Day at the Beach

As we sit waiting for them to call our flight out of Melbourne, please enjoy these pictures from Wednesday (last week), our beach day. It was colder than I expected (yeah, I should have done more research), so we didn't spend as much time at the beach as I thought we would. Still, we headed south of Adelaide to Noaralunga. It's amazing to me that you can have a nice day like that, a beautiful beach, and the only large group of people were kids on a field trip. Australian kids get the best field trips!

 

 

Cleland Conservation Park

Last Tuesday, we went to Cleland Conservation Park, outside Adelaide. It was a nice opportunity to interact with native Australian wildlife, in a semi-natural setting. We got our picture taken with a koala, but I'm going to have to wait until we get back to scan that.

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Echidnas are strange animals.

 

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Here is Christina feeding a wallaby. I think -- since the animals roam relatively free, it's not always easy to figure out which is which.

 

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Here she is feeding a kangaroo.

 

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Here's the Tasmanian devil. I think this was my favorite.

 

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See! I feed things too!

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I defy you to look at this picture and not wander around for a while saying, "Maybe a dingo ate your baby."

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We bought two bags of feed, which at first seemed like too much, but the waterfowl seemed grateful when we needed to get rid of it at the end of our visit.

Around Adelaide

OK, now I'm more than a week behind, but here's a few images from Sunday (Nov. 30) and Monday (Dec. 1) in Adelaide. We really enjoyed the week we spent there.

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They had a number of interesting memorials and statues; here is one.

 

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We did some shopping at the Sunday Rundle Street Market.

 

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One of our favorite places to eat in Adelaide was Sushi Train and its sister establishment, Sushi Train Express.

 

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The South Australian Musuem had a quite nice collection, but it was interesting seeing them trying to reconcile their century and a half of collection history with modern standards of what is culturally appropriate.

 

Saturday Drive

Here are some pictures from our Saturday drive. As predicted previously, I'm hopelessly behind -- I've just gotten to posting the pictures just before we got to Adelaide, and we only have a day and a half left of our week here before heading back to Melbourne. Anyway, I think the highlight of the day was Naracoorte Caves National Park, an Australian fossil site and part of a World Heritage Site. We saw some animatronic reconstructions of prehistoric Australian mammals (I should post a video so you can hear the grunting) and toured a couple of caves. On the road, we took a look at a number of site affected by Australia's decade-long drought. We came across the first one by accident...we were looking for a resting point, and wondered what had happened to the lake promised on the sign.

 

 

 

Friday Night in Mt. Gambier

At the rate I'm going, I'm not going to catch up on our travels before we leave Australia. Here are some pictures from the place we stayed the second night of our drive from Melbourne to Adelaide. It's called Clarendon Chalets, and it's just outside Mt. Gambier. It was basically a little cottage on a farm. After we got in, we got some groceries, Christina made dinner and a fire (in my defense, I had done the day's driving), and we watched The African Queen.

 

 

 

 

Friday Drive

 

We took a picture at our B&B before hitting the road on Friday. We saw various natural rock formations off the Great Ocean Road.

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The Twelve Apostles.

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London Bridge, which became London Arch in 1990 when the part connecting to land collapsed.

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Bay of Islands.

At the Big Lobster

Jon at the Big Lobster
Originally uploaded by jongrantham

We haven't seen as many "big" objects this time through Australia, but this was one of them. This was on Saturday's drive to Adelaide. The Internet access in the lounge at the Adelaide Hilton is doled out in 15 minute chunks, but at some point we'll break down and spring for the in-room access. At that point, I'll post more pictures.

Thanksgiving in Australia

We had a quite non-traditional Thanksgiving (again). We drove out of Melbourne, visited the National Wool Museum in Geelong, picked up the Great Ocean Road where we saw some amazing deserted beaches, and ended up at our B&B where our host used a stick to keep a horny koala away from a mother trying to protect her cub.

 

 

 

 

Arriving in Melbourne

 

We got into Melbourne yesterday. We planned to burn most of the rest of our Marriott points for a couple of nights here to recover. That's quite a flight. After checking into our hotel, we walked to this espresso bar/pasta joint and had some of the best pasta I've had in quite some time.

Tomorrow we pick up the car and head out on the Great Ocean Road.

EuroQuest 2008

EuroQuest 2008
Originally uploaded by Eric E Haas

I didn't end up in too many pictures this year, but here I am playing Dominion, a game I was less than overwhelmed by.

Saying Goodbye to Teddy

I sit here a couple of hours after having Teddy put to sleep, and I can't come up with any good sentences. I have been crying a lot. I am very grateful for Christina, who has taken "Love Me, Love My Dog" to such awesome extremes. I don't know how I would have gotten through today without her. Also, I don't know how I would have gotten through the last twelve years of my life without Teddy.

He made it past 16 years, which is quite impressive for a dog of his size. I've been consoling myself looking at some pictures of him. Of course, most of these are of Teddy in his later years, after I got a digital camera. But it thrills me to remind myself of what spirit and energy he maintained throughout his entire life. I can only hope I make as impressive of an "old man" as he did.

 

 

 

Red state?

Despite the Obama win, some parts of North Carolina are as I remember.

The Android's Dungeon Endorses...

 

Four years ago, I gave you my endorsements. I'm here to repeat that feat.

President

Barack Obama. Top Three Reasons:

• The Courts. I saw a story that said that when Bush entered office, half of the federal judges were Republican appointees. Now it's something like two-thirds. That's getting way out of balance -- see the recent Supreme Court ruling that said that a woman who had been discriminated against could not receive back pay because her employer successfully hid from her the fact that she was being illegally underpaid.
  
• Foreign Policy. I actually think Obama would disappoint a lot of people who expect a ton of multilateralism. I think he'll listen to what other countries want, and then do what he thinks is best for America. But we need a President who will actually listen -- if we want other countries to listen to us.
  
• Taxes. The Bush tax cuts did not help the economy -- look at how much better things were under the higher Clinton tax rates in the 1990s. They did, however, succesfully redistribute wealth towards the wealthy and away from the wage-earner. As someone who earns an income (albeit a nice one), I'd like to see the American worker treated better by the tax code. The American capital-gains-earner has had his day.
  

Plus they gave us a cool yard sign.

Representative

Steny Hoyer. He continues to disappoint in a number of ways (bankrupcy bill, FISA, bailout), but his opponents are even worse.

Judge of Circuit Court/Judge of the Court of Special Appeals at Large

"I tend to think judges should stay in office unless they embarrass themselves significantly. In fact, I'm not sure we should be voting on them." That's what I said four years ago. I could not Google anything embarassing about these folks, so back to office they go.

Board of Education

Running unopposed, so I see no need to vote.

Constitutional Amendments

Question 1 is the early voting question. While I'm generally in favor of early voting, I think far too little attention has been drawn to the problem with absentee ballots. Namely, they undermine one of the main principles of our democracy -- the secret ballot. It's too easy to buy or coerce votes with absentee voting. Since this encourages both absentee and early voting, I'm going to have to vote no.

Question 2 is the slots question. I figure if you're going to take money from poor people to spend on schools, why not do it directly, instead of only picking on the poor people with gambling problems, and giving half their money to gambling companies? Gambling is fine for a trip to Vegas, but it doesn't belong as a neighborhood phenomenon. No.

Ballot Questions

These are at the county level. In the past, I've had trouble getting details on these (and hence voted no), but this year, someone on our town mailing list pointed me towards a useful page on the League of Women Voters web site. So here we go.

• Question A: More money for libraries. I really like libraries. Yes.
  
• Question B: More money for public safety. If public safety officials need new kitchens (among other things), someone is going to have to make an attempt to convince me. No.
  
• Question C: More money for county buildings. Homeless Shelter, Courthouse, Health and Human services...they've put some pretty important buildings on there. Yes.
  
• Question D: More money for roads. We need better roads around here. Yes.
  
• Question E: More money for community colleges. I'm probably being a snob here, but I don't see the return on investment to the community. No.
  
• Question F: Raise the phone tax from 8% to 11%. The people who want me to vote no have called me 3 times. Yes.
  
• Question G: Expand public notice for County Council legislation from 5 days to 10. Anything that helps us keep better track of the County Council has to be good. Yes.
  

E-commerce

People are living more of their lives online these days, and my family is not immune.


For example Christina has been working on Alas: Joyeria de Epoca -- 20th Century Epoch Jewels, "Specializing in North American Vintage and Flights of Fancy. Rare Vintage and Antique Costume, Estate, and Silver Jewelry. Coins."

She had been buying costume jewelry for her own use and found that she enjoyed it enough to start offering some items for resale.

I particularly like the logo, which comes from a picture Christina took on our trip to Puerto Rico last fall.


As long as I'm promoting relatives' web sites, my cousin Sara and her husband Marty operate Saramar Studios, where they feature stained glass, paintings, mosaic tables, jewelry and their own art. Check it out; they're really quite talented.