Nice

Lovely day lying back looking at the sky, listening to music the backyard:


This weather we know won't last long...

Albert Park

Bopped down to our old neighborhood today to take Laika to the beach:


And to have lunch at our old regular restaurant, Dundas and Fausett:

Pixies

The Pixies last night at Festival Hall:


What's with all these people liking MY band?

Food and Wine Festival

Marjorie and friend Fleur at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival:

Birds on wires

Twelve red-rumped parrots spotted near our house:



And a tawny frogmouth, silhouetted against the streetlight (about the only way to take a night shot with the iPhone camera):

Hockey

So, yesterday on a whim I went down to Melbourne's awesome new skating facility for an intro to ice hockey. A little late in the game to be starting a physical sport like this, but I enjoy skating and used to REALLY enjoy playing intramural floor hockey in college.

It was a lot of fun. From pictures on the web site I expected to be given just a helmet and a stick, but they ended up giving me full pads - helmet, gloves, elbow pads, knee/shin pads, shoulder pads, and padded pants. This proved useful as I'm not the best skater in the world, especially in hockey skates (I'm used to figure skates with the sawtooth in the front that I used both for stopping and accelerating). So I ended up going down maybe five or six times, but no pain thanks to the pads. It was quite a lot of fun. The instructors were good and kept things organized and moving. A great deal at only $20 for the hour too, including skates and equipment.

I really, really need to learn to skate better. Particularly stopping, which I don't really have worked out.

Marjorie came by and caught the last ten minutes. She's going to join the fun next week!

Moonlight cinema

In the botanical gardens, waiting while the Moonlight Cinema screen (in the background) is inflated:


Saw "Bright Sun", which was pretty good.

Calexico

Calexico, who we caught at the Thornberry Theatre last night:


Really good show. As their name suggests, their music is a mishmash of American and Mexican influences. Venue was interesting, kind of a banquet hall, with assigned seats at big round tables:

Pierogies

Had lunch today at Court Jester, a very interesting hidden-away Polish food restaurant:


Food was... not bad, but we won't be in a hurry to go back.

Skating

Marjorie, yesterday at Icehouse:



I'm a stinker.

Library

Hard to capture, but this is my favorite room in the state library. I gasped the first time I stumbled into it.

Protest

The Internet filter protest in front of the state library:





Smaller crowd than I was hoping for. As you can see, several different political parties were represented...

Jobless

So - we all knew this was coming, but yesterday our Melbourne FAST office was officially let go by Microsoft. They had decided to discontinue our product, a year and a half after acquiring us, since it wasn't really in line with their corporate vision. A lot of that was due to the fact that we are developing in Java on Linux and Mac machines, instead of using Microsoft products.

No one in the office was terribly concerned; my boss is working on acquiring the software rights to what we were making are starting his own company, which would be a Microsoft partner company but otherwise unaffiliated with Microsoft. I think everyone in the office would be happier working without the constraints that Microsoft put on us anyway. That said, Microsoft was VERY nice about the severance, even going so far as to provide us a career counseling service to help us find new jobs, even outside of Microsoft.

So, I had really been looking forward to the time off. I've been coming up with a big list of things I want to accomplish during my "Autumn Of Mark". But then today, on my first official day off, I got a call in the morning from the FAST office manager about a job opportunity, and I couldn't really say no. So tomorrow I'm going in for an interview. If it works out I will have some Java temp work for a few months until this other company gets off the ground. But I definitely didn't want it to happen this soon. Sigh...

Paintball

One of my bruises from our company paintball outing last Friday:


It's turned a particularly lovely yellow over the past day. Tons of fun though - boss supplied us with unlimited ammo on the company expense account, so the air was dense with paintballs. I came home with 17 different welts!

Botanical

Our friend Trisha's 40th birthday party at the Royal Botanical Gardens.


I don't know why I didn't take any shots with the beautiful plants in the background.

Mueck

Ron Mueck exhibition at the NGV:

Angst

Laika always looks sad in the morning when we go off to work:

Comments

Haloscan, the provider I was using for comments for years is going away. So, I've been forced to switch to the comment system that comes built in with Blogger. I have all the old comments saved, but unfortunately there's no way to import them to the new system yet.

I have all verification turned off on the new comments, which of course means it'll fill up with spam shortly. I'll have to do something about that when it happens but in the meanwhile, enjoy.

Super Bowl

How I'm watching the Super Bowl this year:


Typical. Geaux Saints!

Lizard

More crazy backyard finds. Found this lizard skin while doing yardwork today:


I have big feet too, to give you some sense of scale. Since it's just the skin, we're thinking the guy who shed it may still be around. Our best guess is that it's one of these.

Hat

After car shopping we went to City Hatters, which has thousands of hats but EXACTLY ONE THAT FITS MY GINORMOUS MELON:

Mini

We came home empty-handed from car shopping today, but figured out a lot about what we're looking for. Here's Miss Marjorie test driving a Mini Cooper:


(which we decided is pretty sweet, but generally too small.)

Mantis

Preying mantis in our backyard. About an inch long:

Jets

Australia Day jets over our backyard:

Anglesea

On the beach at Anglesea:

Ouch

Maybe I should have reapplied.

Skim

This is my skimboard:


It's ancient. Not sure the exact year, but I know I bought in 1983 at the very latest. Lots of good memories associated with it. I just had my second skimboard session in Australia here in Lorne which was very fun. From what I've seen I'm the best skimboarder in the country. :-)

Lorne

On holiday in Lorne. The view from our hotel:


Some visitors, with eyes on the cheese plate. (One of Marjorie's coworkers happened to be staying in the same hotel with a friend so we had them over.)

Birthday

Marjorie, at our friend Fleur's birthday in the park:

Spicy wing!

After five years we finally found proper spicy wing in Melbourne!


The Gertrude Hotel on Gertrude Street does them up proper. We're more excited by this than you might expect!

Neko

Neko Case last night at the Hi-Fi Bar:


She's super talented, and sounded great, but truth be told her songs leave me a little cold. Marjorie's the bigger fan. I haven't written her off or anything yet though...

Palace Westgarth

Escaping the heat inside our favorite movie theatre; here to see the Fantastic Mr Fox:

Beans

My sister-in-law has been posting a lot of recipes on her blog, but they're all, you know, vegetarian, filled with twigs and acorns and such. Here's a decidedly non-vegetarian recipe for the best beans we ever ate, at the Democrats Abroad Christmas party last month. A bit labor intensive, but so good that I will have to actually try to make them some day:

Bill’s Baked Beans

Start with Slow Cooked Beans in 4 to 5 litre Crockpot Slow Cooker

375m White Beans (Great Northern or Cannelloni Beans) Big batch 500m size

1 large salty meaty ugly smoked ham hock ( the more white residue visible on the hock the better, it is not pretty, not meant to be – If I can’t get a good big hock, I use 2 smaller ones, (try for 750g to 1 kg total wgt) if using a 5 litre cooker, 500g to 600g if a smaller cooker)

The beans need to be checked for foreign material (rocks & discoloured beans removed), rinsed, then soak for at least 4 to 6 hours, then rinsed again before using. I add the hock to the cooker, (rinse in water only, the smoking process leaves lots of flavour), cover it with the soaked rinsed beans, then add water to cooker to cover beans by at least 1-2inches, even if it is almost to the top of the cooker

Slow Cook overnight, usually starting right before you go to bed. Then cook for 9 to 12 hours using the Auto setting on most cookers. (This is also a stage that they can be served as an especially good soup, but it is so good that you eat too much to finish the baked bean variety, you need to eat them as soup at least once in this experimentation process).

Let cool for at least an hour, then thoroughly remove Bones and Fatty outside from Hock (yes, you do get your hands dirty this way). Be careful as there are some small bones in most hocks, (usually like knobs from the ends of bones). While doing this, I tend to break up the large chunks of ham from hock into smaller pieces to distribute this slow cooked ham throughout the dish evenly

I then discard waste, then put remaining bean mixture to fill 2/3 of a large Pyrex baking dish (putting aside any leftover excellent ham hock bean soup away to have
on it’s own)

Then add to your mix

2 large cloves of Garlic crushed

1/3 cup of Smokey BarBQ Sauce (optional, use your favorite or KC Masterpiece from USA foods)

1 large onion chopped

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup Heinz Ketchup (Aussie tomato sauce poor substitute, but works in a pinch)

1/3 cup American Style Mustard

1 Small Jar Tomato Paste (or ½ of a medium jar)

½ Teaspoon Black Pepper

Combine all of the above ingredients into the bean mixture, then cover the entire top of the dish with the bacon (trimmed of thick rind if Rashers)

6. Large Bacon Rashers or 10 pieces of Streaky Bacon

Cook at 160 degree medium heat for 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes, (Just til the bacon starts to crispy up, but do not overcook til burnt, I tried it once, and not as good with burnt bottom of pan…

Variations to the recipe:

• I like these with less Black Pepper, but a good bit of Cayenne Hot Spice to taste…be careful
• As an addition, some people add a couple of Teaspoons of Worcestershire Sauce. (good this way)
• Two teaspoons of Jack Daniels, or any good bourbon never goes awry with this recipe