Fun

Club Champ



Grice driving on the runway (When I discover the hiding place of the snake I may need a back-up driver.)



Boat ride to Snapper Island



Fun With Fruit, or One Hot Tomahto. Concept by Sarabelle.
(B&W photos shamelessly lifted from Vanity Fair)






Let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to find out the natural bent.

-- Plato

Cough, cough, hack, hack

Sunburn, fatigue, fever, blisters. Those are just my main excuses for coming in dead last in the women's open. I got the chills in the midst of the finals and couldn't tell if I was coming down with the flu or heat stroke. It was probably a bit of both. And learning today at the trophy presentation that the boys' finals has to be rescheduled for Friday because one of the players is sick and that I am now also in charge of that event, well, let's just say my enthusiasm was greatly diminished. When the coach suggested organizing one more tournament and sausage sizzle before the end of the year, I'm pretty sure I just growled. Fortunately my friend and fellow tennis committee sucker invited me to her house afterward for a cup of coffee, throat lozenges, a large aloe plant, and some beautiful cut flowers from the garden.

Sarabelle ended up girls' open and one half of the girls' doubles champ, and Grice and her partner were girls' doubles runners-up. Sarabelle will go down in history as the first girls' winner in the history of the club, her name engraved on a lovely plaque for ever and ever, amen.

Jorge missed all the festivities staying home to organize the storage room downstairs, the room where he and Elle found the four-foot, freshly-shed, venomous snake skin just outside the door. No sign of our visitor. I am not looking forward to digging through the suitcases when it's time to pack.


A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

-- Saki [Hector Hugh Munro] The Square Egg

Bits

I haven't posted much. Nothing much has been happening, and with the Red Sox in the playoffs and then in the World Series again, nothing I could have posted would have been more interesting than that to my family members abroad, as evidenced by recent phone calls unfortunately timed to first pitches. Look, you all had 2004. Wasn't that enough?

We are in the throes of planning another summer holiday/Christmas visit to Florida. You can imagine how excited I am about that. Jorge should be traveling over with us and then is planning to remain in Florida after the holidays to get a few contracts underway. Like last year we may have another overnight in Tokyo, which nicely breaks up the trip, but unlike last year we are expecting to bring along Grice's friend, B. We traded B's mom four weeks of a whirlwind trip overseas for her daughter for four weeks caring for our dog. We definitely came out on top in that deal.

Speaking of animals, we have noticed a frilled-neck lizard hanging around the house. Early one Saturday morning for a photo I had Grice chase him around a tree trying to get him riled up enough to show off his frill. A friend happened to mention that they were particularly nasty creatures with very sharp claws who will climb right up and shred your person if it helps them get to where they want to go. So, sorry, no pics for you. On the friendlier animal scene, we've got a pair of blue kookaburras (not the laughing kind) we've been feeding, hoping to train them to come up and eat out of our hands one day.

We have the last round of our tennis club championships coming up this weekend and then I will be officially retiring from tennis. Elle is more interested in aikido right now and Grice may want to try out AFL. Sarabelle will probably continue with tennis, but she can try out for the team at school if she really wants to play.

Interesting Australian euphemisms we've recently encountered:

"Wobbly bits", as in "Do you have cellulite and other wobbly bits?" Seen in a magazine advertisement while waiting for our visa appointment, launching us into explosive giggles while trying unsuccessfully to be all serious for the crabby immigration people. (In spite of our less than serious attitude we still managed to get our Returning Resident Visas renewed, and for five years too!)

"Special cuddles", a very innocuous and roundabout way of saying "sex."

And incongruously, how's this for a friendly how do you do: "Keepin' ya knees togetha, love?"


I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

-- Abraham Lincoln