Australia Day 2: Part 1- Location, Location, Location

It didn't take long for us to realize that we may have picked the wrong hotel in Gold Coast. Maybe it was the $75 cab ride from the airport to the hotel. Or the $12 dollar cab ride from the hotel to the train station. Or the $22 dollar cab ride from the train station to Skilled Park when we learned that the trains to Brisbane weren't actually running that night. Or the 45 minute wait for a cab at the train station later in the evening. Or the 10 dollar ride back to the hotel once a cab finally did come. Then there was the $10 "courtesy" shuttle that ran from our hotel every 2-3 hours to Surfer's Paradise. It started to seem like it was going to cost us just as much to get away from our hotel as it would to actually stay the 4 nights there! Anyway, as I said before, the whole reason we picked that particular hotel was because it had the word "Golf" in it. (And because my 1st 3 choices had already been booked). So, despite the really really inconvenient location of the Crowne Plaza Royal Pines Golf Resort, David definitely enjoyed the view from our room (although due to the weather, he didn't get to enjoy it much from out of the room):

Australia- Day 1: China

Look at a map. See if you can find Okinawa. You might think it's just a little crumb or speck of dust south of Japan. That's where I live. Now take your finger straight down and see Australia? Looks close, doesn't it? Of course, you'll have to go across to the east coast of Australia so you don't just end up in the desert or the jungle or the "bush" or whatever it is they have there int he middle of Australia. But for some reason, you have to go west before you can go east. And so, the first leg of our journey to Australia wasn't even in the right direction. We went to Shanghai China. Whoopee! Now I've been to China! We had big plans to take pictures of the pictures of China as we walked through the airport, but then we checked in, ate, etc. and so our China vacation pictures never materialized.
We were too early to check in, so we decided to get some food. Chinese food, of course!


So here's a tip for anyone who is going to go to Australia. You actually need a Tourist Visa to go there. Now I've been a lot of places. And David's been a lot of places. Between us, we've been to at least 20 countries...and neither of us have ever needed a Tourist Visa. So imagine our surprise when the lady at the check-in counter told us we needed them to go to Australia. Like that's something everybody knows. You'd think a little pop-up window would come up when you're ordering your tickets or something. Anyway, for just about double the price, you can apply for an instant "e-Visa" right there at the ticket counter. How convenient.

Soon after, we were on our way to our gate for the 10 hour flight to Sydney. We got pretty lucky on all of our flights...we never got stuck in the middle set of 4 or 5 seats. On the way to Sydney, we were in a set of 2 seats, David had the window and I had the aisle. During take-off, I sat with my face in the barf bag. I just managed to make it until the seatbelt sign went off so I could rush to the "lavatory" and puke with dignity, rather than having the Chinese people across the aisle staring at me while I did it. After that, I was fine, except my teeth felt gross. We both went to sleep. Unfortunately, I slept right through the hot chocolate. We arrived in Sydney in the morning, and saw the Opera House on the way in! We didn't leave the airport at all though, because we had another plane to catch to Gold Coast. Have to go south to go north too, I guess.

G'day!

We have reluctantly returned from Australia, our wallets (much) lighter and our bodies probably a few pounds heavier. Lots of "chips" in Oz. In the past 11 days, we've been on 6 planes (and I only threw up on one of them!), various boats, buses, taxis, trains as we've eaten and photographed our way through (part of) Australia. I really loved it! I was pretty blown away in Queensland by how darn nice everybody was (well, except for our first cab driver, but even he *seemed* nice at the time...more on that soon), and once we got to Sydney, I was completely blown away by the view. It was a great trip, and I can't wait to tell all about it...in small doses. Tune in tomorrow! I promise there will be lots of pictures in days to come... but for now, I don't know how to connect from this computer to the laptop to get any.

Interesting blog posts coming soon!

In one week, we will be in Australia! You can find us here:

(We're staying at the Crowne Plaza Royal Pines Golf Resort--once David's little ears perked up at the phrase "Golf Resort" there were no other options. He'll be on the course on Saturday, and I might ride in the cart with the camera and a knitting project)
here:

(Our stomping grounds for 4-6 hours...but hopefully not too close to 6... on Sunday during the marathon) (If you want to check us out, I think you can listen to the live broadcast --although I don't think they're actually going to mention us ;) -- at www.goldcoastmarathon.com.au or check there to make sure we're crossing each 5k mark. It will be between 2pm and 10pm Central time.)
and here:

(The Harbour Rocks Hotel will be our home away from home for the Sydney portion of our trip)
And I promise I'll post some of my own pictures & be a whole lot less boring once we come back here:

(Not our house...but you get the idea)

I'm bored!

School's out! I'd been counting down for about 175 days & it's finally over...and I'm bored! I've finished 1 400-and-something page book, started a 500-and-something page book and then realized I've already read it, put away clean clothes for 25 minutes (it was a big pile), gone to a softball game (that's where I finished the book...but I did manage to look up in time to see David's home run!), gone to the movies, cleaned up my living room, watered my plants, watched the ends of 4 movies that I fell asleep during the first time around, filed some of my school papers, watched Dr. Phil, started a knitting project, entered some pictures onto Ravelry, and taken 3 showers (in 4 days...that's not too bad!) What else is there for me to do?

Today I will go pay for car insurance (it seems that David has taken a page from my book... I tend to make him do everything because I can't just leave school, take a long lunch, etc. and he can usually be more flexible. Except for during June, July & August, so the car insurance payment has been delegated to me.) and after that I think I will stop at the library. I need something new to read while I wait for a book I ordered for ScrapVillage's new book club to arrive.

Here's my latest knitting project. A whole sweater in 2 days! ;) It's the size of a spool of thread!

Fun with Other People's Pictures

This was fun... I came across this meme/survey on someone's blog while being sidetracked on Ravelry.

Here are the directions:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

And here are the questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

Here's my mosaic:

1. For Rebecca, 2. rock soup, 3. 20080605-Kate-Graduation-22, 4. Macho de Saí-azul, Saí, Saí-bico-fino ou Saí-bicudo - (Dacnis cayana) - A male of a Blue Dacnis or Turquoise Honeycreeper 12 08-05-07 024 - 9, 5. Wentworth Miller, 6. Mojito Power, 7. El Arco Cabo San Lucas Mexico, 8. Hot Fudge Sundae at Stella's Diner, 9. The French Teacher., 10. Togetherness, 11. 71:365 Just a little messy, 12. knit kit girls

Most Dedicated Runner(s)

In high school track & cross country, not a season went by that I didn't receive some kind of award at the sports banquet. In track, I was "Most Improved" and "Sportsmanship". The ones I treasure most were my cross country "Most Dedicated Runner" awards. My best friend on the team is a natural runner...there was no question that she'd be MVP every time. But, secretly, I believed that my award was really the most valuable award. Coach Hey picked *me* as Most Dedicated Runner. He had no idea.

Yesterday morning, we got up early to run and beat the sunshine. It's way too humid here, and once the sun breaks out, you've got no chance! When I say "early", you might be thinking 5 or 6. By 5:00 a.m., I had already run almost 10 miles. We woke up at 3 and left the house about 3:30. A lot of people run marathons, so I know a lot of people get out and run 18 miles. A lot of them are probably out starting their run or in the middle of their run by 7:30. But not us... we were finished by 7:30. Now that's dedication!

Oh...and I've been saying "we". I think it's time I share my Most Dedicated Runner title (for now) with David. He was up and running by 3:30 too. Although he's already decided that his first marathon will be his last!

6 Questions

I saw this on another blog, and although I wasn't tagged (and I'm not tagging, either), I decided to go ahead and answer. It's nice when I don't actually have to think of a topic to blog about!

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? 10 years ago I was getting ready to graduate from High School. I bet Senior breakfast & ditch day were right around this time. I wore the cutest plaid dress & then the Kathys and I went to the beach for a little while. We took Jill, too, even though she wasn’t a senior. Generally, we drove around singing Backstreet Boys songs, saw a lot of movies, and ordered a lot of pizza because the delivery boy was cute.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today: It’s the weekend. I don’t do a to-do list on the weekends!

3. Snacks I enjoy: Chips & dip. Pretzels. Jelly Belly Jelly Beans (but not the cinnamon ones or black licorice). Gummy bears.

4. Places I've lived: East Chicago, IN, Merrillville, IN, Kenosha WI, Waukegan IL, Racine, WI, Aviano Italy, Crown Point, IN, Okinawa Japan

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Hmm…buy gas? Try to act normal and not get all "But I'm a fabulous billionaire". Invest. Send some kids to college (not necessarily my own, but them too if I had some). Buy a house on some land & a horse for David. Get a few Masters degrees/doctorates. Get a nice little winter cabin somewhere close to a ski slope, and ooooo, maybe a place to stay in Cabo too. Misc. travel around, (have I spent my billion dollars yet?), shop for clothes, shoes, yarn, furniture & scrapbook stuff, donate to Camp Lawrence, Children’s Memorial Hospital, Rails to Trails, and some other nice organizations. OOooo…hire someone to wash my dishes, put gas in my car, and wind my yarn into center pull balls.

6. Jobs I've had: Limited Too sales girl (I was awesome at folding & hanging clothes!), Camp Counselor x 7, after-school babysitter, education office girl at Carthage, 1st grade teacher x 3, nanny, 3rd grade teacher, 1st/2nd multi-age teacher x 2. I don't know if I'm forgetting any...

7. Peeps I want to know more about: Anyone who would be interested in being hired to wash my dishes, put gas in my car and wind my yarn into center pull balls. ;)

Je vend, tu vends, Okinawa vend plus!

I think about strange things while I'm running. Mostly because there's only so much regular stuff I can think about and when I run out of that, I've still got an hour or so left to run!
Sometimes things just pop randomly in my head and I think about them. Sometimes they are inspired by my surroundings. Sunday, I was conjugating the French verb vendre: to sell. This was inspired by the plethora of vending machines here on Okinawa. The availability of a cold drink almost...almost makes up for the humidity and the hot sun. Coke, Aquarius (one of my favorites...a grapefruity sports drink), water, green tea, plain tea, apple tea, lemon tea. I suppose if you're running in the rain and it's cold, you could also get a hot tea. I counted 19 vending machines in 2 miles (not including the cigarette vending machines)! Uh...but no garbage cans! There are some garbage cans outside of the little convenient stores (Japanese 7-11 is called "FamilyMart" and you can buy sushi instead of slurpees).

Blog drought

Well, it certainly has been a while since I've blogged. And, sadly (or happily), nothing truly noteworthy has happened since my last entry. But, since I'm typing, I'll fill you in on all the uninteresting details.
-Only 26 days left of school! This is cause for great celebration, because I have a very...er...challenging class this year. Challenging is teacher-code for "these kids give me a headache an entire bottle of excedrin couldn't crack" or "I'd rather eat pick up elephant poop with my bare hands, make cupcakes out of it, frost them with bird poo, and eat the cupcakes than go to work every morning" or "How on earth does one become so flippin' exasperating and disagreeable in just 7 short years of life?"
-I'm all signed up for the Gold Coast Marathon. Now to drain the bank account and buy the plane tickets/hotel.
-I'm also signed up for my second "term" of the Hogwarts Sock Kit Swap. Here's the basics: you give a present and you get a present. And the presents come in the mail. I love getting presents and I love getting mail, so it's pretty good for me. The part where you start to look at me funny comes in the details: the presents are all knitting related. And Harry Potter related. Oh, it gets pretty crazy! You get sorted into a "house" and you get your very own Potter name, and it all becomes a big obsession. You get homework and search for the Snitch during Quidditch matches.
I swear, I really am cool.
More info here
-Our friends are moving away next week. We're not. Still a little bummed about that. Next month we might know where we're going to next. We have a general idea because a list of possible selections came out and we selected. Unfortunately, our selection list was not as desirable as the one we got to select from before we found out we weren't going to be moving next month after all.
-There was a Virtual Crop at ScrapVillage this past weekend and I'm still exhausted! I wasn't as productive as normal, but I had a lot of fun!
-I'm working on 2 knitting gift projects, but I'm dying to start a project for myself.
And there you have it...

12 of 12- April

A Saturday 12 of 12. This really proves how lazy I am! You might find more exciting 12 of 12s here.

My day started around 0600, when I was getting ready for my Saturday run. 7 miles this week.

A little wrench in the plan is shown in this picture. Do you see what's wrong?
An odd number of running shoes- 2 pairs of "retired" shoes, 1 pair of brand new shoes, and only ONE single currently-used running shoe. I found the other one in my laundry basket.

David went out for a hair cut and picked up the mail around 10:00

I got some tax paperwork from my mom as well as an envelope from my old high school track/cross country coach. They sent me this notebook, a "traveling journal" from a 6th grader they know. The notebook had been in Indiana, California, Arizona and Illinois. I had (too much?) fun adding pictures, brochures and my own journal entry.

David went out to pick up the dry cleaning and picked up pizza for lunch. The pizza was greasy & pretty disgusting, but I always love the cheesy breadsticks.



I finished up my journal entry and decided to send it on to my friend in Alaska. Her name starts with R too. This was probably around noon.


Since I was sending David to the post office anyway (other than the run, I didn't leave the house on Saturday!) I decided to go ahead and have him mail off this stuff too. A couple birthday cards (late), taxes, a letter and a transcript request.

I still have a lot of 32 cent stamps.

Even though I had no plans to go anywhere, I decided it was about time to take a shower. The picture is bad, but the clock says 1:53. I probably managed to delay the shower another 2 or 3 minutes after that.


I decided to tend to my flowers around 2:30. Aren't they beautiful?


I'm impatiently waiting for them to bloom. I planted them on Friday. Aren't they going to be beautiful?

I love Zinnias, and the Asters look like my favorite flower- spider chrysanthemums.

This picture could probably have been taken at 0800, 1030, 1200, 1400, 1530, 1600, 1615 or 1900.

I raided my Easter candy several times. Oh look, there's Brown Bunny too! He was hiding in the bag all along.

I started hemming some pants (6 pairs!) I will be hemming those for a while. I like to get them all zig-zag stitched and pressed so that I can just hem while I watch tv.

I like to hem my pants with hot pink thread. Just for fun.

But, I get bored hemming pants, so I stopped before the pressing step and decided to work on knitting some socks instead. Bare feet=cold feet. Sure, I could go find a pair of matching socks in my sock drawer, but what's the fun in that?



And, to close out the evening, I decided to watch one of the Harry Potter movies while knitting. It was over by about 2130 and I was in bed shortly thereafter!

Forgot to say that...

My Gathered Pullover is finished!
It took me exactly 4 weeks from cast-on to put-on and I like it quite a bit! I got lots of compliments (especially on the color) and lots of questions about the cable, like "yeah, but how do you do that?"

The only thing I don't like is that it stinks. I've never actually smelled wet sheep before (it was always sunny when I visited the petting zoo I guess) but my sweater smells worse than wet dog when it's wet. David thinks it smells like perm- I have no idea why he knows what perm solution smells like; I don't think he's ever had a perm. Anyway, I think it's pretty and I'm hoping to wear it 1 or 2 more times before the weather takes a turn for the super-hot and humid.

Darn Brownies!

Today was the White Sox home opener & I'm lucky enough to be on spring break so I can watch the game (remember, afternoon & evening games air at odd times here!). Since we only have 1 sports channel, they choose which games to air based mostly on team record...and since the Sox ended in 2nd to last place last year, their game wasn't on, so I watched the ESPN GameCast instead. I left the computer in the bottom of the 7th, with 2 men on and 2 outs. I shouted at the last guy who struck out that he could've loaded the bases for a grand slam. Then I had to go make some brownies & finish a taco salad for a function for DH. I came back from making the brownies and checked the game... turns out, the next batter loaded the bases & Joe Crede hit a grand slam! And I missed it! The Sox won 7-4. That made me happy, especially because they beat the Twins, who absolutely creamed the White Sox at the only game I went to last year!

Oh, by the way...the brownies turned out delicious! Used the recipe found here.

We got a dog!

Isn't he sweet?

Well, he was only ours for about an hour and a half. Then we had to give him back to his owner.
This little dog broke my heart when he started running with us this morning. He was all skin and bones, his hips stuck up, his ribs stuck out, and his tail looked like a dinosaur spine at a museum.

But boy could he run! He started running with us by the seawall and ran 4.5 miles all the way back to our house with us! He was such a good boy, too! He never ran out in the street, he didn't bark at other dogs or people, although he did scare a cat away by sniffing it. He also jumped on one lady and the gate guard on our way back onto base, but just to be friendly! David wanted to run him off before we got back to the main road, but I started to cry just thinking about it! We had no idea where his home was, but he did have a collar and part of a leash, like he had broken off the rest of it. I had visions of taking this dog (who I named Pacey, by the way) home with us, nursing it back to health, and taking him running with me every day. David didn't exactly share my enthusiasm for getting a dog, even though I felt like this dog really needed us, and he obviously loved us, because he ran all that way with us.

When we got home, we hooked him to our neighbor's dog leash, gave him food and water (but he didn't eat) and had a Japanese-speaking friend call his owner. He said the owner sounded happy to hear that his dog had been found and we arranged pick-up. Pacey was ready and excited to jump right in the car!

He sat in the car like such a sweetie! I just love him! I was happy that he would be back home with his owner, but I still wished we could've kept him. It broke my heart when we gave him to his owner and the owner hadn't closed the car door yet and Pacey jumped out and ran after us as we headed back to our van. I miss that dog.

Hoppy Easter!

Hmm...I am wondering where my little pal Brown Bunny is. A few weeks ago I started wondering if I ever sent or took him back home last year. He wasn't in our Easter decoration box, and my mom sent me a package but I didn't see the little guy in there (although he could be in the bag, it's all taped up and David's making me wait until Sunday!) I hope he's not hiding around here somewhere. I'd hate for him to miss Easter.
David ruined my Easter Brunch plans by planning a ...erm, traditional...Easter Barbecue. You know, Easter hot dogs and Easter burgers. They're not even bunny shaped. And he was not at all interested in me making a bunny cake. I'm beginning to think that David is the Grinch who stole Easter. He even told me that there were no more egg dyeing kits left at the commissary. I think he's a total rabbit-hater. I asked him to pick up a bag of cole slaw mix and he brought home 2 jars of "slaw dressing" instead. I thought that at least if we didn't have any colored eggs for the Bunny to hide, at least we'd be able to feed him some cabbage. I don't know that the Easter Bunny would be interested in eating 2 jars of mayo, which is what I have discerned the slaw dressing to be.

Ahh, Easter. I am almost more excited about Easter coming than I was about Christmas. After Easter, I'll be able to buy more yarn! For the 40 days before Easter, I gave up buying yarn. I typically give up something big--all meat, desserts/sugary snacks, eating at restaurants, even shopping once. This year's was probably the hardest one ever! I've been trying to occupy my mind (and my online yarn store searching fingers) by working on my Gathered Pullover. I'm very pleased with the body, but I'm finding it very difficult to make it through the sleeves. So boring, and I can't manage the dpns while holding the yarn in my left hand, so I'm having to use it in my right.

Still, even though I'm in the middle of two projects right now, and I don't actually need any yarn, but I've been drooling over yarn for days. Ravelry has definitely increased my yarn-awareness. Oh Ravelry, you devil! The other day I noticed an ad at the bottom of the screen that said "Yarn Marathon". Of course I was intrigued by that! As I waited for the new window to load, I thought of all the things a "Yarn Marathon" could possibly be. You know, really sensible things, like a real running marathon with knitting stops instead of water stops. Or medals made of yarn. It turns out that the Yarn Marathon is put on by a store, Eat.Sleep.Knit (love that name because it totally reminds me of my old summer camp t-shirt, Eat. Sleep. Swim. Camp Dick Runyan) The store will track all the yarn you buy (from them) and give you little (and big) prizes at the "water stops". Fun, right? I have my shopping cart full and I'm ready to click "checkout" first thing tomorrow, Easter Sunday! Then I'll be about 2 miles into the marathon. And what will I do with 2 miles of yarn? I'm thinking of doing a laceweight sweater, a scarf for a friend that's moving to a cool climate, perfecting my magic loop sock-ing technique, and maybe getting a head start on some Christmas gifts!