The Heat is On! June 4, 2006

Winter has finally arrived in Brisbane. Last week, it got down to 3 degrees Celcius in the night. Luckily, we have the luxury of central heating in our house. Tim came down saying how cold he was..."We must turn on some heat!"...but he was still wearing a pair of shorts. The mornings and evenings are quite cool, but the days are still spectacular - clear skies and 20 degrees. Perfect tennis weather.

We have had several get-togethers here over the past two weeks. We must be the only people in Australia without a barbeque grill. The parties were advertised as Barbequeless BBQs. People seemed very happy to come even though we didn't cook out in the Australian tradition. Everyone crammed in the kitchen as usual, but I made people go and sit on our new sofa just to make Tim see it was money well spent. No one commented on our decor or lack of it. The only thing that caused much talk and amazement was the fact that we had bananas in our house.

When North Queensland was hit with a dreadful hurricane a few months back, 90% of the banana crop of Australia was destoyed. The supermarkets have of course taken full advantage of this and have jacked up the prices accordingly. Bananas are now $9.99 (Australian) a kilo. Our guests were impressed I would throw my money around in such a fashion! Really, to be honest, I can't remember what bananas cost before the hurricane. And to be even more honest, I don't even know what an Australian dollar is worth. And even worse is I don't know what a kilo is in terms of pounds. I may be the only person in Australia without a grill and who is still buying bananas.

Last weekend I took Elliott and a friend to the Science Centre in Southbank. They had a great time there. I'm sure they got more exercise there than they would have at a park. Elliott threw a ball to see how fast it flew - he did this so many times, he was sore for days afterward. There was an exhibit that measured how fast you could run that they did a million times. I loved the fact that the museum had several exhibits that required a sick bucket! One spinning chair made people dizzy and then some bizarre walkway resulted in severe vertigo. Strategic trash cans were dotted around in case of vomiting. Now that's a good museum!

Sorry no photos this post. I'll try and remember to take some pictures of something interesting this next week.