I'm Boring Myself Just Talking About This

Dear neglected blog, sorry we haven't been returning your calls. Been out of town, off the grid for a while. I just don't think I can give you the love and attention you deserve. Or maybe it's just you aren't cool enough for us to really hang out anymore. It's not you, it's me. I've changed.

Ok I don't know what I'm talking about. The truth is we have neglected all of you devoted readers out there by not writing much in the last couple weeks. But it's not because we don't love you or want you to know what we have been up to. The reason that amazing burrito has been sitting at the top of this interwebs link site page for so long is we don't have too much to talk about these days. Fewer amazing adventures. Fewer authentic aussie experiences. Heck we spent most of this morning lazing around watching the Oscars as if we weren't on the other side of the world in this strange beautiful land. I am a bit embarrassed to write that I sat on the couch all day. Why should I write at all if I did the same thing that many of you did today? The only difference is all the coverage of the event that wasn't part of the actual live feed from the states was commentary about how great all the aussies did. How Heath is the man (I agree). How Hugh Jackman was amazing (I disagree). How based on Hugh's performance, this whole country expects him to be hosting many more award shows in the future. (Please no). I thought he was terrible. Bring back Jon Stewart. My favorite part of the whole thing was when Will Smith said “Boom goes the dynamite.”

I digress. The point of my Acadamy Award Show analysis is to show you that for just a tiny couple of weeks smidgin of our time here things are not so super duper over the top crazy-awesome go go go all the time. But in fact kinda boring. And so we aren't jumping to write about how things are slower here than they have been. How we have been doing regular everyday things.

Last week we went and saw He's Just Not That Into You. It was me, Jesse, Erin, and Diana. We all loved it. While it was a romcom (I recently learned that stands for romantic comedy) chick flick. Jesse and I justified our love of it by remarking on the lack of overwhelming girlyness. Not this over the top Legally Blond brand of entertainment. It's ok to like it if there isn't too much pink or too many tiny little yippy dogs being carried around in purses. We ran home and pulled up espn.com and we're fine.

Also I have gotten to play a lot more volleyball this week in between the thunderstorms. I got out to Tamarama Beach 5 days of last week. I'm pretty proud of myself. Also I got a haircut! That's probably the biggest event for me since that boar of a burrito I posted about last. I got my whole head buzzed really short so I don't have to get a haircut again til I am back stateside. We will get some more pics of the new me soon. But most of you know what I'm like with no hair so it's really nothing new.

But you see, I'm boring myself just talking about all these small details. Let's see what else? I just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's a great book about where food comes from and the different methods of producing it. It discusses questions like: should we eat meat? Should we buy from the supermarket? Is Whole Foods really much better than Safeway? What in the world does organic mean? Why does Skinner think he's so special walking around eating his tofu all day? I figure this is the beginning of the part of my life where I will have to cook and buy food for myself so I need to do some research to figure out how best to go about doing that. The book was a good start. I thought Whole Foods was my answer to being healthy. Now I don't really trust them as much. I am going to have to talk to Skinner more about improving my eating habits.

Like I said before, it's raining all over the place here so we have been watching lots of movies we find for free at the library. Jurassic Park 3 was not as good as it seemed 10 years ago when I saw it in the theaters. We thoroughly enjoyed watching I Am Legend though (despite the death of the lovable dog which is the sole reason the females in my family refuse to see the movie. The flesh eating zombies are not an issue. But if one dog dies, boycott). And the final semi-importantish piece of information is I have been listening to the latest Jason Mraz album on repeat for about two weeks now. I'm starting to like that guy more and more.

The last couple weeks have been a little slow. But fortunately my last day of work at the pizzerias was today and my Mom is somewhere flying over the Pacific as I write this. By the end of this week I will be in Cairns. The Rescuers will be divided. Change and adventure will again be in the air. I am Excited! Finally a couple pics from a random night last week. Love and Miss You All. B “I can't get used to having no hair” Lindy

Mad Mex

Leif told me I wouldn't last long at all in Oz without a real quality burrito. For a while I thought he was right. I would be back in cali doing a burrito tour before I knew it. I would go to Lily's with the beach vball peeps to 3 Amigos (and cheat here and get the nachos) with my dad to that taqueria in Moorpark that George showed me to Baja with Amanda to Burrito with EA to La Bamba with any vballer to Chipotle with I don't know who to Taco Bell (not really mexican food and I would cheat again and get a crunchwrap supreme) with Ben Reddy and finally end up at Maria's with Mere. And by the end of it all I would surely remember a few other burritos I had missed and would make my way back down the coast retrieving the forgotten ones. But alas the burrito tour of California will have to wait a while longer as we have discovered a legitimate substitute. Mad Mex on Oxford St serves an amazing chicken burrito with all the Tapatio sauce you could want along with Coronas (still overpriced but worth it every so often). So for those of you like Leif worrying about a Brian with a burrito shaped hole in his gut, you needn't fret. I will be ok.

Rain Sydney Rain

Hello friends and supporters of rescuer operations. It has been a gloomy slow but nice day here in Rose Bay. No fires. Just lots of clouds and coolness which is kinda nice after the recent heatwave. Anyways the alarms around the 597 household went off far too early this morn. 11am. It was rough. For the first time ever all four sides of the rescuer quadrilateral went out to do a little workout together. Jesse taught us all how to run up and down the boardwalk outside our casa and do fun things like pushups along the railings and box jumps on the benches. Great fun and a fabulous way to start the day.

After that Taylor got his LOST on and then made some food and got ready for work while J, E, and me went out to Watsons Bay for some excellent seafood. I had a nice little prawn roll with chips and J and E split a seafood platter basket monster 6 course meal. It wasn't as big as we had hoped unfortunately. After that I grabbed some chocolate chip gelatto and the other two ran off on some errands.

After a napful afternoon I did a little reading of The God of Small Things. The book is ok. Its a little too flowery and full of imagery for my taste. Exploding with really rich description. Like really rich rich chocolate. Sometimes its just too much. Then this evening I went on a little stroll around a moist Rose Bay. It was really relaxing to wander around at midnight when everything feels asleep and so quiet. Looking at dark windows of shops and houses. And then I found a little bakery with a couple bakers in their working pretty hard to have all their tasty treats ready by morning. So cool to find just one little place in the whole town lit up with tons of activity going on. Then I wandered back home in time to meet Taylor as he got off the bus coming home from work at 1am. Nice day.



Anyways a couple other things I wanted to mention besides my day was this pic I got from my aunt. If you are any sort of LOST fan you will instantly realize that she is the coolest to put this little platter of goodies together in honor of season 5. It's almost like her dining room is somehow on the island. Also Skinner has started going through his pics from his trip here and sent me some of them and is uploading them. We are still trying to get him to write a little guest post about his trip but for now I will give everyone a little taste of his photographic genius.










hasta la pasta from down under

B

Bushfires, Byron Bay, and Baking

Not to worry friends, family, and fans… all of the rescuers are safe. I noticed the bushfires going on in Victoria, Aus were the top headline on cnn.com for a while and since the people reading might not know – I thought I’d fill you in. Victoria is a different state here in Australia and thus the brushfires are quite a ways away from us. There are something like 50 separate bushfires going on in NSW as well (New South Whales, where Sydney is), but this state is enormous and that’s not really out of the norm apparently during the summer months. We are safe here in Rose Bay especially because we are so close to water. If it came down to it we would just have to sprint for 15 seconds and make a jump for the bay. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that…

In other news… our time is winding down here, and we are all very excited about that. It’s not that we don’t like it in Sydney or anything like that. We’ve just been here for long enough. And we’re all getting a little bit tired of working 4-6 days a week. Personally, I’m happy staying here for another couple weeks because I am making a good amount of money and I love this city. That said… I can’t wait to get out of here and see other things.

I’ve been recently looking at things we’ll be doing in Byron Bay. If I haven’t already mentioned it… Byron Bay is the first place I’m heading post-Sydney. Erin and I are flying there March 9th and we will return to Sydney on March 17th. Taylor and his sister will be there for a few days at the beginning of that stretch and Lindberg may be there for all/some/none of those days. It has quite a lot to offer and we are keen to see the sights. It’s known as one of the best places to surf in Australia (and by reasonable extension, the world). The best part about the surf is that there are numerous locations for newbies, like us, where we can ride the waves and not die. Dozens of surf schools are clamoring for tourists to take part in their lessons and as a result the deals are pretty sweet. We plan on taking a half-day lesson and then using the skills we learned for the rest of time we are there. It’s nice because we can rent surfboards and wetsuits (if we need them) from hostels or the surf schools for really great rates after we know what we are doing. That means hours of surfing fun, I can't wait. Hopefully none of us get eaten by sharks.

Other things we might do in Byron are as follows…
- Take flights on an ultralight glider. I understand that it is kind of like a hang-glider, but sweeter. The flights terminate at the lighthouse, which sounds very intriguing to me. Maybe I can fly over the lighthouse and release my harness and land on the the top of it or something.
- Stay in a teepee at the Arts Factory Backpackers Lodge
- Learn to play the didgeridoo for free at the Didgeri-U-doo workshop
- Get certified (or renew our certification) as a scuba diver or just choose to snorkel at any of the great sites
- Take the 10-day certification course for hang-gliding. Not a reasonable possibility, but it’d be so sweet to be able to hang-glide whenever I wanted (assuming I bought a hang-glider and lived on a cliff or mountain or something)
- Rent (or get one free from our hostel) a bicycle and travel around to see the sights
- Kayak with dolphins/whales. I hope I don't see any whales - they're too big.

As you can see there is quite a lot for us to do. And that’s just during the week we are there. Maybe we won’t sleep.

Anyway – the timer for my cake in the over just went off so I’m going to finish this up and post it and go make some peanut butter icing. Wish me luck. Thanks.

You guys are the best.

- Jesse “Little Betty Baker psyched for Byron Bay” Meredith

Also the office once again knocked it out of the park... great episode.

Hawkesbury River

Hello hello hello! It has been a while since we've spoken and I don't know where to begin with what has been going on here. The number of people living in 597 New South Head Rd has been reduced back to four as all the holiday visitors have come and gone. So things are slowing back down again here. We are currently in a stage of shutting down the engines and recharging our batteries before one final big push of fun and excitement during our last couple weeks in Sydney. That's right we are leaving Sydney and soon! The four of us have had a great time in Sydney and we have definitely used the time here to acclimate ourselves to life down under. But we are getting to the point where we have seen most everything this great city has to offer. We feel we are ready to go out and begin exploring new territory.

So by the end of the month I will be leaving Rose Bay. My mum is visiting starting the 24th of Feb. I will show her the sites here and then fly with her up to Cairns to get a little taste of the Great Barrier Reef. I intend to hang out there after she leaves and hopefully get in a little bit more diving and adventuring. By mid March I will fly back down to Byron Bay to meet up with the rest of the rescuers before we fly out to New Zealand. Thats right the big NZ! So a lot of fun stuff will be starting up at the end of February so bear with us for this next month when we will be doing slightly less adventuring and more planning of our travels. While I am up in Cairns, Jesse and Erin will remain in Sydney for another week or two before they head up to Byron Bay before NZ. Taylor has some family visiting at the end of this month too so he might be traveling around with them a bit as well and it is possible I will see some of him up in Cairns too. Things are about to get pretty crazy around here and we hope to start getting you posts from all around Oz as the rescuers divide and conquer for a little while.



Anyways thats the tentative plan. I hope it makes some sort of sense to you readers. We are still in the planning phase so everything is pretty amorphous to us right now. So now that I have covered what will happen or might happen or what I expect could happen, lets go over what has happened. Last week Taylor, a few buddies from Taylor's work, Chandra, and I took a little excursion to the mighty Hawkesbury River. We rode a train for about an hour outside of Sydney to this tiny little town on the side of a river. The Hawkesbury is a nice little river that runs eventually into the Sydney harbour. I don't know exactly how close it is to the harbour but the water was much saltier than any river I have ever been in. It didn't feel like straight salt water but it felt much more like ocean water than river water. Anyways we got out to the river and walked twenty minutes or so to a boat rental place. We rented out the Brooklyn Central for the day.



We puttered around the river all day spying jellyfish, climbing rocks, relaxing on beaches, and playing games. The weather was sweltering and captain Taylor



took one for the team steering the boat in the full sun (the rest of us hung out under the canopy) for most of the day. His skin has been pealing off by the fistful for about a week now. Wonderful day overall though.

So thats whats going on with us. What's going on with all of you people back in the states? We miss you all and hope your February is bright and sunny like ours is. Before I say goodbye I want to remind you of all the extra pics I have posted online which you can find through the little BLindy's Pics link on the side of the page.



Love
B

Superbowl Fun

Hey people – Jesse McMeredith here… just reporting to you post super bowl, and oh, was it a great super bowl or what? I’m sure it was so much better for all of you reading this because you got to watch the best commercials in the universe whereas we had to watch the same old commercials that we always see. It really made me hate Australia for a couple hours – why can’t they embrace America fully?

We truly had a great time watching it, though. Lindberg and Erin are pretty much die-hard Steelers fans and they were talking them up from a week or so ago. Taylor and Chandra and I felt obliged to keep it balanced and root for the opposition. My reasons were as follows… Kurt Warner is the man, Larry Fitsgerald went to Pittsburgh Univ, and the Cardinals beat the Eagles, so I wanted them to win.

We started off the day at our house watching the broadcast on channel 5 on our TV (10 TV here in Australia) and it was unbelievably disappointing. Not only did they not show the superbowl ads we were accustomed to, but they talked about punting more than anybody has ever talked about punting (the cardinals punter is Australian and they kept discussing his form and how he did and everything mumbu jumbo forever). We bought chips and salsa and nachos and cheese and hotdogs and ketchup and mustard and everything else super-american we could think of… and chowed down. It was deliciously entertaining.

As soon as halftime rolled around we decided it was time to try and find a better locale to engage in NFL-watching. I had heard about this place called the Martin Place bar that was showing the game via an actual American broadcast company. We were excited about the possibility and went to check it out. Arriving just as the second half was starting, we were pleased to see it was a different broadcast that wasn’t obsessed with punting, yet disappointed to see that they were still showing stupid Australian commericials. I mean, come on. All-in-all it was an incredibly enjoyable experience and Erin and Lindberg won in the end. They gloated for a minute or two, but everyone was just happy it was such an exciting game.

I think everyone’s favorite part of the game was when #92 from the steelers returned that interception for a touchdown and was too tired to do anything for the rest of the game.

Thanks for reading and sorry I didn’t exactly update you on anything you didn’t really know. I mean everyone probably witnessed the superbowl, but nobody saw it from our eyes so I hope you caught a glimpse of something new that Americans had never seen before. I guess the moral of the story – is it that it is a fantastic thing that the internet exists and that we can watch the commercials sometime soon online.

Thanks for reading and we’ll talk to you soon…

- Jesse “Loves America because of the Superbowl” Meredith

Also… if you happened to catch the episode of The Office on NBC following the superbowl then consider yourself one of the luckiest people ever because it was phenomenal.