On one of our last days in Australia, I took Emma across Sydney Harbour to Manly Beach, a place my sister and I sometimes visited as elementary school kids. We used to love the retro funhouse and the massive shark tank next door that opened up to the sea on one side. Good times.

Sadly, the funhouse and shark tank were gone, and Manly had definitely taken a turn for the sketchier. Emma and I stopped by the public bathrooms, where we practiced our mouth-breathing and one-legged balancing while changing into our bathing suits, hoping in vain that the muck on the floor wouldn’t rise above the edges of our flip-flops.

As we made our way toward the sand, we happened upon the following sign, very much in the spirit of the bather’s rules from our wedding weekend:

Unfortunately, they left out “No Spitting on the Respect Sign,” as evidenced by the feedback someone deposited just to the right of the list.

Australia, the Cricket World Cup defending champs, beat Sri Lanka today in the finals. As I noted in my write-up on the 2006-2007 Ashes Series (which took place during our December trip to Oz), it’s nearly impossible to find any cricket news in the U.S. So, I had to make do with intermittent headlines on the World Cup website, and knowing that somewhere, ten thousand miles or so away, my uncle is jumping out of his seat, punching his fist in the air.

Ok, you have to try this now: If you’re on a Mac, hold down control-option-command and press the 8 key. Total insanity.

(If you’re on a PC, check out the chickens and rabbits below. That’s all I got for ya.)

I really need to get some chickens (and then some squabbling rabbits.)

(via cynical-c)

I was on a conference call early this evening and looked out the window to see these guys, less than 40 feet away. It was hard to pay attention to the phone conversation, with the deer grazing in front of me while we yammered on about websites. They noticed me and the dog staring at them through the glass, and let me take a quick, grainy shot before they scattered.

For some reason the farm surrounding us has bulldozed all of the apple orchards into six massive piles. They’re very Middle Earth-looking things, these huge jumbles of roots and curved branches. Our view from the front porch seems like an alien landscape.

Rumors abound, as everyone’s always nervous that our local farm might finally be going under. One rumor had it that apple trees simply need to be removed and replanted every 7-10 years. Another claimed that the apples would be replaced with more profitable pumpkins. Whatever the case, I seriously hope the land remains a working farm, and more immediately, I hope to be there when they set these piles alight.

UPDATE:

Emma’s parents are staying with us for the week, and they’ve celebrated their recent retirement by becoming our tireless manual laborers. We began by surveying what Emma and I took over, which was basically a yard that had been neglected for a good decade or so—including a perimeter of dense, thorny brush, interrupted by the occasional gnarled and half-dead shrub. We decided to get our Clampett on and bring out the chainsaws, pitchforks and fire.

(more…)

He must have been trying to do this… right???