Australia Photos

Hey Family, Here are the pictures that I took while we were in Australia. You have two ways to get the pictures that you want:

Option 1:

Find pictures that you like among those that I put on Flickr. These were the photos that I picked each day for publishing, and I might have edited the pictures a little bit. These are already uploaded to full resolution, and you can download them directly. Here’s the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bizzarrowes/collections/72157628569973887/

Option 2:

I took A LOT more pictures than the ones I put on Flickr. I’m happy to send you any picture you want, but I couldn’t possibly upload them all in a reasonable amount of time. So, I made contact sheets with thumbnails of all the pictures. Flip through them, and if you find any you like, send me the file name. Then, I’ll send you the full-resolution version of whatever pictures you pick. Be warned…it’s a lot of pictures, but they’re broken down by day:

Day 01 – Arrive

Day 02 – Bondi

Day 03 – Opera House and the Bridge

Day 04 (sunrise)

Day 04 – Wildlife and Aquarium

Day 05 – Botannic Gardens

Day 06 – Blue Mountains

Day 07 – Travel to Cairns

Day 08 – Reef Trip

Day 09 – Walk around Cairns

Day 10 – Rain forest

Day 11 – Bungee

Day 12 – Return to Sydney

Day 13 – The Rocks, Dinner, and a Show

Day 14 – Family Day

Gardening 2010 #2

Just a week, and flowers everywhere! We had our first rains in the past week, and it’s brought out several new flowers. It also filled up the rain barrel that we attached to the gutter in the front of the house. The cinder blocks are my tasteful touch for holding up the barrel. The hostas have started to grow some, too.

Our bleeding hearts came out to play in the past couple of weeks. We’ve got some white bleeding hearts in there too.

Some violas came out to play this go. They seem like they’re going to cover the whole back yard.

The ferns are coming out to play this weekend, too.

More next week…

Gardening 2010 #1

Here’s a link to the full Flickr set.

Kevin accuses me of collecting hobbies, but this one just might stick (at least until the mosquitos come out to play).

Now that we’ve been in the house for a year, we’ve had a chance to watch everything around the house and see how it progresses. This year, I’m going to work a little harder on documenting the changes (so I can be prepared for it next year). We’re also going to make a bigger effort to keep it under control.

So, here’s the first tour and my first round of notes for the year.

Things are starting to grow in just a little bit, but we can still see through to the neighbor’s yard and stuff.

The hostas on the side of the house are just starting to grow. There are also tiny shoots on the clematis. Maybe it’ll bloom nicely this year. We also got the rain collection barrel attached to the gutters. You can just see it in the corner of the photo.

The bluebells have all come out to play, too. They’re everywhere!

And tulips…

And there are some Dutchman’s Breeches coming up in the back, too. They’re these delicate little vernal plants that pop up early in the season.

Things are popping up slowly but surely. More to come later.

House Tour

At the request of some family members, I’ve uploaded a few short clips to give a tour of the new house….now they just need to come see it in person!

Here’s the 4.5 minute quick tour!

Under Contract!

For the past few weeks, Kevin and I have been on the house hunt. This week, we had an offer accpeted! Hopefully we’ll be able to move in around the 24th of April. For the family and friends that are interested, I’ll keep the details posted here on the blog. 

Here’s a link to photos of the house. 

Gun sales spike this week…

This is sad and somewhat funny all at once. But really more sad. Definitely sad.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27598947/

Jack-o-Lanterns

Guess which one Kevin made and which one I made:

A thought exercise

Close your eyes and imagine a conflict from your high school years. Rebuild the visual details from the moment. Hear the words that others were saying. Rerun the thoughts from inside your head at the time. Relive those moments. Relive them again. Now, open your eyes and think about what you just did.

Were you an adult going over a memory, or were you still that teenager thinking with the point of view of a teenager? Can you ever really look back on something with an objective eye?

Over the weekend, my dad read and replied to the post I put up in July regarding my feelings over our shared past (or lack thereof). He’s drug my mom into it, again. All of that has triggered strange few days of thoughts in my head. 

The long, long reply from my dad reads like so many of the arguments that we had fifteen years ago. You could take the text and the tone from two days ago and align them in so many ways with the arguments and letters from half my lifetime ago. 

Which makes me wonder:

Are these arguments really the same?
Am I stuck viewing all of this through the lens of a 15-year-old?
Is he stuck viewing this through the lens of fifteen years ago?
Are we both stuck viewing all of this through the lens of that time?

Part of me wants to just jump back into the bickering and try to set the record straight with anyone that I can get my hands on, but that wouldn’t do any good. But then I re-read it all and think about it, and it really does just seem like the same old crap. Then I wonder, “What’s the point?” Is it too far gone?

The thoughts are still confusing. They’re incomplete. I don’t really know how (or if) I want to respond. For now, my musings here are all I can think of to do.

Just to make sure

Shameless re-post of an email I received today:

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight….

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re ‘exotic, different.’

* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers — a quintessential American story.
 
* If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. — Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
 
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.
 
* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
 
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.
 
* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian. If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married heiress Cindy the next month, you’re a Christian.
 
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
 
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
 
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
 
If your husband is nicknamed ‘First Dude’, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Flag on the play

This is the most a ref has ever made me laugh. The good stuff is about 40s into the clip.