Land Down Under!

I have a new favourite thing to make me laugh since being here. If I am ever feeling down or unmotivated I watch this music video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McsWKczU6wc&feature=related

You should watch it and laugh. It is the music video for the song "I come from a land down under." My favourite highlights:

1. The guy sitting in the tree playing the flute to the stuffed koala hanging by a rope.
2. Them bouncing away like kangaroos in the sand.
3. The end where they are marching through the sand and still dragging the stuffed koala.

I hope this brightens your tomorrow, because it brightened my today!

They're GREAT!

Well, as you are all aware it is that time of year again...Halloween. This means a few things:
1. It will snow in Colorado (congratulations Papa, you will win the bet with the car dealership)
2. College campuses will be clogged with girls dressed as their rendition of a sexy whatever they are supposed to be. (ie-sexy nurse, sexy red riding hood, I even saw a sexy nun costume...)
3. I shall indubitably come up with my own wacky silly costume (last year I was quite literally Lacey Walker...dressed in lace with a walking stick.)

This year I have devised an awesome costume. I am going to be tony the tiger busting out of a box of frosted flakes! I have already warned my friends that they will have to tolerate my constant throaty rumble of, "THEY'RE GREAT!" (As a side note, they do have frosted flakes here, but they call them Frosties.)

I think this costume is great for several reasons:

1. It makes me laugh.
2. I get to play dress up.
3. The total thing cost less than $10 to make.
4. I got to do an art project which made me happy.

So I bought some cheap tiger ears, some face paint, and poster-board. I have taken pictures of the creation of a Frosted Flakes box:

This is all I have for now, but come Halloween night I will take a picture of me in the box and put it up. Hooray for art projects, I am happy with the result but bit sad that it is over, much like a good book.

Age is Only a Number, or is it?

Well, I suppose it is finally time for me to expand about my trip to Canberra this weekend. I met James at the airport last Thursday. He showed up right as they were boarding the plane, I was there about 40 minutes before that, but even that seemed like it was cutting things short. They are a little more casual about domestic flights than we are. They say you just need to be there before the stated boarding time, or 45 minutes before the flight if checking baggage. Also, they didn't even check my ID, they only checked my boarding pass it was very odd and relaxed.

The majority of this blog will be about age as the purpose of our visit was to go to his Grandparents 89th and 90th birthday parties. It made me start thinking about age, people say it is only a number, but I suppose that is in an effort to comfort someone who is feeling old. It made me think, when you are young you want to look older than you are, when you are around my age, you want to look the age you are, and once you get past 30-35 people want to look younger than they are.

When sitting on the plane James made me laugh and my eyes got all squinty and he pointed at my eyes and said, 'you have wrinkles.' I told him to stop there before he dug the hole too deep, he then said, 'well everyone does when they scrunch their eyes.' So he was back on track but then he told me I looked tired and had bags under my eyes. I warned him again not to dig this hole any deeper because he was telling me I looked old. Then he remarked, 'oh come on honey, you don't look old you look like you are twelve.' Then I had to say, 'woah too far buddy, that is creepy.' He finally recovered by kissing me on the forehead and telling he thought I was gorgeous, but that was a close one.

James' family is very very sweet and everyone was wonderful. I met his brother, his uncle, and his grandparents for the first time, and did not feel uncomfortable for even one minute. Guess what they don't call them Grandma and Grandpa, they call them Granny or Gran and Papa, just like me! :) Well his Granny was turning 90, and his Papa had just turned 89. I think that I found the fountain of youth, and it is wherever their house is. They both still live without any assistance aside from James' Mum driving them to the grocery store, they did finally give up their licenses last year. They both have all their natural teeth, they look 70-80 not over 80. Plus they are both sharp as a tack, they remembered everything from a long time ago plus from the whole dinner. They never forgot my name and they already knew everything about me. They were incredible. I would be very thankful if at 89 or 90 I still had my independence, teeth, and short term and long term memory. Actually I think I will be happy if I can remember my name by 90, haha. Fantastic!

Well it is one of my last nights of classes tonight so I best be off and punctual even though no one else will be.

Thank You to the Service Men and Women Around the World

I had intended this Tuesday morning blog post to enlighten everyone about my trip to Canberra. However, more important things have arisen. I will derail from my slightly goofy and cynical typical blog style to a more appropriate somber attitude.

Yesterday, 14 American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, the most in one single day in over four years. One of these proud service men was unfortunately one of my good friends brothers. She is here in Australia studying and I can't imagine what her and her family are going through. I might physically be in Australia but my heart goes out to these families and service men. I would like to take a moment to thank all of the service men and women around the world supporting our freedom and our government (and our allied forces.) Whether or not we agree with the initiatives and wars we must keep in mind that these men and women are serving our country so that we can remain free and keep the liberties afforded to us and we owe them our eternal gratitude and support.

There is no way to adequately express our grief and gratefulness other than to say:

Thank you for everything you do, we stand by you and support you.

The Tale of the Persistent Violating Spider

Once upon a time there was a girl who was had a great distaste for spiders (aka-me.) She hated how they creeped, crawled and wandered around on their 8 disgusting legs. She despised their frightening anatomy and their hairy bodies. Well this girl (aka) me went to Canberra this weekend, without a care in the world and least of all fearing spiders on her trip to the relatively small suburban city. However, one of Aragog's army decided to violate their agreement (please see earlier post) and tormented me (aka the girl.)

James and I decided to do a bit of shopping as he needed a present for his Grandparents upcoming birthday party. The car we were driving on our errands was an old boxy four wheel drive that had been recently used to haul gardening supplies and piles of weeds to the dump. We had been in the car for at least 15 minutes when I felt something on my foot, however, I am a bit paranoid and freaked out by spiders so I shook my foot and said to James, "Uhhh it felt like something was crawling on my foot." He responded "It was probably just a spider." (Now, as an aside, James is aware of how badly spiders scare me and so he knows what reaction such a simple comment would have. But he is always playing jokes on me, such as trying to convince me that the creepy sounds outside his house was a ghost of a haunted man instead of the actual nest of possums that I later found out was really making the noise. Therefore, most of the time I assume he is just trying to pull my leg.) Whether or not I believed him I am still very cautious when it comes to spiders so I checked the ground and area around my feet and found nothing, so I figured he was indeed just pulling my leg. Well just a few minutes later I felt that same disturbing creeping feeling on my same three toes again (the same one I am feeling now thinking back to this) and what do I see creeping around on my foot but a big, black, hairy spider. It had four of its creepy hairy legs sitting on my foot and the other four lodged between my toes and moving along. According to James I screamed. I don't remember that part but I do remember freaking out. I shook my foot violently and sat on my feet on the seat and looked down at the spider. Even James looked over at the half dollar sized big fat black hairy spider, and remarked, "Oh that is a big one." I continued to freak out until I was actually able to gain enough composure to smack it with my thong and then itch my body obsessively, feeling like things were constantly crawling on me (just like I feel right now, thinking back to this....eewewoe heeby jeebies.)

Well, I would have rather not relived this experience but it seems that my blog readership skyrockets with the mention of spiders, so I hope you all enjoy reading this traumatizing experience. I am beginning to be more and more itchy every minute thinking about this so I hope you also appreciate the research about what spider I expect it to be, because looking at this photos online has started to make my skin crawl uncontrollably. Itchy itchy gross gross. Well I think that the spider was what they refer to as the "black house spider" you can see a picture here, hopefully this helps you feel my pain:

The little research I have done says that they are common (oh goody), they prefer urban areas (oh double goody, where I am) and they are most often found in houses (oh yippity skippity, what I live in) and are poisonous, but not lethal (oh goody at least I will not die, unless from extreme paranoia or traumatic shock.)

OK well in the land of tomorrow I must go recover from remembering this incident by taking a shower, and rubbing myself with anti itching medicine. I know I must be well for all the spider questions I will be fielding from you yesterday.