The new CD by The Shins came with a sticker to promote the band. Marjorie asked, "Where should we stick it?". We both thought a minute, and didn't come up with any place.

I think maybe that one's maturity level can be measured by the number of places one has to put stickers.

Wow. These kinetic sculptures are really cool. Watch the video.

In an exercise of self-indulgence, these are a few of the things that I'm enjoying lately:

Go Fug Yourself

Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke - this site kills me, but not one for the little ones.

Mimi Smartypants, again not for those easily offended, but generally very funny.

Rose wines, a new varietal for us, but one we are both enjoying muchly. We're also still enjoying sparkling wines, though I'm guessing that our ritual of "champagne Sundays" will be put on hold now that the Soccer season has re-started for Mark.

Running- Laika and I have been running anywhere from twice to five times a week for over a year now. I keep expecting myself to get lazy, but it's surprisingly addictive. That said, I need to get more serious about it and start running in some local fun-runs. I'd be very pleased with myself if I trained enough to run a marathon by the year I turn 40, but won't commit myself to it at this point. I currently run anywhere on average from 3 km's to 7 km's so a marathon would be a huge leap.

Music swapping- I've been trading favorite cd's with another expat (French) in an effort to move past our music doldrums. We were introduced to Phoenix this way, a band we both really like, and recently obtained a Ry Cooder CD that we really like too.

I wish I could add my new job to this list, but at the moment I don't feel expert enough to find it enjoyable, and instead feel depressed at being deskilled. I'm hoping to be illuminated in the near future, because at the moment nothing is making sense to me. My colleagues have reassured me that I just need to give it some more time. I'm definitely enjoying the new paycheck though.

The audition for The Rich List was today. They held it in the function room at the local German cultural center, and a LOT more people showed up than I was expecting -- maybe 120. The first part was a standard trivia quiz. There were forty questions; I started really strong, but stumbled a bit at the end. No matter -- I scored a 24, and the cut off was 18. Everyone under that was out. That whittled us down to sixty people or so.

They took a Polaroid picture of us next, that they attached to our questionnaires. (Of course, I blinked at just the wrong time.) Then the guy running it forebodingly asked if we had ever seen Australia's Got Talent. The thing was, each of us remaining had to get up and demonstrate a talent for thirty seconds or so, "or you can just talk about yourself, but that would be boring." We were given a raffle ticket, and we were called up in random order. I was thinking, "Please, please, give me time to consider this a bit." Luckily I wasn't called until about half way, so I had time to plan my shtick. Some people told off-color jokes, and some sang nursery rhymes, but lots of other people were just talking about interesting experiences they had, so I just did the same. It went basically:

Hi, I'm Mark, and I'm American, as you can probably tell by my accent. Or as I like to think of it, my lack of accent. [Mark pauses for laughter, *cough*] One interesting experience I had was that last year I participated in a naked group calendar photo shoot for charity, down along the Yarra River. The Age did an article about it, and of course they chose the one picture where my naked bum was directly in the front row. Do, uh, any of you recognize it? [Mark turns around and shows backside.]

Shrug. People laughed, but I stumbled over my words a bit, as I'm prone to doing, but it could have gone worse.

Then it was off to the one-on-one interview with the assistants. They asked a bunch of wacky questions, like, if you could pick a superpower, what would it be? I babbled something about super speed so I could avoid all the recent train delays, blah blah blah. There were a few others along those lines. I don't know, it seemed to go reasonably okay for the most part. That was the end of it; we just wait for a callback from here. I don't rate my chances as excellent. But it's possible. They promise to contact their selections by Easter. So, no news will be bad news.

As Mark stated, my friend Kristina was with us the week back. It was lovely to have her here, and like all the people who come to visit us, she's now seen parts of Australia that are still unexplored by us. We did take a trip up to the Yarra Valley together to taste some of the wines grown there, and discovered a lovely dairy farm as well. The highlight of the trip was the Yering Farm vineyard, which was just lovely, and served us a fantastic tasting platter, which sent us in search of the previously mentioned dairy farm to track down a remarkable fetta.
The whole week was a bit of a wine fest, which was fun, but left us all feeling a bit over-indulgent. To top it all off Kristina and I went on a search for the best chocolate bars in Melbourne (this city is a chocolate lovers dream, with over five specialty chocolate bars and many other "lolli-shops", add in the ncredible italian and greek bakeries and you could seriously indulge) though by Sunday we were excessed out and I feel our attempt at binging on chocolate was half-hearted.
On the whole it was a nice visit, and good to be able to play host(s) to Kristina, who has repeatedly been a very gracious hostess to us on our trips back to the States.

Questions from The Rich List's contestant profile questionnaire:

1. List some of the unusual/quirky/interesting experiences of your life so far?
2. What is your greatest achievement and why?
3. Would you describe yourself as a gambler? What is the biggest bet you have made?
4. Are you a member of any clubs (sporting, academic, social)?
5. What would you describe as your best and worst character / personality traits?
6. Do you read newspapers, magazines, books? Which kind and how often?
7. Do you watch quiz shows? If so what shows?
8. Do you attend trivia nights regularly? [note: bing!]
9. What are your interests? (Please list as many as possible and be specific):
10. List your 5 top movies of all time
11. List your favourite bands/artists of all time
12. List the 5 TV shows you can’t miss
13. Who is your favourite actor/actress celebrity?
14. List the sports you love to play and/or watch
15. What book series and/or author do you read?
16. Where have you previously travelled in the World? Where would you like to travel to?

Audition is Monday at 2pm, which is a bloody inconvenient time. (If I'm going to appear on an Australian TV show, I can use words like "bloody".)

C'mon, big money! To heck with hard work. I've signed up to be a contestant on an Australian game show called The Rich List, after a friend of a friend walked away with $250,000 dollars (pre-tax, natch, but still). I figure it suits me because I like lists and am generally a cesspool of useless information. We watched this evening's show -- the contestants had to name as many countries as possible that were formerly part of the Soviet Union but were now independent countries. Naming all fifteen would have gotten them $250,000, but I'm pretty certain I could have gotten twelve, which would be a cool $150,000.

In other news, Marjorie's friend Kristina is on her way back home after a lovely visit. I'll let Marjorie blog about that though.

See? We're not freaks -- we're at the forefront of a trend.

I've got a killer idea for the internet that's too much work for me to build alone. I'm trying to decide what to do with it. The more I think about it, the better it sounds, too. Let me see if I can describe it well enough to convince you.

There are lots and lots of forums around the internet where you can sign on and discuss all sorts of things. And lots and lots of sites -- like this blog -- let you add comments.

The idea is a thing that will let you comment on any site on the internet, and to see comments left by others. It would be a browser "plug in", which means that it would just be an extra button on your Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer. The button would turn redder the more recently comments have been made. You click the button to pop up the comments/forum. The comments themselves would be hosted on my (hypothetical) company's server.

The advantages as I see them:

1. Instead of having to have separate accounts on separate websites, you would only need a single login. I already have trouble remembering all my passwords.

2. Similarly, you'd only ever have to deal with a single unified style of comment forum.

3. Because the comment forum attaches itself to web sites but is not affiliated with them, you are free to say anything you want. So go on over to that local politician's web site and let everyone know what a schmuck he is. If a dodgy company tries to rip you off, go tell everyone about it, right on their own website (essentially). You can say nice things, too. Comment on any news article in any online newspaper. Sports, politics, religion, books, movies, shopping -- really, anything that has a web page, you can hold a discussion.

There are still some functional issues to resolve, but I don't see any technical roadblocks. There's a few other ideas I have for it, but that's the gist. It's a fairly straightforward idea, and I think it has the potential to give all of the internet a more populated feel, as you surf around and see what everyone is commenting on.

I used to be a good tipper -- twenty percent in restaurants, and usually a dollar on a pint of beer. Australia has ruined me. I still tip ten percent at nice restaurants -- they say that's expected, but no one seems to mind if you don't. But most restaurants we go these days, I tip bupkis. Bars, too.

Everyone from down here (or England) really hates that part about visiting the States. I don't think the service in the US is that much better for it. If we ever move back, that's going to be a hard thing to readjust to.

In the spirit of the weekly blog:
Observation at work- Head Office if frequently referred to as "Town" as it's in the centre of Melbourne. It always amuses me when I hear someone say it.
If I get another tattoo, it's going to be a finger moustache. Makes me grin just thinking about it.

You'd think we missed the whole Texas Hold 'Em craze, but no, it struck here too. Many pubs have Texas Hold 'Em nights, and they show the competitions (celebrity and not) on TV frequently.

I've skipped it, because I've never been particularly adept at poker, preferring euchre, hearts, spades, or (very novice) bridge. But tomorrow our company is having a poker party, so tonight I'm hitting Yahoo Games to at least learn the rules.

Not much else new. I've started soccer practice again; the hip is not perfect but I'm easing into it. Lonely Planet work is going. I've discovered where they put the books you're allowed to take (seconds and old editions) so our bookshelf has been swelling. Um, and Extras is the best show on TV right now.

Update. I made it through the first round, but got lousy cards the second round. Still, if I was any good, I could've bluffed my way through a while longer. I don't have that instinct. I'd like to give it a go down at the casino though.

"New Leaf":
I''m going to make an effort to blog more. The goal is to write something at least once a week, as my contribution for the last year has been piss-poor. Things have been happening. It's not for lack of news that I don't write, just ..... who knows. Anyway, new leaf.

I started a new job this week. I'm now a "Partnership and Service Advisor" which means that now my responsibilities are to monitor agencies, not individuals. At the moment I don't have a clue but I'm hoping the job will become clearer in the weeks to come.

The other exciting event this week was the exploratory "cardiac catheterization" my Dad had scheduled on Monday, which might have lead to Angioplasty if any blockage had been found. Luckily, nothing was found and he is in good health. Scary though, and exactly the type of thing that makes living so far away difficult. It's hard to be as supportive as I'd like to be from another continent.

As requested, the "flooded tent" story:
When I was five my parents decided to take my sister and I on a hiking/camping trip to Kauai, Hawaii (we lived in Oahu at the time). The trip over was taken on a speed boat, and unfortunately I did not have my sea legs. I ended up having to wear a garbage bag to disembark from the boat as I had vomited all over myself (and probably my poor mom and sister). I think the trip back was slightly better.
My parents had been to Kauai without us kids at an earlier part of the year and wanted to bring us back to this amazing spot they found. Unfortunately it was December (or January, it was right after Christmas) and the rainy season. We hiked into a very remote area on the island, carrying in our tents and supplies. On the first night there (I think) we experienced a very heavy rain storm that practically washed mine and Susan's supposedly "waterproof" tent away. I remember we set up camp near the beach, and it felt like we were going to be washed out to sea, though that's probably a false memory. Susan and I ended up abandoning our tent and going to sleep in the bigger, actually waterproof tent with our parents. The other really memorable things about the trip, beyond the camping, hiking, and getting rained out, are the incredibly vivid memory of burnt pancakes, flowers that could be used as soap and shampoo, befriending a feral cat we called "Katherine" (who benefited when Susan and I abandoned our tent), and losing all four of my front teeth at different parts of the journey (at least one was lost eating what I remember as my first Kitkat bar). By the time we got home I had a huge gap in my mouth.
I have positive memories of the trip overall, though the storm was definitely scary for both myself and Susan. It was hardly the last family camping trip we took, as we camped about once a year until I was in high school.
Dad, Mom, Susan, is this how you guys remember the trip? Did I leave anything important out?

We're back from part two of our experimental vacation week. This time, instead of asking "Can we survive camping?", we asked, "Can we vacation with the dog?" So we bought her a car harness (for her protection and ours) and drove down with her to a nice little cottage we booked in Rye, where we passed four days visiting wineries, padding through tide pools, and generally making gluttons of ourselves. All was lovely but the dog's not too keen on being left alone in an unfamiliar place. Not that she destroyed anything, but she was very clingy when we came back from our excursions.

Back now from our first ever camping trip. I knew that sleeping bag I got Marjorie for Christmas eight years ago would come in handy some day.

We headed down to Wilsons Prom, and had a loverly time.

The beach just off our camp site, Norman Beach, was maybe the nicest beach I've ever been on. The sand was like it was filtered, it was so soft; the water was crystal clear, the setting beautiful, and there was hardly anybody there. We also took a hike over the tidal river to Squeaky Beach.

I'm too bony to even sit on hard ground, much less sleep on it, so I had trouble with just a foam pad and sleeping bag. The first night I couldn't sleep so I got up to look at stars. There weren't that many visible, just because the full moon was too big and bright, but I was still treated to the incredible view of a low blanket cloud streaming over a distant mountain range directly under the full moon. When I came back to our site, one of these guys was sniffing around the space between the car and the tent. I woke Marjorie and we went chasing it through the woods.

A few new birds spotted, most notably a number of swift parrots.

Scary coincidence -- the people at the next site started playing some music, and straight away I recognized it as my funeral song that I just mogged about. As another data point that there's no such thing as omens, I wasn't eaten by a great white the next day.

We'll go back at some point, I'm sure.

We saw the Pretenders over the weekend at nice venue. We were supposed to see Paul Kelly and The Church as well, but we FORGOT THAT WE HAD TICKETS to this show until we got a call from the outing organizer at around 4:30.

I blame early onset senility. Anyway, they were really good. Chrissie was in fine voice, and looking damn good, too. At one point she played a song I didn't recognize, what I thought was a good song, and said that it was "for the two people who bought our last album". I was going to post a link to it but I can't find much reference to any recent album by them since like 2003. What gives?

What, another? I've got a new myspace-y kind of deal going on over at mog.com, which is (yet another) social networking site, this one for music geeks. I'm even blogging there a bunch, at least for the moment, so if you'd like to watch me take a metaphorical bubble bath in front of you while nattering on about bands you probably have no interest in, drop on by.

The music fairy visited us, apparently. I was thinking of tracking down some of Phoenix's earlier albums, since I liked their recent one so much. Today I was looking through our collection and found a burned copy of their album "United" that neither I nor Marjorie had ever listened to, or even noticed. And neither of us has any idea where it came from.

Was this a gift from any of you that we somehow just shelved and never played?

The Sea Dragon was very cool to see indeed(I only saw one, Mark says he saw two). The truly amazing thing was that we were literally snorkeling right around the Portsea Pier, where we could have walked in from the shore. Who would have thought these amazing animals would be so easy to find?! I feel very grateful to have seen one, as Southern Australia is the only place in the world were these animals live.
We had such a good time on Saturday that we've decided we'll go back for a longer trip to the Mornington Peninsula soon, with the dingo in tow. I'm looking forward to visiting a few wineries as well.

Here there be dragons. Another nice bit of novelty on Saturday as we went for a snorkeling trip in Port Phillip bay, two hours south of the city. Animals that actually touched my hand included:

• A weedy sea dragon, which is what we went down there to see
  
• A black-lipped abalone (worth about $40-$50)
  
• A sea urchin
  
• A puffer fish, caught by the guide and actually puffed out like this
  

Fun day. Fortunately, the seal and penguin colonies are around the other side of the peninsula, and these guys don't really ever wander into the bay.