So, umpires aren’t fat they just wear lots of padding?

The closer it gets to Christmas the busier we have been getting. A few of the highlights from the past 2+ weeks include:

• Hitting up the cinema to see Rare Exports, a different kind of Santa story, with Shelley and Alex
• An attempt to take Coopa swimming until we realized that the beach we were going to take him to along the river was a good 5’+ underwater, it seems as though Australia got all 20 years of rain at once when the drought broke
• The annual Walker family Christmas Carol’s, lots of tasty snacks and some off key, but enthusiastic singing, including an attempt at Six White Boomers
• My work Christmas party, now that Andrew has had 2 of them it's only fair I get one
• The successful baking of pepparkakor (delicious and much appreciate by my co-workers)
• Our first Canberra Cavalry baseball game (a winning success, even if it was freezing outside and we had to huddle up in our hoodies and the origin of the blog title)
• Our first session with our dog trainer, he works similar to the Dog Whisperer in the States. It’s going to be a tough 2 weeks as Andrew and I try to remember, and follow, all the rules to keep Coopa in line and turn him into the best behaved dog but it will be worth it in the end

Now things are slowly winding down as we count down the days and hours until we’re released from work for our Christmas holiday, 2.5 days to go :)

11 Cups of Coffee Later…

This past week saw both Andrew and I travelling off to conferences for work, as would happen our conferences were in different cities. While Andrew flew to Sydney on Sunday I packed my bags and head to Melbourne on Monday.

This was my first big kid conference so I was pretty excited and ready to go, so like any kid I now have come down from my sugar high with an airy of excitement, much exhaustion and my memory full of good times.

Fancy fancy hotel room, it even had a small galley kitchen

The view from my balcony, if you went out and leaned over the edge of it

We flew to Melbourne Monday so we could settle in to our hotel and get a chance to rest before starting workshops early Tuesday morning (and of course by early I mean we had to be there by 9). Michèle, Ellen, Anne and I went down the street to Insigna, a pub I discovered in the rain on my last trip to Melbourne. It was as good as ever, iwandered the streets to find food, deciding on an Indian restaurant (and by restaurant I mean tiny shop front that the three of us barely squeezed in to to be able to point to the curries we want. We sat outside on the street enjoy the fact that, for once, it wasn’t raining in Melbourne.

Michèle and Ellen

Me and Anne

The amazing Swedish cider (the Swedes do things so well)

Mmmhhh curry

I discovered that the 7/11 across the road from our hotel sells Ben & Jerry's.

 Melbourne is one of two cities in Australia that actually sells the ice cream.

Tuesday we wandered down the street to a nice coffee house/restaurant/bar (it’s between a YHA and tour group so it’s a very diverse place) called Five66 for breakfast, we actually spent every morning there except Thursday morning when we decided to try out one of the many other amazing coffee places in Melbourne.

So the actual conference was great, there were people there from all over Australia who work with international students in schools, it was a good chance to meet other people in similar positions and learn what everyone is doing, what problems people are coming up against and what solutions people have found. There were lots of inspiring moments and people that have been turned into a nice long list of things we wish we could accomplish here at ANU if we had the money and resources. We are going to meet sometime this week to see if we can take anything from our wish list and actually turn it into a reality here, which would be really great.

When we weren’t in sessions we were chatting with other people and drinking lots of coffee. Tuesday night they had a welcome reception for us with waiters walking around with lots of drinks and snacks (they had some very tasty mini burgers that I couldn’t get enough of) and a group of traditional Japanese drummers played for a us a few times. After drinks one of the girls, Bonda, rounded up a group of us to head over to a bar for some more drinks. We ended up taking over the patio at the local Belgium Beer Café where we sipped Hoegaarden and snacked a bit more while chatting until we were practically asleep at the table, it didn’t take that long as it had been a long day.

Wednesday’s social event was the conference banquet, and a banquet it was. The whole conference was being held at the Crown Promenade, which is attached to the Crown Casino, a bit flash, so the banquet was held in one of the large ballrooms upstairs. It was 1960’s themed so we dressed as best we could and stuck some flowers in our hair before heading over.

Japanese drummers

They began with more drinks as we waited to go inside the ballroom and the cocktail hour gave us time to make some more friends and check out everyone’s outfit. The meal consisted of more drinks, a first course of some delicious garlic, mushroom torte thing, I have no idea what it was besides amazing. Then came king fish for me (yes Mom and Dad, I voluntarily ate fish and it wasn’t salmon or tuna) plus mashed sweet potatoes and more wine. And the meal was topped off with a plate with chocolate mousse, coconut ice cream and something else that I cannot remember, plus more wine.

Michèle, Ellen and one of Ellen's friends

Flower power tattoos

Me, Zan and Michèle

the yummy appetizer

hmmm dessert, I love good food

Dancing

And an incriminating photo of Ellen trying to eat the giant gingerbread house outside the banquet hall

Once everyone was gone and the band began packing up we decided that we should probably switch locations, so back to the Belgium Beer Café we went for a nightcap before dragging ourselves home. The next day was a bit of a struggle but it was worth the fun of the night before.

Thursday I met Zan and Michèle for breakfast after which we strolled around the river bank a bit before the rain began. That night we hopped the free trolley up to Lygon Street, the well known Italian district and had ourselves a very nice feed that we had to roll home from, luckily our hotel was slightly downhill.

Looks like Andrew has a business he never told me about, and it's food related, the nerve

Apparently this penguin grants Christmas wishes, it seemed to work because I wished for a giant penguin

The free tourist trolley

The light on Lygon Street was amazing as we were walking along

Friday went by fairly quickly and before we knew it we were packing ourselves into a cab to head to the airport. Anne is a Qantas Club member so she asked at the desk if she could take us in with her, which thankfully they agreed to, so Ellen, Anne and I waited to board our plane while sipping champagne and eating some cheese and crackers, a nice start to the trip home.

Coopa and Andrew greeted me at the door when I got home with a clean house, flowers and a bottle of red wine (ok, the wine was from Andrew’s conference but still). Which means it is now time for our first guest blog.

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First Guest Blog
Ok so Sarah has asked me to write my first guest blog, so here goes. Well Last week was pretty busy, which I guess is expected for this time of the year. On Friday we had our Department Christmas party which usually involves binge drinking at noon till...... well my director didn’t get home till 6.30am which kind of puts it in perspective. This year the theme was ‘out of this world’, I think it would be the only time you could see a wookie, darth vadar, and captain spock all lining up at the bar for their next sprit drink.


Saturday was our thanks giving party which to my surprise had more food than Christmas lunch. I had the high pressured job of carving up the turkey, I finally got the hang of it at the end and was happy I didn’t make much mess. It was a big day and I think we were all worn out by the end.

Sunday I had to fly out to Sydney for a conference. We arrived in Sydney at about 4ish and then checked into our hotel which was right in the heart of the city, it was a great location. We even had an attached pub downstairs which was an interesting touch I thought. The conference was basically about how different businesses use Microsoft SharePoint (Content Management System) as a communication tool......riveting stuff I know lol

It went from Sunday – Wednesday and they had a bunch a guest speakers, some even from the states.

Most nights we ate out which was great. On Monday night we found a nice restaurant with views of the Opera house and I took this lovely picture which I’m sure Sarah will like J. All in all it was a lot of fun, but very tiring and I was happy to get home.

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This past weekend went by in a blur as Andrew and I tried to get readjusted to being home. I woke up very early Saturday morning and Coopa and I joined Bonnie and her dog Jye for a walk/hike up Mount Taylor. It’s relatively small, only taking us 25 minutes to reach the top, but because we have been so rainy and flooded out recently it took us another 25 to get back down. The dogs had a great time together, both off the lead, bounding through the high grass, playing in the streams and just generally running around, Coopa was exhausted the rest of the day.

The rest of our weekend consisted of getting a new desk, rearranging furniture, setting up our Christmas tree, doing some Christmas shopping and lying around listlessly not know what to do with ourselves, it could have been a bit less busy but it was nice to be home.

What's the point of taste if you can't taste it

  Since everyone in the states got to celebrate Thanksgiving last Thursday I decided that we needed to celebrate as well. We held Thanksgiving last year as well and it was so good we decided to invite even more people this time. Last year there were 7 of us in our townhouse in Monash, this year it expanded to 22, not including 2 babies, 2 young boys and a very happy (and by the end of the day, exhausted) puppy.

As I can’t handle cooking for that many people I took a cue from my family and had potluck Thanksgiving making the turkey and allowing everyone else to provide side dishes and deserts. Saturday was the chosen day as we don’t get off for Thanksgiving. The day began with me stuffing my 13lb turkey and getting it into the oven. I had made Mom’s sticky buns on Thursday so that was one less thing for me to do, so Andrew and I settled in to wait for the 5 hours to be up.

The weather had forecasted rain starting at 3, the same time people were going to arrive for dinner, so we held off setting the tables up as we wanted to eat outside. We finally decided that the blue skies weren’t going anywhere so we got everything ready and pulled the, perfect, turkey out to set for a bit.  It looked as though the predicted rain was actually going to come so when our firsts guests arrived we put them straight to work moving the tables and chairs inside, of course it never did rain but we were glad to be safe with our set-up.

The dinner was massive and very very tasty. Everyone loved the sticky buns, I tried to make them last year but had to substitute vegetable shortening for Crisco, this year I was able to get Crisco sent to me so they turned out perfectly. The turkey was moist, the gravy was warm and the food was plentiful. By the time dessert was finished most people were rolling for the door.

As normally happens when we get all our friends together there was a small group of us left at the end of the night having drinks and caring on into the night. By the time Damon was falling asleep on the couch we decided to call it a night and realized it wasn’t even midnight yet, the might effects of Thanksgiving.

Sunday I had to drop Andrew off at the airport to head to Sydney for a conference and I went home to pack so that Monday I could go to Melbourne for my own conference. And that shall be the next adventure soon to come.