Vegetarian

Yup - that's melon rind.

Mmm - meat!

Aussies love a good slab of meat. And if you can gamble on it, that's even better. Which has led to the creation of meat raffles.

Meat raffles are a standard fixture of any good pub in Australia. They're a weekly event, so you show up, buy your raffle tickets, and drink some beer while you're waiting for the numbers to be drawn. And if you're a lucky winner, you get to go pick out your tray of meat. The owners of the pub have to buy all the meat, and they generally don't make much off the raffles. It's just another way to draw customers in.

So the South Dubbo Tavern has one of the best meat raffles - mostly because they have the best tray-to-customer ratio I know of. Every week they raffle off 42 meat trays, and on an average night, I'd say there's around 100 people there. Ben and I bought $10-worth of tickets and won 2 trays - $50-worth of meat!! Mmmmm.

Movin' right along

Yep - it's that time again. Time to update your address book. Two years in one place was starting to push our limit - our feet were getting pretty itchy. So we up 'n moved.

Now we're happy Dubb-ites, or whatever you want to call people living in Dubbo. I got a 7 month contract at the zoo, and Ben is at the "writing stage," so he can do that anywhere. Although everyone looks at you a little funny when you say you like it (as if it's not physically possible to find Dubbo pleasant), we're really enjoying the rural NSW life.

A bit of research into moving vans revealed that it was out of the question to rent the van in Sydney and return it in Dubbo. For the few companies that did allow it, they charged a ~$5,000 one-way fee. (Yes, that's the correct amount of zeros.) Although we always love a good opportunity to throw away some money on fees, we decided to opt out of this one (just for you, Mike). Since I was already living in Dubbo, I rented a truck there, drove it ~7 hours to Sydney, we loaded up all our stuff (in the dark), slept in an empty house, and then drove back to Dubbo (me in the truck, Ben and Ani in the car).

Not only was the truck big (and Australian highways small), but it was manual AND the position of the gears was different (i.e., reverse was top left). But after ~14 hours and 1000 kms together, I got a bit attached to our little truck (or at least my ass did). I spent the whole drive singing "The Lady was a Truckie" by iconic Aussie country singer Slim Dusty, and "Bumpin' up and down in my little red wagon" (the truck had good shocks).

The side-note to all this is that when I left Dubbo with the moving truck, we didn't actually know where we were moving to. But that's another story, and we did know by the time we got back to Dubbo with our van-load of stuff.

So this is our new home: 10 Lovett Ave., Dubbo

We're paying $100 less per week for about 3 times more space. Hard to complain about that. So if anyone wants to come visit, we have lots of extra space now! It even has a little cubby house out back for Ani.

Skink in the tub

We have a skink who has moved into our tub. It just crawled up through the drain (which is open to the outside). I think it might be escaping the cold weather, although it probably doesn't hurt that we bring home some of Ben's flies to feed it. It mostly just likes to curl up in the drain.

A day in the life: Fly Boy

Things are going well with Ben’s research. The big huge experiment that we started in December is almost finished. There were 2 flies that outlived all the rest and acquired names: Ponce and Methuselah. My parents regularly inquire about them, right after asking about Ani. But now we're just down to 1: Ponce (who, by the way, is female).


Having proven that we can survive an experiment that size, he and his honours student (Sarsha) decided it would be a good idea to run an experiment 4 times bigger. They just finished setting that up. So all is well in Fly-land, but very busy. That's a lot of mouths to feed.

Pumpkin

Fall is here and it’s pumpkin season. FYI – squashes are called pumpkins, here (e.g., butternut pumpkin, kent pumpkin, grey pumpkin). And we don’t have the orange variety that you typically think of. But they’re still tasty – especially in fall.

So I got inspired, despite the lack of spare time on my hands. I found a recipe for stuffed pumpkin gnocchi, and figured while I was at it, I should make pumpkin scones, too. And somehow, I decided that I needed 2 whole pumpkins to get 500 g of pumpkin. With all the leftovers, it looks like now we’ll be making pumpkin soup, too. But everything turned out pretty well!

And not only did this culinary adventure produce some tasty food - it also provided Ben with some valuable insights about my kitchen skills: 1) I'm no good at estimating quantities, 2) the time estimates that they provide on recipes are a gross underestimate for me, and 3) apparently I cuss a lot when I cook (probably due to our extreme lack of counter-space).

When ya gotta go

Ben stumbled across this webpage the other day (he was doing race searching, if that explains anything) - the site just cracks me up:
The Australian National Public Toilet Map

You can browse them or search for a specific one. There's even a trip planner function - I guess for short you could call it the TP function! (hahaha...) The header reveals that it's a project of the National Continence Management Strategy - who knew such a thing existed! Mom and Dad - maybe you want to offer your modelling services over here. (I don't remember what your life-size poster/advert was for, but I remember jokes about incontinence...)

Anyway, for those of you contemplating a trip over here, don't forget about this incredibly valuable resource!! :)