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.

Wow. How depressing. Well, I think we're here (in Australia) to stay now. It's a lovely country, and we have a guest room.

Could today be more nerve-racking? I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. Go Kerry go!

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!

Bottom line. Our president has taken us from peace to war, and from surplus to deficit. He took a worldwide expression of good feeling towards the US (following 9/11) and squandered it completely. Not to mention that 1000 US soldiers are dead for a wrongly justified and poorly planned war for which no wrongdoing has ever been admitted and that has only replaced despotism with chaos.

I understand the lines are long, but take a book with you if you have to, and vote!

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.

The Good Life: Today was beautiful; high of around 30 degrees Celsius (around 85 F). We took the dingo to the beach so she could roll in smelly low-tide debris, and run around like mad with other dogs. I'm so pleased that she is the type of dog that gets on well with other dogs. Nobody likes the mean dog. She's so happy at the beach, it's contagious. She doesn't swim so much as romp in the water. Mark says she's doing the butterfly stroke.
We're loving Melbourne. It's no secret that I was not terribly happy in Singapore, but Melbourne is about as perfect as a city could be. No mystery it's been voted the most livable city in the world. And I suspect I'll be employed by the end of November.