Awwwwwwwww!

Posted by: Nic and Sal

Today we unexpectedly received a delicious Food by Emily panforte xmas present. About 2 minutes after taking this picture is was mostly eaten (and now 4 minutes later it's gone).

Thanks for thinking of us Chris and Em, bloody good food as always Em!

Happy Christmas everyone back home!

Dawson's Creek

Posted by: Nic

Yesterday we drove to Wilmington to collect the remaining belongings we had shipped from Australia. Wilmington is a large town on the coast about 300 km from Durham. It is the oldest European settlement in North Carolina and has a number of claims to fame. Michael Jordan grew up there. He still has family in town and we were told he regularly visits. Apparently he also contributes a considerable amount of money to the town. The local museum even has a display dedicated to him. It was also where Dawson’s Creek was filmed. I never watched the show so I don’t know if we saw anything a Dawson-buff would have recognized, perhaps Grace can help us?

Despite the distance Wilmington was easy to get to, there is a four-lane highway the whole way. You don’t get to see much scenery though. It was a pleasant touristy town with an attractive waterfront and business district. We think it would make a nice holiday spot.

The plants were also interesting. As you can see in the pictures, there were buttressed trees growing in the swamps next to the river and also a strange lichen-epiphyte-thing hanging from all the trees.

We were happy to finally get all our stuff. We were especially happy to finally get the Chimes Estate wine and the beanies that Gran knitted for us!

A new arrival?

Posted by: Nic'n'Sal

Our house echos to the pitter-patter of tiny feet, well, paws. We are looking after Hava (that's Little Monster in Ukrainian) our friend Lana's kitten. This is the third time she has come to stay. She's getting bigger, but not much calmer. Although she has gotten over the habit of eating our feet under the doona.




On the weekend we went for a walk at Umstead State Park, it was a nice walk in the winter woods. Perhaps we should go for some better alliteration - which was a wonderful walk within the winter woods.

Okay, and now for some old rivalries that have followed us across the world. The picture below is of student dorms at Duke. If you look closely at the windows you will see, lo and behold, an Aussie flag and a Kiwi flag! Weird. We don't know who these people are.

An excuse for more pictures.

Posted by: Nic

Last night we had dinner with our friends Zuzana and Gil. Gil is Israeli and Zuzana is Czech so they treated us to to an Israeli feast. The picture shows Zuzana and her daughter Shira (I think that is how it is spelled). Shira is 7 months old. Zuzana and Gil are running the project I am currently working on.

The following picture is looking down the road from our front doorstep. You can see the winter-trees. One thing to note is how clear the sky is, most of the winter days are bright and sunny.

Ice Ice Baby...

Posted by: Sal

Ice is remarkably pretty. It settled on the windscreen and around the doors of our car this morning in precise snowflakey crystals - the kind of thing that chemists dream of resulting from the most perfect, slow and gentle recrystallisation. Feathery crystals in long arcs traced their way along every scratch or imperfection in the duco or the glass.

All of this was remarkably nice until we needed to drive. Nic tried the usual, tested technique for a frosty windscreen in Perth - pour some warm water onto it. Unfortunately in the subfreezing air here in Durham, the water simply slid down the glass until it too froze, leaving a couple of thick lumps sitting above the windscreen wipers. So then, I guess out of reflex action, Nic turned on the wipers and the water - with the result that we smeared a fine layer of crushed ice across most of the windscreen! All of this would have been great if we'd been wanting to make Margaritas (hmm, which, now that I think of it, would be nice...) but was not so good for visibility and all that good stuff. So we turned the heater on in the car, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best... and all was well.

So, its COLD. -8 last night. Despite the conversations with various friends from Montana who maintain that -10 FARENHEIT is "quite ok", I'm not keen on it being quite this chillsome. However, we still have all of our extremities, so I suppose we've adapted reasonably well!

Everybody: Nic has received his authorisation to work! Its valid for THREE YEARS! This is awesome - it only took 1 month to come through (we expected 3), and its been really really painless! So with any luck Nic will have a much shorter period of being a kept man than he did last time round! Although this does raise tricky questions about timing, post docs, and finishing off the "volunteer" work that he's currently embarked upon... happily, that's Nics problem and I'm sure he'll do a wonderful job of solving it. Until I start asking for money... *grin*

On a serious note, its a great relief that this has come through - so hurrah!

Furniture!

Posted by: Nic

Our new furniture was dropped off yesterday. We are now the proud owners of a nice old table and chairs, coffee table and sideboard. All make the house more liveable. The table can also extend to beome nearly a meter longer, which will be good when every one comes to visit.

Kevin Rudd - I smell a conspiracy.

Posted by: Nic

Okay, this has nothing to do with our lives in America, but living outside Australia gives one an interesting perspective on politics, and this is bugging me. Is it just me or does anyone else think the whole Labour Party leadership since Crean has been a well planned conspiracy to make Rudd look good?

In 2003 Simon Crean needed to be replaced. Rudd had serious potential – smart, rational, compassionate, hell, he even looked a bit like Howard - so why not put him in straight away? Unfortunately, the Labour Party could tell they wouldn’t be able to beat Howard, no matter who was the head of the party. Instead of putting up Rudd only to have him defeated and forever tarnished they decided to put in Latham. He had done good things in his home electorate so the public would think the Labour Party thought he was a good choice as leader. Unfortunately, his (carefully scripted) behavior and colourful past (which he was carefully chose for) left many people a bit disenfranchised with Labour. After his defeat the public wanted change. Was it Rudd’s time? Okay, said the party room, here’s Beazley. Awwwww, cried the public, why Beazley! He’s done his dash! Of course this was also a deliberate choice. Beazley, in an unpleasant, florid, blustery and brilliantly acted manner pretended that Labour had only one policy, to do the exact the opposite of the Libs. The party room knew that even hardcore Labour voters would start to become disenfranchised. Then, in the Labour Party’s darkest public opinion hour, Rudd rises - appearing young (relatively), fresh, different! Do Latham, Beazely and, importantly, Howard seem old, stale, unpredictable and arrogant by comparison? Funny that. And, what is the first thing Rudd is doing - presenting a strong clear message of what the Labour Party is about! It all seems too well planned!

Think about it.

Chil-ly!

Posted by: Nic

Hey Perth people, check out the weather we are having!

Monday Sunny 8° C to -5° C

Tuesday Sunny 9° C to -3° C

Wednesday Sunny 12° C to 1° C

Thursday Cloudy 11° C to -3° C

Friday Cloudy 5° C to -3° C

Mundane drudgery and Saturdays nights at home with Nic and Sal

Posted by: Nic and Sal (wow!)

Don’t come and visit us, we have concluded that we are bad luck for travelers. You will either not be allowed into the country and treated like a criminal, or get poisoned and miss your bus to Washington. Chris and Tim, we’re sorry. So since you won’t get to experience the mundane drudgery of our lives in person we will do all we can to bring it to you on the blog and, lets face it, we have since the beginning.

Today we bought furniture. Whilst waiting for Tim to post a guitar we found a cool second hand store called Hand-me-ups . Unlike most second hand stores they had some good things in good condition. We found a cool old table and chairs, sideboard and coffee tables for a grand total of $400 (including delivery!). As part of the deal we even got to speak with the lovely old guy who ran the furniture department. We’ll post pictures of our haul as soon as it all arrives. We are feeling much better set up now, considering that we only had two chairs before - when Tim was here one person had to sit on the stairs to eat breakfast.

Less mundanely, due to the high price of fresh food here we are going to start a vegetable garden. This involves growing things inside coz the frost’ll get ‘em otherwise (this is Nic typing as Sal dictates, and that is what she just said). Bring it orn indoor tomehtoes! Any way, we have a room on the top floor of our house with big south-facing windows that is consequently warm and bright, so they should grow well. The room also has leopard-print wall paper, but that’s another story and probably won’t help the veggies grow.

Whilst we spend a lot of time writing about our house we do actually have friends, or at least people who tolerate our presence. We joined our friends Lucas and Jamie at their house last night for an evening of good old-fashioned badger-state fun, Lucas and Jamie being from Wisconsin. We have a picture to prove it, how about that eh! And just to let you know that we really are cool we’re going to another friends house tomorrow to play ping pong (please note, this is Sal’s idea).

Nic and Sal.

The party at Lucas and Jamie's