Tina's wanderings around the world

Yay, roadtrip! We're leaving in six days to go on a roadtrip. I will officially finish my last day at this stupidest of all stupid jobs I've ever had, then I'll hightail it to the airport where I'll meet Marcus, check-in for our flight, and head up to Darwin! We'll arrive around midnight then head to some friends' house to crash for the night. Then, first thing in the morning, we'll go pick up a campervan and be on our way. We'll spend the next 11 days driving from Darwin to Alice Springs during which time we'll see jumping saltwater crocs, frilly-necked lizards (I'm thinking the miniature version of the tar-spitting dinosaur on Jurassic Park), barren flatland, dipping pools, sacred Aboriginal sites, Uluru, and all kinds of good stuff. There will be a LOT of driving (and we're not allowed to drive at night, so a lot of sleeping and playing cards) but I'm really looking forward to some time away from the city to re-center, relax, and re-al...

A group of 10 bike gang members bludgeoned a rival gang member to death in the Sydney airport yesterday. It is absolutely unbelievable that something that violent could happen in such a public place...that's about 15 minutes away from where I live. Yikes. Well, at least the rest of the violence has taken place pretty far away from our place. That is to say, other than Marcus getting knocked out for no good reason by one of his friends' fatty bike-gang brothers at a buck's night (bachelor party) last year. I am not a fan of bucks nights...or bikies for that matter. http://www.smh.com.au/national/bikie-killed-in-sydney-airport-brawl-20090323-95xc.html?page=-1 There's a TV series here called "Underbelly" that's all about the Sydney underworld, though its focus is (for now) on the drug gangs. Season two is just now airing in Australia, though HBO bought the rights and will be playing Season one at some point back in the states. Season one was pretty good, but ...

I find myself at work, looking out my window over the skyline of Centrepoint and the faux Eiffel tower at the beautiful blue sky...yet here I sit with nothing to do. No work to be done, and yet stuck in the office. Mmm, a bit unlucky, but I formerly lectured Marcus on the novelty of being paid to do nothing but sit in an office. Now here am I, of the same experience and understanding the madness. Three more weeks, three more weeks. Yesterday we spent the first half of our day wandering through Alexandria. We semi-unknowingly live close to a scattered bunch of outlet stores. Random purses and shoes in one store, European shoes and bed linens in the next, designer jeans "on sale" for $130 two doors down...once upon a time I was a master at rifling through a smorgasborg of clothing. I possessed a true gift at finding treasure amidst the trash. But lately, shopping has been overwhelming and outlet shopping is five times worse. What happened to the shop-happy girl of my youth? I t...

This last weekend we celebrated the big lawyer man's 25th birthday. Now he is officially as old as his grandma girlfriend. What an old man... :) We had a lovely dinner on Friday night with a group of friends at a Spanish tapas restaurant that gave everyone potent garlic breath and great joy with their food. The night continued with drinks at random next-door hotel/pub, then we made our way back to Erko and had strange cocktails...Marcus's first drink was tasted like a fruity toothpaste. He didn't react very well to that. One of our friends had a "Monica Lewinsky" martini, though I'm still not certain how one would devise a cocktail recipe for that particular personality. I think it had a cigar-flavored spirit? Why that would make sense is beyond my range of common sense, but there you have that. Marcus was also bought a cocktail with absinthe. I didn't realize absinthe was legal in this country, though it is Australia, so why wouldn't it be? I mean, A...