In Australia

I'm in Australia now. It's a bit colder than I expected. I knew it was supposed to be 30s-60s but I was hoping for more of the upper half of that range. The hotel is essentially not insulated, and we just have little AC/Heat units in the rooms. It took a few days, but I've finally gotten those figured out and the room to stay a reasonable temperature. Unfortunately, the room is like a cave. The bedroom has a glass brick window, the living room has a big picture window. On a sunny day, I can leave the curtains off the bedroom window to let in some warmth/light, but the but picture window has to stay covered. The glass just sucks all the warm out of the room otherwise. And it's not like I have a view. The big window just looks at the other side of the hallway our room is on. Even on a sunny day there's no direct sunshine, so I'd just have a view of a gray wall. So the curtains remain shut, and I live in a cave with no sense of whether it's night or day.

I'm pretty settled in now. But I'm totally off my 'forced activity' schedule. I haven't done a yoga session or completed a day of my pushups training since I got here. I did the first two sets of pushups for week 3 day 3 yesterday. They were killing me. I could only make it half way through the set and had to let my knees down to take a breather. I took too many days off. I think I'll go back to taking a daily yoga break (or a walk outside when it's nice). But I'm not giving up on the pushups.

Flying to Australia August 9

You know the weirdest thing about flying to Australia from NY? You lose a whole day. We're going to leave Saturday evening around 7PM from JFK. We'll be flying west, so the night will just go on and on and on until we arrive in Sydney on Monday morning. I WILL NOT STEP FOOT ON PLANET EARTH THE ENTIRE DAY OF SUNDAY, AUGUST 10, 2008!!! Isn't that crazy? It's bad enough that you can't get to China today - you can only get there tomorrow. But you can't even get to Australia tomorrow - you can only get there the day after that! It takes 29 hours to get from JFK to Sydney then to connect to Wagga Wagga, NSW. Yes, we have to fly to a place named Wagga Wagga. Then it's a short car drive (on the LEFT hand side of the road) to our hotel in Tumut.

On the plus side, the tickets weren't as expensive as I'd thought they'd be. I got my round trip for $2300. Yes that's an expensive plane ticket, but it is to the totally opposite side of the globe.

Billy's got us booked for a King Suite at theAshton. I emailed them a couple days ago confirming they have broadband internet available in the rooms. Hurray for companies that actually answer their emails. The response was exactly well-written, but at least it was prompt. We're booked through late September, figuring 4-5 weeks for the project at Visy, then another week or two for us to have a proper vacation together before we fly back (only takes 24 hours to fly back east to JFK).

I'm super excited to go to Australia, though the logistics of working with my office people in California will be a pain. I played with the world clock for a bit, and it looks like 8AM in Sydney is 3PM in San Francisco. So as long as I work first thing in the morning I can talk to people on live chats. Most of the conference calls are in the afternoon PST, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. In Brazil, no one was available until noon or 1PM my time, which was fine by me. But I guess I can manage to be a morning person for a few weeks.

Chicos, Mama Mia, and Tamut

I went out with Mom today. oDesk.com where I work went down for a bit due to a nasty attack, so it was a good day for it. I got to visit the hospital gift shop where she volunteers, then headed over to New Town to see Momma Mia. We had time before the movie, so we walked around the shops. I love Chicos! Not only is it Tax Free weekend here in Virginia, but they had a serious clearance sale. Everything we got was from the 50% off racks - and that's 50% off of the already marked down sale price.

The original prices for what I bought were:
$42 + 36 + 58 + 68 + 32 + 32 + 32 = $300
The prices I paid:
$10 + 10 + 15 + 20 + 8 + 8 + 8 = $79

I was so in love with the one shirt I bought before the movie, I went back to get it in two more colors after the movie (I got it first in Heather Grey, then Ocean Teal and Optic White - I fought the urge to get the black as well). I also ended up getting a pair of white jeans when we went back. They were the most expensive item, and mom ended up getting a pair for herself. I've never owned white pants before, but after all the time I spent in them in the store finding the right size and style me, and then mom, I'm getting used to them. It was the same pair of pants, but it came in three lengths, and three cuts, and weird special sizes (I was thrilled to end up in a 00 - that's one step below the size chart I linked to).

Momma Mia is a fun movie. I bet the stage show is a riot. The movie was super cheesy - but it must have been super fun for all those actors to film. Besides, how seriously can you take a movie that's based on a broadway show that's based on a bunch of Abba songs!

Billy made it back to Anchorage today. So I finally got to talk to him again. That was a nice surprise - I didn't think I'd hear from him until tomorrow. Apparently I read the itinerary wrong. I was right about him getting back to the house of the 4th. But he'll leave again on the 5th, and I get back the 6th, so I won't see him til he gets back from Pensacola. And then we may have only a day (or less) before going to Australia! I went Googling and it seems that the two main hotels have internet I'll be able to use. I emailed them to ask for sure. The trip is only 3-4 weeks, a little short for me to all the way to the other side of the world, but I REALLY want to go to Australia. If I go or not depends on what the flight costs when Billy's able to book it (probably on the 4th).

Here's where we'd be going:


View Larger Map

Started Week 3

I took the exhaustion test that follows hundred push-ups week two yesterday. I struggled through to 23. Week three looks a lot harder than week two was, but I guess I'll never make it to a hundred if I don't kick it up a notch. On the plus side, my score not only qualified me to continue the training, but it keep me in the 'middle column' - so I don't feel like too much of a wimp. I've done my 20, 15, 15, and 13 while getting ready for bed. I still have to do at least 20 more before I can curl up to read the next chapter of my book.

I'm my way through the entire Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. I read the first book years ago, but never got any of the others. I don't like spending money on books. Grandma gave me some of her other books - including the Brain & Brawn Ship, Crystal Singer, and Talent series.

But then I went to Powells while we were in Portland in March. That place is amazing! All the used and new books are mixed up on the shelves, and it's the biggest book store I've ever seen. And they had two of the Pern books on clearance. One was the first book in the series if you put them chronologically. I brought it to Brazil, so Billy ended up reading it too - and liked it. So my anniversary present this year was going onto Powells online to order the entire rest of the series. I got 16 books for $78.49. All but one of the books was available as a used paperback. Shipping is free if you order that much. I was so ridiculously excited that Billy let me buy them all. I was sure he'd think I was crazy, or just say no to the idea (we can both be rather stingy about buying things). But I did get a good deal, and I'll get more enjoyment out of them than the jewelry he would have bought otherwise.

Coming home from Brazil was like a mini-Christmas for us opening the packages we'd received while we were gone. The Powells box was definitely my favorite (ok, second favorite - our mortgage company unexpectedly refunded us $900 from escrow overpayment but that's not 'fun' to unwrap in quite the same way). I'd say only half of the books look like someone actually read them, and only one or two have any noticeable wear and tear from the previous owner (I'm talking a few dog-eared pages and creases in the spine, but still very good condition).

On the advice of Wikipedia, I've opted to read the rest of the book in the order they were written. I immediately dug out the first book I had read more than a decade ago (yes, I still had it, because that was one of the few book I'd bought back then instead of borrowing from the library). It was read flying to and from Huntsville. I'm 3/4 done with the second, and have the third here with me in Virginia. I'm trying to leave some to read on the planes home, or I might have finished them both by now.

NOW DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!!!