Worst Blogger EVER

So I have decided I am the WORST blogger ever. There has been SO much to talk about but I have been neglecting my blog in the worst way. Like a lot of things I started out with a plan: I'd blog every day. But slowly life sort of took over and I ended up doing other things instead of blogging.. We go to bed a lot earlier here (Sean has to be up at 6am) so I'm not up at night, when I typically would do a blog post. I also have a little schedule going on here where I piddle around in the morning, email, etc. then go off for the day to visit Brady (an hour each way) or go to the gym or head into the CBD. I typically get home around the time Sean is getting home from work and we'll cook dinner and watch Master Chef (it's on every night) then head to bed shortly after.

Anyway.. There have been so many things to report so I'll do a quick update.

• When Sean came to Sydney to meet me after I found the apartment we had an amazing weekend. We went to dinner one night and saw Charlize Theron!! The waiters apparently saw Sean lift a spoon of dessert into his mouth and watched it fall as he noticed Charlize Theron standing three feet from him. He claimed he recognized the chef and that is why he was so "Star Struck" so they told the chef and she came out and introduced herself to us.. It was hysterical! The meal was amazing as well!
• Sean loved the new apartment as much as I did! We took measurements and went to pick out some furniture to have delivered the day I arrive but we missed a key wall measurement so we couldn't order the couch but we did order the bed for our room and the guest room, as well as a futon for the third bedroom.
• I went to the Tim Burton exhibit at the ACMI (Museum in Melbourne) and it was awesome! They had the Bat mobile, the actual scissor hands from Edward Scissorhands and tons of amazing sketches. My favorite were Tim Burton's sketches from Beetlejuice. Remember the scene in the movie where the people who had died are in some office registering to the afterlife? They show all the people how they had died, so there is a football player carrying his head and a woman who had been cut in half, etc.? Anyway, he had a ton of sketches that were really cool, it was a great afternoon.
• Brady lost his voice at dog jail! Thank god he only has one day left!! A bunch of other little yippy dogs moved into his cell block and they are barking up a storm so Brady lost his voice.. We were reassured that he'd have it back in no time.
• Sean and I spent the afternoon in Manly and met some new friends who we were introduced to by two different people in the US. We were SO excited to meet other American expats and can't wait to hang it with them again soon.
• I met a friend of a friend who is awesome!! She is working in Sydney for a while from Boston and we went to a beer garden - it was great so I hope she sticks around Sydney for a while.
• Sean and I had an early dinner last week (Wed night) in the CBD and he got stopped in one of the random breath test operations that they have here. It was crazy!! I guess the alcohol limit is lower here too so it was good he didn't have any wine with dinner.
• We saw the nasty possum that lives in our wall. We were actually talking about how loud he had been lately while waiting for a cab outside and he ran by us in the dark - he is HUGE!!
• The possum woke us up SQUEALING the other night.. It was a terrible sound like listening to a small child have their fingers pulled off one by one.
• We went to an Australian Rules Football game on the 4th of July at Ethiad Stadium. It was very cool because we were guests of Australia Post and sat in their box so that was great but I didn't really follow the game. It's sort of like football/rugby/soccer and even basketball in a way.. Odd.
• We still LOVE Masterchef Australia
• I went to see Eclipse last weekend - LOVED it!
• I have stopped reading total crap and read Water for Elephants and Olive Kitteridge in the past two weeks. I loved them both and would recommend them as summer reading to anyone looking for something. I will warn that Olive Kitteridge is pretty depressing so if you're looking for a beach read I'd pick something else. I just started Wally Lamb's book "The Hour I First Believed" and am loving it so far (but how could you not love a book that takes place in part in your home town?).
• I got a haircut yesterday and got full on bangs.. AAah! I have done it before and sort of hated it but I needed a change & so far so good.
• I'm still walking a TON but haven't been to the gym religiously since the trip to Sydney b/c I have been doing other random "trips" during the week: (IKEA, bank, etc) and figured my walking would make up for the lack of gym..
• I found a dog sitter for Brady while we are in the US who is willing to stay with him at our apartment so that is huge (as long as he isn't a total freak when we meet him in person on Sunday)

I am sure I am leaving out a ton of updates but hopefully I will be better about blogging and will keep everyone more up to date.

Apartment Hunting Continued

...Continued from previous post.

After leaving the meth hotel we (the grumpy rental agent, who'll I will call Rhonda (as in Rotten Rhonda) and I) are on our way to property number 2, another Bondi beauty with water views! During the short drive Rhonda assured me that this property was much bigger. We pulled up to a building that was light colored brick on the outside and shaped like a perfect square, I would estimate it was built in the 60s or 70s. We entered through the front doors into a retro (or old) common area where the mailboxes are located. This apartment was also on the fifth or sixth floor so we trudged up the stairs (no lift). We arrived at the apartment door just as a really, really, old man came out of his apartment, I wondered how this old man made it up five to six flights of stairs on a regular basis - more power to him.

Rhonda unlocked the door to what I soon realized was a disco paradise. I am pretty sure that if Quentin Tarrantino was looking for a location to film Pulp Fiction 2 he'd end up at this apartment. There were wood paneled walls, olive green colored fixtures and there was brass EVERYWHERE. The place was much bigger than the last but it was just a mess. The kitchen had pineapple tiles and yellow appliances, the bedrooms had "built ins" but they were all mirror and that is TOO much mirror for me - it was the equivalent of an entire wall of mirrors in each bedroom. The bathroom was baby boy blue with brown and RUST - I have never seen such rust, there was rust in places I didn't even think could get rusty. It was the type of place that no amount of sprucing up would really help, you'd need a major overhaul AND it smelled.. kind of like mildew, mothballs and Electric Youth perfume that went bad, basically the smell of nightmares.

To be fair the view was pretty amazing, there was a small deck that viewed Bondi beach in the distance, but was that worth it? Was the distant view worth everything else? There was no air conditioning or washer/dryer (you'd have to share with the building) and it wasn't really all that close to the beach, it would still be a good twenty plus minute walk. In terms of neighborhood it was very residential, there were no grocery stores, restaurants or any signs of retail life in sight. All of this combined with the hefty price of $850/week made me shudder.. I knew these were only the first few places I had seen but I started to get a real feeling of dread, where the heck were we going to end up? Luckily Rhonda had one more property to show me in a totally different area so I had some hope.

The third place was VERY nice. It was a modern building with a lift, woo hoo! The apartment was brand new, central air, gorgeous bathrooms, a nice terrace, laundry room, stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, no complaints at all.. except the neighborhood. Our neighbors would be either car dealerships (high end at least) or hotels. There was no beach in walking distance or even restaurants. The closest grocery store was a cab ride away and the building was so big I didn't think we'd be able to "sneak" Brady in. It just didn't feel like "THE" place so the search was still on. I thanked rotten Rhonda and told her we'd be in touch and I zipped off to grab a cab to see another property.

The next few days were pretty similar to this. I saw a TON of properties in Paddington, Surrey Hills, Coogee and other neighborhoods. I fell in love with a terrace house in Paddington. It was SO cute and had tons of character, there was a nice patio and it was three stories. The problem was that the stairway was soo narrow that the only way you could get any furniture into the top two floors was through the windows and even that was iffy. I really liked the place but did it make sense for us right now? We needed a place that was semi modern because if we bought all of our furniture at an IKEA typed place it needed to look decent - if we were in a really old terrace house with molding our furniture would just look cheap and random. I was also torn about not living close to a beach. The neighborhoods I likes so far Paddington/Surrey Hills were great but they were close to the CBD so it felt like we'd be living in NYC again, not in Sydney and if we're only here for two years shouldn't we live up the beach lifestyle? I just couldn't imagine looking at one more place in Bondi and the places I saw in Coogee were not much nicer.

Luckily on Thursday I had an appointment scheduled to see a place in Bronte. Bronte is a great beach town that is close to Bondi but is more under the radar. The beach is gorgeous and is across the street from a park so it feels more secluded than the hussle and bustle of Bondi. I took a bus from the CBD and got off in this really cute little neighborhood that I immediately fell in love with. There was a little grocer, a flower shop, a veterinarian (woo hoo), a pet shop, gift stores, it was adorable. When the realtor showed up I prayed I liked the apartment because I already fell in love with the neighborhood. The apartment was PERFECT!!! Three bedrooms (one is tiny), two full baths (with heated towel racks and heated lamps), gorgeous wood floors, internal laundry, HUGE built in closets, CENTRAL AIR, a HUGE private patio with flowers/trees, totally enclosed, a dishwasher, everything was so new and modern, I wanted it!!

I called Sean from the patio and couldn't even make complete sentences I was blurting things out like: "Close to beach" - "Three bedrooms" - "Private Patio".. blah blah - he was so great - he basically said if I wanted it to put a deposit down and we'd grab it. I told the Realtor I wanted it! It all went pretty quickly from there. I took the applications, figured out the money I'd have to transfer and took a ton of pictures. By the time I left the apartment my head was spinning but I decided to take a walk down to the beach (15 min door to door from the apt) and I fell in love all over again. It was a perfect day, sunny, blue skies, warm but not hot and when I stumbled down the hill onto the beach I knew it was one of those really lucky days you get sometimes in life when things just work out - despite yourself.

I had brunch at a little cafe looking out over the beach, that would soon be "My beach" and felt really lucky and grateful.

Who Knew?

I am in Sydney! Woo Hoo! I love Sydney - it is amazing.. it's like the best thing about every US city wrapped into one. It's the beaches of LA/Malibu/Hawaii with the sophistication of San Fran and Boston and the hustle and bustle of NYC (in some parts).. It's totally unique but totally like other places. I love it!

I arrived yesterday (Tues) and pretty much JUMPED into apartment hunting. I didn't realize until yesterday that I have never really looked for an apartment before. When I moved to NYC it was basically an opportunity I fell into. A friend of a friend had an extra bedroom in her apartment so I grabbed it, then, six months later, a friend had a spare room that I jumped into. I stayed in that apartment until Sean and I were engaged and then, again, we fell into our place. Sean was put in Longview Place (where we lived in Waltham) for corporate housing and we ended up staying there for almost five years, until we just moved. So... I have never really researched neighborhoods or "settings" to decide where we'd live. I have never had to think about "Where is the closest grocery store" or "Where is the closest metro" or.. in Australia: "Is there a dishwasher" or "Is there a washer/dryer".. it's MUCH different here!

I did as much research as I could prior to arriving yesterday but I was still shocked. The first apartment I went into was in Paddington, a great little neighborhood with cafes, shops and parks very close to the CBD. The neighborhoods are made up of terrace houses which I loved because it would feel like we had our own place, rather than being in a big building. The first apartment I looked at (that was more expensive than where we lived in Waltham) looked like a place where even a college student would cringe. The walls were dirty, the carpets were stained and worn. There was no refrigerator (pretty standard here) and the washer/dryer were in the kitchen (again pretty standard). When I walked up the stairs to the bedroom I realized there were no closets (called built ins here) so the people had their clothes on racks - NO WAY!! I lived for five years in NYC with no closet and I will NOT do it again! That is all I had to see before I walked out.

I decided to stop for lunch before I met with the realtor who was going to take me to visit three more places. I found a great cafe and settled in, I really liked the neighborhood so I could totally imagine us living there. I enjoyed my fantastic salad and then made my way to meet the realtor. I walked into the office and she was at her desk (she didn't get up) and informed me that I was five minutes early and she had some work to finish so I could sit on the couch (not the typical Aussie friendliness but whatever).

"I suppose I'm driving," she said from her desk. I told her I assumed we'd take cabs/bus so she didn't need to drive. "No, it's fine, I'll drive, I just don't normally do that because it's not my job." - YIKES!! This was going to be a fun afternoon.

I assured her that she did NOT need to drive if she didn't want to but she said it was fine.. So we got into her car (she had to clean off the passenger seat) and took off to the first property in Bondi. The property was advertised as a two bedroom with water-views so I was excited to check it out. We pulled up to a block with some convenience stores and a market and parked on the street. There wasn't really a neighborhood but it was only a five minute walk to Bondi beach and the beach was definitely in view. She opened the door to the building and I tried to hide my horror. This building was like a meth hotel - SO old and dingy. Ripped floors, dirty walls and BONUS: NO elevator!! The apartment was on the sixth floor and they were full flights of stairs. We made it to the top with burning thighs and she opened the door to the place.

The entire apartment (bedrooms included) was about the size of a standard hotel room. The bedrooms somehow did have closets but they were really small. The living/kitchen/dining room barely fit a two seater couch and a tiny table. The kitchen was probably 2x3 and had a mini fridge with no dishwasher and no air conditioning. So this place would be PERFECT for a single dwarf without sweat glands who enjoys doing dishes. The realtor rattled off some facts about how it had recently been redone, blah blah and the price was ONLY: $850/week so $3400/month (hopefully the dwarf has a well paying job) and that was a GREAT price for the area - being so close to Bondi beach and all. So on hot summer days when I am hanging my head out the window since I have no air conditioning I can see the beach in the distance. NO THANKS.. I told her that I thought it was too small for my husband and I because we were accustomed to more space. She assured me the next property we were seeing would be bigger.

To be continued...

Sydney!

I am soo excited! I get to go to Sydney tomorrow to start looking for apartments and I can't wait!! I am going to look all over: Bondi, Manly, Paddington, Surrey Hills, Rose Bay, Bronte, the list goes on!! I have found some amazing places that I can't wait to see!

Also - Only 16 more days till Brady comes home - Woo Hoo!

Sean Guest Blog: Celtic's Loss

It’s raining here in Melbourne today (not a big surprise) so this is probably partially coming from that.

The Celtics loss is hitting me particularly hard. Though I know that it is rather ridiculous to be upset about something like this, I think it is more than just the standard Boston sports disappointment. My favorite quote about sports starts to put this in a bit of context I think:

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift.
--- Roger Angell

I watched the Celtics games online while sitting on a folding chair at a picnic table in an unheated manufacturing plant outside Melbourne, and it felt like I was sitting on my couch at home, or sitting with my brother, or my mate Bret, or my dad. For Game 7 about 5 of us from Boston who are here for the plant start up were sitting around a laptop, cheering and yelling, surrounded by confused Australians. It felt…right. When the Celtics were up by 13 in the third quarter I started thinking about parades, about “We Beat LA…Again” T-Shirts, and about calls home to talk about the win, the parade, the mood in Boston.

When they lost, I think it hit me for the first time that I am really away. Watching this run by the C’s, being connected with all my friends and family in the US as we watched the games at the same time, has kept me “in Boston”. So I guess for that I have to thank the Celtics. I just wish I was going to be watching a parade tomorrow and buying a “We Beat LA…Again” T-Shirt to keep the feeling going.

Liam

As most of you know we have two black cats, Fiona and Liam that we left back in Boston in the care of our wonderful pet sitter. We talked about bringing them with us but since the journey would be long and the stay in quarantine was expensive we decided it would be better for them to stay behind. Fiona is a great cat and loves other animals (except for Liam).. She is the type of cat that is more like a dog, she's affectionate, playful and loves attention. I adopted Fiona when I was still living in NYC so she has been with us for a long time.

When I first moved to Boston from NYC I thought it would be good to get a companion for Fiona since she was used to tons of attention and Sean and I would be working longer hours than before. I looked on Petfinder.com and found Liam (who was named Tad at the time) and fell in love. He was only a few months old and had already been returned from two adoptive homes. He was found in the woods a week after the rest of his litter and was VERY timid. I thought that he'd eventually come out of his shell and welcomed the challenge of getting him to open up. He was so tiny and cute I just knew that we'd found a new addition and friend for Fiona.

Fiona NEVER warmed up to Liam, she hissed at him, bullied him, ate his food and her own and pretty much made it so that all he could do was hide out under the bed or in his house that we had to put up on a table once Brady came along.

Brady TERRORIZED Liam from day one - even though Liam was twice his size. The poor thing really should have been in a home where he was the only pet, where there were no children and his owners didn't travel. He would have been ideal for a much older couple who didn't have grandchildren. Anyway, because of his personality we knew that he would never survive a trip to Australia, we had to sedate him in order to get him into a kennel to take him for his yearly vet check ups.

So when the day came to give him over to our pet sitter/his foster parent we were very concerned about how he'd do at his foster house. Our pet sitter knew Liam well because she had been watching him for years when we were away, still we were worried because she has two dogs and cats of her own. We told her that he'd likely hide under the couch or bed for the first week or so but then start slowly coming out. We were hopeful that without Brady around he'd be able to do well enough until we got back in two years.

Unfortunately last week we found out that after that first day Janan never saw Liam. She thought he had been hiding this whole time and got concerned. Because she was leaving food downstairs for both cats and the food was being eaten she assumed Liam was coming out when he was alone. She invited her mom, sister and boyfriend over to look high and low to find him but they couldn't. She thinks he could have gotten out as some point when she was outside with the other pets but he's definitely not in the house.

Sean and I are sad but everything happens for a reason and obviously Liam was NOT happy with the new arrangement. We are holding out hope that he will either return or has met a new person who will feed him and take care of him. No matter what we are so happy for the time we have had with Liam and hope for the best.

Long Time!

Wow! It has been a LONG time since my last post and I have been put to shame by some other bloggers! I have been reading a blog that a friend of a friend is writing who moved to Australia around the same time we did (She's in Sydney for work) and she makes me feel LAZY!

She pretty musts posts EVERY day and does as much as possible: http://vegemite-not.blogspot.com/

I am still waiting for Sean to post the details of our Great Ocean Road adventure (maybe I can get him to do that this weekend) but he has been pretty swamped with work. He gets up at 6:15am and doesn't normally get home until 7:00pm, part of that is due to traffic (it's terrible here).

So what have we been up to?!

Last weekend was a holiday weekend here "Queen's birthday Weekend" but we pretty much took it easy (for a change). We ordered in dinner on Friday night and caught up on Breaking Bad Season 2 - SO GOOD! Saturday we went to our brunch place (we have gone every Saturday) and then went out shopping in search of World Cup wear (Team Australia). Unfortunately the track coats were sold out in Sean's size so he got a scarf instead, scarves are big here for showing team colors. After that we went out to dinner with some people from the company to a Shri Lank-an restaurant that was very, very good. Dinner and drinks was fun so it ended up being a great Saturday night.

Sunday we met up with our only Aussie friends for brunch and then went home to hang out (it was a rainy, windy day). We spent the rest of the day planning my trip to Sydney (next week) where I'll start apartment hunting. I went to bed fairly early and Sean woke up at 4am to go into downtown Melbourne and watch the first game of the world cup in Federation Square (where they were showing it on a big screen). Unfortunately team Australia started losing to Germany early on so the scene was a bit deflated so Sean didn't stay for the whole game (although he did bet on it - another huge thing here). I will try to get Sean to post more details on this outing as well!

Monday we were invited to a dinner party at one of Sean's colleague's homes and it was fantastic. They have this amazing house in Melbourne that is much bigger than it appears because it has a HUGE underground living area. All of the food, wine and company was exceptional and it was a great night - it was so nice to talk to other Americans and other people that Sean works with.

This week I spent a lot of time looking for apartments online and starting to look for a job. In reality I only sent one resume out but I did reach out to a contact I had made in Sydney to try and arrange a meeting for next week.

Wednesday I went to the Immigration Museum, which was very interesting and is a must see for visitors to Melbourne. It just makes you realize what a young country Australia is and all of the ways that they tried to incentivise Europeans to move here as well as detour the Chinese. I could have stayed at the museum for quite a while but there were a few classrooms full of students under the age of nine that made it impossible to really focus in on one area for long.