My parents' visit to Oz

It's been a busy week and a half here at DCoE, with my parents coming to Melbourne for a visit. Well, my father technically came here for a conference, but my mom tagged along and a fair amount of visiting was accomplished. While my dad was working, my mom and I checked out some of the local sights, including the National Gallery of Victoria art museum and the Melbourne Aquarium, which has awesome penguins. Anyone who doesn't like penguins must be a sociopath. One thing Melbourne has going for it is great food, and we enjoyed dinners at a steakhouse, a fun Greek restaurant where there are no menus and Greek men tell you what to eat, and a traveling dinner on the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant (which my parents, being fans of trains in general, LOVED). D handled The Meeting of the Parents quite well, even when crammed into a tiny table on a moving tram.

Over the weekend, we headed down the Mornington Peninsula, which is only a couple of hours drive (on the left!) from the city and has a lot of beautiful beach scenery and vineyards. Kind of like Cape Cod, only with better wine. The photos below are of us at Cape Schanck and a picture of one of the many vineyards we stopped at.




The next stop was a trip to Scottsdale, Tasmania where father had planned a visit with some Australian work colleagues. Scottsdale is a small, agricultural town and since they don’t get many visitors, especially at this time of the year, they went out of their way to keep us entertained. My mom and I drove out to the forest and hiked to St. Columba Falls (see photo) and then returned to town to join everyone for dinner at Barnbougle Dunes, which is apparently a links golf course (whatever that means) and made the list of the world’s top 100 golf courses. It was night time so we couldn’t see much. After that, we spent another couple of days hanging out in Melbourne, and then my parents headed off on the long flight home. I really enjoyed their visit- it was great to see them and nice to have a few days off from work with the opportunity for some sightseeing and whatnot.

A few of my favorite things

Melbourne is a great city, full of cool cafes, bars, restaurants, and shops where people like me end up spending loads of time and money. But my favorite things in the city aren't museums or landmarks or hipster hangouts, they're the quirky little details, like this old vinegar sign- apparently I'm not the only fan of the skipping vinegar girl.

Here are some more examples:


These neighborhood watch signs- they're all over the place, and something about the logo is just so 1970's, I can't help but love them. They also remind me of the old girl scouts logo. Tagalongs and samoas, anyone?


Melbourne in general and my neighborhood Fitzroy in particular are known for street art. I really like this one of a girl in old-fashioned clothes peeking around the corner.


An lastly, here's giant coin purse sculpture (and yep, that's my mom and I sitting atop it).

Things I found in my boyfriend's record collection

Many years ago in Australia, a teenage D collected records. I recently had the good fortune to peruse this gem of collection, which is essentially a treasure trove of 1980s nostalgia and hilarity. Here are photos we took of my ten favorites:

10. My sister Kerry had this on cassette and it ruled.

9. You know, I still dig Huey Lewis.








8. Bette Midler and the cure on the same album? Throbbin'!

7. Some music from this decade did age well.








6. Others, not so much. And now I have "Shake Your Love" stuck in my head.

5. D claims that Wham and Debbie Gibson belonged to his sister...






4. But he fully admits to purchasing the Dream a Little Dream soundtrack.











3. And now for something gayer than Wham- the English techno group Man to Man performing their club classic "Male Stripper." I love the cover art on this one...what goes well with shirtless men smoking? I know! The Leaning Tower of Pisa!








2. The first time was a great time, the second time was a blast...




and finally,








#1. U Can't Touch This.

DCoE's Return to Glory (coming soon)

Remember how my blog used to be awesome? (okay, my words) And now I hardly ever update anymore, and it's kind of lame? Well, all that's about to change with the arrival of....drumroll, please...my new laptop! See, my new work environment doesn't really allow for internet tomfoolery, and my old personal laptop has been on its last legs for months now...it's so slow I can barely send and email, let alone post pictures and blog entries. And I do have some ideas...like a photoessay pertaining to a certain boyfriend's hilarious record collections. And there are still durians to be had.

But for now, you can amuse yourselves with this collection of bad yearbook photos. (thanks, Jos!)

Quitting in style

Did you hear about the JetBlue flight attendant's dramatic exit? Fantastic. (except for the fact he may end up in jail...but maybe the chance to pull the emergency slide was worth it)

And now this story about a girl who quits her job via messages on a dry erase board that she emails to the office. I'm pretty sure it's fake (the girl looks WAY too much like one of those beautiful models who don a ponytail and glasses so they can play a misfit in a high school movie), but it's still pretty entertaining.

Links!

Some have you may remember the fascination I developed last year for the juggalos. Well, it hasn't faded. The infomerical for this year's "Gathering" is out and is as absurd as ever. Coolio and Gallagher at the same festival? Snap. And check out this news- juggalo culture has spread to Australia- I swear, I'm not responsible! (thanks for the link, Cupcake)

And now for something entirely different:

A travel article from the NYT about a guy traveling in Nicaragua with his parents. (thanks, Dan)