Never Fold

Hussey and Joy with Jess' friend Garreth
Hussey's shot of (L to R) Garrith, Jess, Amanda, Joy and Tegan. Note the background poker game with Andrew, me and Troy
The poker game out of focus. I am almost out of chips. (Andrew, Rueben, Owen, Troy and Me.)

Party! Joy and Hussey got the visa application in and that's as good a reason as any to celebrate. I had a party in my apartment. The Phillips sisters (snail and cat) ran in to the city for the party from Camberwell (~10K). The Barr brothers did give them a ride home. Tegan, (here in front of Uluru) the resident parasitic pathologist PHD/pastry chef made a wonderful chocolate cake with peaches which we devoured. We also watched an AFL game (Essendon Bombers v. Brisbane Lions) as preseason of that is on again now. eeee!

Later we played some poker, where I brought my patented, "never fold" strategy to the game and stayed in longer than you would expect.

Status update: As usual I've been working, cycling, and playing disc. I'm playing league on Sebb Barr's team (X +1) Cheers For, where X= the number from the team name from last week. Team Box has just started mid-week training on Thursdays, in a Melbourne suburb appropriately named Box Hill. I'm staying up late at night to watch episodes of season 4 of The Wire. About a month to Italy.

I seem to have some throat thing going on. I am drinking tea and making soup.

Dinner tonight for Jacko's birthday at Shakahari. Some pub crawls /breweries on the weekend. Team Box training SUnday. Clap Your Hands on Monday at the HiFi.

Mail bag: Thanks to Paige, Marc, Moose and O for my Christmas tree! (You have to love the Australian mail service, mate.) Also to Mom for the Valentine candy and T-shirt. (Special to Lucas: I am promoting the Leopards down here in Melbourne!)

3 Day Old Sushi

Hmmm… What can I tell you? It has been a quiet week. I worked. Ran some. Biked some. Threw some. Pretty quiet here. I’m not proud to admit that on Tuesday I was so bored I watched two successive episodes of So You Think You Can Dance. That was pretty sad.

TV here has every crap American show. For some reason they are two seasons behind on the Ghost Whisperer and that is always on. Why is Jennifer Love Hewatt always in some low cut top talking to dead people’s relatives? Why do I know this? Why is any American show, no matter how crappy, on TV here? I know I should get out more. Australians get a bit of a chip on their shoulder that shows are always on here a few months behind in the states. The local TV stations have started a new promotion that they call TV “Streaming from the States”. It’s for new shows like Californication. The concept is that Australians no longer have to endure the wait of a few extra weeks to see the next episode of American Law & Order, you can see it at the same time as the US. Of course, the ‘streaming’ term makes no sense, as the show is not actually shown at the same time, because that would be in the middle of the work day here. Whatever. Minor details I guess in the grand scheme of progress which is of course defined as getting the latest American TV show as soon as possible.

The only plus side to Australian TV right now is a little something I call Tuesday lunch football. I’ll be watching my Eagles on Fox sports here live. The game starts at noon. The Eagles will try to make something out of the season. Let’s all hope they can beat the Washington Racial Slurs.

This week in the survival pool, I was going to go with the Steelers, but I was afraid that the miracle Bills might pop up and win one for Everett, so I decided to wait on that a bit.

The drought is still quite bad here and all the crops are failing so food prices are on the rise. Of course, this won’t really affect me, but it is bad news for poor Australians. All the banana crops died in the drought and as a result bananas are almost impossible to find here and like $6 each if you can find one.

I bought a new flashing light for the front of Deirdre. I hope she doesn’t get all bling conscious and materialistic.

I had a Footy Semi-finals game party on Saturday. The “semi-finals” are a round played when 6 teams remain. Next week, with only 4 teams left they will play the “preliminary finals”. Then, just after my parents arrive, they will play the Grand Final. The ‘party’ was quiet but fun. I had about 10 people over to eat sushi, cheese, TimTams and watch the game.

Thanks to Kimmie for this shout out to my CSI addiction: Fact Checkers Unit

Have a good week.

Lazy Americans

Lazy Americans! You take a Wednesday off in the middle of the week and now you want a post from me? Nice try. My 4th of July was uneventful.

All I can really tell you is that once again this week involved much going to work, some going to the pool, and some playing of ultimate. I also stayed up way too late many nights this week watching Wimbledon.

I had some co workers over to the corporate pad for sushi and nachos on Saturday afternoon while we watched the Collingwood Magpies overcome a 20 point (4 scores) deficit over the St. Kilda Saints in rainy and windy conditions. It was a great game.

After the game, I went out to celebrate a birthday for Teegan who's on the Victorian Squad with me. About 6 of us went to see the very scary documentary Jesus Camp (yes, Mara a second time for me) at the swank ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) which is about 2 blocks from my house. They have a big pixar exhibit on now.

After the movie the Australians celebrated not being Americans by going out for Japanese food and then to the James Squire brewery for beers. It was a fun night.

The posts should pick up soon as it looks like I have a full slate of visitors lined up. Jesse will be here later in July. Sarah will be here in August. Sipper is passing through town on a whirlwind Australian tour and before I know it my Mother (and #1 comment poster) will be here with my Dad, Aunt Vicki and Uncle John. Look forward to thorough coverage of all those visitors.

Extra special thanks to Andy for this which reminds me that some good things do occasionally come out of the good ol' U. S. of A.

Today I went to see the footy. All Australians seem to like AFL and care about it more than their own kids. I like sports more than most things, so I am up for getting involved.
I went to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, known to locals as the MCG stadium to see a battle between the Hawthorne Hawks and the Melbourne Demons. Everything is abbreviated here, (even at work, documents are “docos”, registration is “rego”) so I wasn’t surprised that locals were cheering for the “Dees”. The stadium was nice. It was much more laid back than going to an NFL game at home. The stands were quiet and polite where I was sitting. Everything in the stadium seemed new and clean. Above are some pics of the stadium.

The game was fun and fast-paced. Alas, the home team fell to the evil Hawthorne Hawks, due to some errant kicking that left them gaining only 1 point instead of 6 too many times early on. I need someone from Australia to explain the rules to me. The timing seems to be random as some ‘quarters’ last several minutes longer than others.

I think the biggest concept I noted was the official membership. I think premiere league soccer does this as well (Ben?). Here fans aren’t just fans, they register and pay a membership fee. With this membership fee, comes certain privileges: sitting in the members section, going through the member gates (with shorter lines) and a scarf that shows how long you’ve been a member. (Hawthorne Hawks 10 Years). This is basically just another revenue source. I’m sure I would have become an Eagles member if I had the opportunity. I think members may get a program or some mailings as well. It seems like I good way to keep your fans involved and extract some additional money from them.

I haven’t settled on a team to go for (or barret) yet but fans of those teams should be offering me cash to pick someone else, with my sports luck. (See City of Philadelphia Sports Results from 1984-Present.) Right now I am leaning toward the St. Kilda Saints, the Melbourne Demons and the Richmond Tigers. Send in your votes.

In other sporting news, the Kentucky Wildcats have gone outside the fold to hire their new coach, trumpet great Dizzy Gillespie. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_Gillespie) While a surprise choice, everyone can see how Gillespie will improve the harmony of the team, and their ability to improvise. Look for the Wildcat Band to improve as well, as a bonus.