very random blog on a rainy Sunday afternoon

hi everyone. As many of you know, Andy is not a vegetable lover. He's not even a vegetable liker. He is barely a vegetable eater, although I do have to give him credit for his recent efforts, which have seen him eating green beans, zucchini, and snow peas on a fairly regular basis when I make them to accompany our dinners. So imagine our intense laughter and pleasure in watching the following last night:



In other youtube video news, we joked that we hope our reunion with Buddy sometime next summer will go something like the reunion in this video:

A very Happy 5th Birthday to Buddy this Tuesday! Zach & Spike, thanks for taking such great care of him for us!

ok, that's it for the youtube links for today I promise. So, things here are good. Andy is out kayaking a portion of the Yarra River this afternoon with a group from Monash Uni. I'm lounging around the apartment taking it easy, reading Carter Beats The Devil, and writing this random blog entry. I bought a bottle of orange juice the other day, and when I looked at the Use By date, it was Aug. 14, which made me smile, as that is the date we fly from Melbourne to Portland.
Last weekend we enjoyed a mini-getaway to Mornington Peninsula, also known locally as Melbourne's Playground. We had a rental car for the weekend, so Friday night found us at our local Safeway, massively loading up on groceries. Who knew that a Safeway could be so quiet on a Friday night? :) Saturday we took in some sights along the drive, enjoyed some wine tasting and pizza at one of the wineries, and soaked ourselves at the hot springs. Sunday we again saw some sights and did a beach & bush horseback ride.

We've been chatting about how equally amazing & weird it seems that we've been here for almost a year already. We're even thinking it might be kinda weird in some ways to be back in the US after being gone for a significant amount of time. I think it will be interesting to see how it feels, see what we notice while we're back, etc. We've been keeping up with the presidential election 'stuff,' mostly via the local World News and Jon Stewart's The Daily Show online. We've also been keeping up with the US economic woes (and just slightly joking about whether or not we're likely to find jobs when we return next summer). We'll be filing our Aussie taxes here soon, and our US taxes next month while we're in Portland. Bring on the big returns!

Speaking of US taxes, our Yankee 4th of July Party went off pretty well. One guest even arrived wearing red, white, & blue and bearing Yankee-rific party favors of Coca-Cola, microwave popcorn, and Oreos! I caught Andy sneaking 2 hot dogs in 1 hot dog bun for himself, pictured above.

Hope all is well for everyone. Keep on enjoying summertime - we're looking forward to getting in on some of that next month!

Cheers!

Love, Christy