the ex-pharmacist, ex-fire-fighter, ex-shop manager and ex-teacher all saying how they'd never go back now that they have this career as a dairy farmer. The thing is, New Zealand is such a fabulous place, so breath-takingly beautiful at e [View Full Entry]

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Odds And Ends Feb 19, 2006 Things are winding down here. We’ve started packing and stopped buying the largest size of milk. We are also mostly eating takeout food again as we transition out of a permanent residence to just-passing-through status. Naturally it is now, as we are about to leave, that I finally bought my one billionth smoothie and was promoted to the VIP level. It was all very exciting. I was given a free smoothie (extra jumbo size) and I received a VIP card that will give me 10% off for the rest of my life. I also get [View Full Entry]

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Feb 8, 2006 Well I started this blog out today intending it to be primarily about Frangipani flowers as a local fashion statement. But that’ll have to wait. Today I encountered the Australian Medical System and, as a card carrying member of the “10 Times or More” club, a group that counts how many times the American HMO/PPOs have made them burst into tears out of sheer frustration, I am obligated to recount the following. I’m in the middle of the three part Hepatitis B shot series. It’s required by Massachusetts state law for everyone attending any sor [View Full Entry]

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Feb 1, 2006 In Which My Worst Fear Is Realized It happened last night at precisely 10:14pm. I got ready for bed, turned off all the lights in the apartment, walked into our room and started fluffing the pillows when out of the corner of my eye I saw something that Should Not Be. A Huntsman Spider. On the wall above Les’ dresser. Five inches or so across. With cat-like movements, (by which I do not mean the graceful sort, but rather the extreme spazzing sort where a cat can jump into the air and propel itself across a room), I [View Full Entry]

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It's another 'bobby-dazzler' down here (bright, sunny, day in Oz-Speak). We already hit the beach this morning before the crowds descended. I suppose that's one of the advantages to the early morning routine that a toddler demands. We don't get to sleep in, but we do get to hang out at the beach nice and early. So a few bits of fun news from our camp. First, The Beverly Citizen, a local newspaper from our hometown back in the U.S., has started running a series of columns that I'm writing about life down here. Of course they are mostly just shortened [View Full Entry]

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The Bridge Climb Sydney’s Harbor Bridge is the equivalent to our Golden Gate Bridge in terms of fame and its symbolic value to the country. It is the world’s largest (but not longest) steel arch bridge built throughout the 1920s and opening in March of 1932. And of course keeping with the theme of all things dangerous and Australian, the city of Sydney allows people to climb the Harbor Bridge, which incidentally is held together by about six million little rivets that seem to have a propensity for falling into the Harbor. To be clear, they don’t simply allow people [View Full Entry]

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Getting Off Kangaroo Island Our last night on Kangaroo Island was hot. Super hot. And because we'd had the nocturnal tour the night before, I went to bed dehydrated from all the walking. I woke up feeling like I'd swallowed a bottle of sand and consequently drank a bottle of water at brekkie. Not just any bottle, but a mega 1.5 liter bottle. Dad looked over and asked. “Did you just drink all that!? We have a two hour drive ahead of us you know.” I replied. “I’m dehydrated; my body will absorb most of it.” The drive to the ferry [View Full Entry]

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Part 2 of 3: Kangaroo Island The Long Hot Drive to Glenelg The drive out of the Flinders Ranges was a long one. We chose to take the more ‘scenic’ route, and it was scenic, but it was also hot and dry. Further, down here the day after Christmas is Boxing Day and even though it was Tuesday, the day after Boxing Day, everything was still closed in a retroactive celebration. This meant that we drove for hours without ever seeing someplace that sold water or snacks. Who lives out there!? We couldn’t even begin to guess. All we saw for [View Full Entry]

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We did a lot in the past week. Probably as much in one week as Les and I did in our first month here. As a result, and since this blog is first and foremost my way of recording our time down here, these will be some LONG blogs. I’ll be posting three in all, but I’ll caption them. So if you feel like you’d like to read about Flinders Ranges, you can skip to that section, or you can skip it altogether. I hope this way those of you who read in five minute breaks here and there will have [View Full Entry]

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