Weather Phenomenon

Last week while Atlanta was having its own weather problems, we were going through something a little strange in Australia. Wednesday morning I drove Josh into work and it was a really pretty blue sky at 6 am, but the radio hosts kept warning that a dust haze was going to make its way into the area. Neither Josh nor I knew what a dust haze was, but Josh said 'I bet that we don't even notice it.'

Fast forward 3 hours and this was the scene out the patio door.

It was very War of the Worlds. You could go outside and come in with dirt all in your nostrils and all over your skin.

Josh sent me a few pictures that they took out at the power station. He apparently had to spend a few hours out in this that morning (I stayed inside and worked).

We were under the impression that this was a normal thing to happen, but one of the guys that Josh works with says that he hasn't seen one this bad in over 20 years! I guess that we just got lucky.

It cleared out within the day and we had bright sunny skies again on Thursday and Friday. And then on Saturday, it rolled back in again (though not as bad). Josh climbed to near the top of the power station to watch this one come in. He said that it looked us like a thunderstorm except it was all dust.

Against our better judgment, we went out and played golf Saturday afternoon. You can look directly at the sun without hurting your eyes.

That's me playing golf in the dust. The white shorts. Not such a good plan.

And here's Josh cleaning up after we finished playing 9 holes. We didn't really realize how dirty it was Saturday until we went back out on Sunday (which was clear) and all of our stuff was covered in dust.

Josh also found some pretty cool satellite images of the dust haze that shows how big it really was. This thing stretched from Sydney to Brisbane which is like Atlanta to Michigan.

We love our town

I've mentioned before that we get a local paper once a week. I think that I could get another one if I wanted to pay, but free is a pretty good cost right now.

The paper that we get is only 24 pages long and they can stretch to find some news around here. The front page story this week was entitled 'Tractor trekkin''. What caught our eyes this week though was the picture on the back page.

I keep wondering if this young girl is proud to have her picture in the paper or completely embarrassed by the fact that her face is planted in the ground.

why I wasn't home if you called

Here is our normal morning routine:

• Josh wakes up at 4:10 and is out of bed by 4:15
• I sleep in while Josh takes a shower and gets dressed. I usually manage to roll out of bed by 4:45/4:50 when my watch goes off for the 2nd time that morning.
• I make Josh breakfast which he eats while getting a dose of morning Facebook and other internet. I also pack his lunch during this period.
• Josh goes to brush his teeth and put shoes on. I either sign into work (if I'm going to work at 5:30) or put gym clothes on, contacts in and brushe my own teeth (if I'm going to the gym at 5:30)
• We both leave the house around 5:20 and run by Jonathan's house to pick him up (his bike got stolen 2 weeks ago).
• I drop Josh and Jonathan off at the park around 5:25 and either head back home to work or off to the gym. If at the gym, I make it back home after a spin class or weights - usually by 6:50.

Here is an abbreviated version of what happened this morning:

• All bullets from 1 to 6 occurred according to schedule.
• Rebecca reenters her house at 10:15 am (almost 5 hours after she left).

Here's the deal. We have 2 sets of house keys and garage openers - like the one below.

Except mine is pink. Naturally. This is Josh's set and it hasn't left the counter since we got here. About 2 weeks after we arrived, I decided that I was worried about taking off with the car keys (which were on another key ring), shutting the door behind me and not having the house keys. So I attached my set to the car keys.

Which actually makes sense since I don't go many places without the car and if I go for a walk, I usually put a key outside (or leave the sliding door unlocked - ssshhhh). However, this morning, when we got to the park at 5:28, there was no bus. There were about 40 guys in yellow shirts standing around, but no bus. We waited about 10 minutes and one never came. Josh wasn't real keen on standing around waiting for it because his work jacket got stolen after he left it at work over the 4 day weekend. So I told them just to drop me off at the gym, they could take the car on to the power station and I'd just walk home after spin class.

So we arrived at the PCYC (my gym) and I took my gym pass off the key ring, but I forgot one other important item. And I didn't realize it until we were cooling down on the bikes and I started thinking about my walk home. Nice.

But I had a plan. I would go ahead and start my walk home.

• I was going to stop by the power station downtown office where the site services group (the ones who take care of us) work. Hopefully, they could give me a spare key or call the rental company to come meet me and let me in. It took me about 15 minutes to get there from the gym and I was not happy to see a sign on their window that they moved their offices out to the site.
• Secondly, I would go ahead and walk home and see if maybe one of the doors hadn't been shut tight or wasn't locked or a window was cracked. I really had my fingers crossed for this one. After another 30 minutes of walking, I was home and I had no luck.
• If the first 2 failed, then I figured that I could walk over to the Robinson's house (Bryan is Josh's boss) since if they were home, I knew that they would be up and use their phone to call the people that I needed to call. Luckily, Kathy and the kids were up and about and Bryan was at work for a meeting (this weekend is actually his off weekend), but she was expecting him back in about an hour (It was about 7:45 by this point). We were able to get in touch with Josh to give Bryan the key so that he could it back to Dalby to me. So I hung out at the Robinson's house and played with their kids and talked to Kathy until Bryan was able to get away from the site. He finally made it back around 10:15 and gave me a ride home.

Luckily it all worked out and I didn't get too upset about it at all. I even had a back-up plan in case I couldn't get to a phone at all. I had my purse with me so I would have just made a day in Dalby - brekky at McDonalds, coffee at The Coffee Club, a few hours reading at the library, lunch at the bakery, browsing the shops and back home. It would have been fine.

It's a good thing that I don't have to test that day in Dalby plan since our spare key is getting placed outside tonight.

In other news, look what arrived today! It only took 63 days.

Now....to put it all back together.

This and That

Today was the Queen's Birthday holiday. Obviously, it's not the Queen's real birthday, but they celebrate it on one day each year (I guess so that it doesn't change when there is new royalty). So most everyone had the day off today....and of course, all of the stores were closed. Except to us, it was just a regular ol' Monday. Josh still had to work. 'A' Shift had today off and so 'B' Shift will get next Monday off, which actually works out better since that gives both shifts a 4-day weekend.

As has become a habit, I drove Josh into work this weekend so he can get that extra 30 minutes of sleep. Both Friday and Saturday were really foggy mornings - our first here in Oz. On Friday, I was trying to find the gym after I dropped Josh off at the park and I almost missed it because of the darkness and the fog. On Saturday, Josh was able to take a few pictures. I apologize for the blurriness since apparently I was trying to hit every bump in the road.


I was happy to have someone in front of me so that I could kind of see what was coming up in the road. Plus, I figured that a kangaroo wouldn't be stupid enough to hop between the two of us.

On the way back home the sun started getting high enough to burn off all of the fog, but it was so pretty watching it rise. The picture below doesn't do it justice since I was zoomed in to try to avoid the sign indicating that bulls are for sale at the place I pulled off, but it's still kind of pretty.

Sunday after work, Josh and I met Jonanthan and Kelly over at the golf course for 9 holes. They are both beginners too and so we had agreed that we would just have fun (Really, you should see me play). Josh and I were both scared when it looked like Kelly was going to bogey the first hole, but she brought it down to our level after that. Josh did manage to bogey two holes again (he came so close to par) and this time it was only out of 6 holes instead of 9 so his percentage is getting much better. We only made it to 6 holes because we were walking it and there were 4 of us and did I mention that in 2 weeks it will be winter here so the sun goes down at 5:20?

We all had fun and I think that we'll definitely do it again. I think that Josh might have caught the golf bug since he's sitting on his computer right now looking at clubs. The only part that I didn't like was when the sun came down and the mosquitos came out and I came home with 21 bites! 21! Josh didn't get bitten once and in the 15 minutes of darkness, I got bit 21 times. Josh says that it's because I'm just too sweet.

Australian is Funny - Part 5

They call them road trains over here if there are 2 or more trailers attached to the cab. There can even be 3 or 4 trailers in a row. It's scary. But kind of fun to say 'Watch out for the road train'.

There are also signs warning you of the road trains.

25.05.2009 - Just an update

My younger sister complained that since I didn't post yesterday (in her words "Gave up blogging"), she didn't have anything to read while at work. Since it is our family's sole purpose not to upset Sweet Melissa, I figured that I better not skip two days in a row.

My camera battery died on me (again) so it's getting charged so no pictures with this post, but I realized that it's been awhile since I did just a generic update on how our lives are going and what we are up to. I also call this 'easy blogging'.

Josh finished his 8th day of work in a row today. This is the first time that he will have to do 11 days straight (he's done 10) and he seems to be making it through okay. I drove him into work both Saturday and Sunday so that we could both get a little more sleep (and because I had nothing else to do). I like driving out there because on the way back everything is waking up and it's really pretty looking at the open fields with the sun coming up. I saw a kangaroo both mornings (Josh saw one on Sunday) along with plenty of dead roos. Also, right near the power station there is this HUGE dead boar. It is the nastiest, grossest thing ever.

On the Saturdays and Sundays that he has to work, Josh only has to work 8 hours and gets off at 2:30. Which means that I should be at the park at 3 to pick him up. I somehow got it in my head that pick-up time was 3:30 and didn't realize it until I got to the park at 3:24 and there were no other vehicles there. Oops. He was almost finished with the ~1.5 miles when I caught up to him. I don't think that he would have been so nice if it had been raining.

Speaking of rain, only about 3 hours to the east of us, the coasts are getting battered by some storms. They show pictures on the news of cars in the sand and towns completely shut off due to the floods. We have been pretty lucky and only got 2 days of rain (Tuesday and Wednesday) last week which was welcomed since we were afraid that we wouldn't see real rain for awhile. Apparently when it rains too hard, the workers out on the power station get sent home at half-day since they can't do any work. Josh does "office work" in a trailer so he still had to do his full 10 hours. It would have been nice to get a call that he was coming home early, but I guess that he should put that college education to good use.

I have been busy working. I even worked today even though it's technically Memorial Day. I figured that since I had work to do and no one was here to entertain me, that I should just get it done. In the past few days, I've also gotten a few more bug bites on my feet. I have no clue what it is giving them to me. I've gotten a few as soon as I take my sneakers and socks off from working out and some in the middle of the night. You would think that it was a flea or something, but Josh isn't getting bitten and I'm not getting bit on a regular enough basis. Our best guess is that I'm getting some chiggers when I wear my flip-flops outside and the bites aren't showing up until later. It's completely ridiculous - especially considering how sensitive I am to insect bites.

We don't have any big plans for this upcoming weekend. I think that we'll take in a movie in Toowoomba on Friday and maybe drive up to the Bunya Mountains for a hike either Saturday or Sunday.

WINNER!

And the winner is.....Beth....who guessed EXACTLY the correct number of 128 tires. Though I was pretty impressed by Adam (Josh's brother) who did an actual calculation of how much load a standard 18 wheeler can handle to come up with a pretty close guess.

Josh sent me a picture of the whole trailer with the advice to count the chrome and to not forget the ones in between the guy's legs.

It's probably too small to count in this picture, but there are 16 rows of 8 tires each.

Beth - I'll send out your prize early next week after we're back from our weekend away.

Thursday(s) Excitement

On Thursday mornings, we get delivered our local newspaper. That's right - the newspaper only prints once a week. I'm talking SMALL town living here.

Here's what it looks like just after I've picked it up off of our yard.



It's very tightly rolled and then very tightly wrapped up with a saran-wrap like substance. My best guess is that they have some machine that does this though I do like to imagine some worker in the newspaper office rolling all the newspapers and then struggling with the saran wrap to get them securely protected.

And then you get the fun of unwinding it.



That's the newspaper completely unwrapped. And yet it stays curled up at the bottom.

So you have to use whatever you have lying around that's heavy enough to flatten it out.



I'm hoping by this afternoon that it's going to be flat enough to read.

Also THIS Thursday we got delivered our water cooler and our first water supply.

It's not plugged in yet since we seem to have a lack of electrical outlets in our house and thus I need to go by some more multiple-plugin strips. But yay! No more having to buy bottled water to drink.

Also, Thursdays is the day that the ice cream truck comes by. I haven't bought anything from it, but I have heard it is not your typical ice cream truck. Instead of just selling single treats, it sells boxes of treats. So you can go out and buy a whole week's worth of ice cream. I'm going to try it out one of these weeks!

Australian is funny - Part 3

Brekky starts at 6AM okay?

And I hope that world-wide symbolism ensures that all readers can easily tell what Hungry Jack's REALLY is.

The 1950's called - they want their women back.

When we agreed to move down under, I never knew that it meant that we were going to travel back in time.

Though, I doubt that in the 50's, it was this easy to get connected to the world.

Also, when I asked for the dishwasher to be fixed, I never meant for this to happen:

It doesn't bother Josh though since he says that he HAS an Australian dishwasher.

Australian is Funny - Part 2

As seen on the top of our rubbish bin.

Sorry for the no-post yesterday (and the lame one today). By 8:00 last night, I still had some work to be done and all I was thinking about was crawling into bed. Luckily, we got to sleep in until 6:30 (!) today. We went for a walk so I'll post some pics from that tomorrow (when Josh is back at work) and we drove out to the power station so that I would know how to get there in case of emergency and so I could have my first roo sighting. I'll have an update on that tomorrow as well.

Is there anything good on the telly?

Chances are if you are in my house, then the answer is no.

Those who know me might be clued into the fact that I like TV. It's not that I have-to, have-to watch it, but I'm one of those people that really appreciate the inventor of the DVR. On a Monday, you can record Gossip Girl AND J&K+8 AND How I Met Your Mother AND The Hills AND not get fussed at by your husband that you are wasting your life away watching crap TV (he does love HIMYM). You can simply wait until he's preoccupied with something else (the 360, computer, cleaning) and just catch up on everything you've recorded in the past week really fast!


Let's just say that this year in the almost Outback is going to make me appreciate those American rainy Saturdays where all you have to do is stay in the house.


We have 5 TV channels. Okay, really we have about 15 actual channels. But it's really just a ploy to make you think that you have more channels because REALLY you only get 5 broadcasts and they just decide to repeat them on some of the stations. It's all very strange really and I can't quite figure it out.


Luckily, I have already figured out the best times TO turn on the tube. See below.

Obviously, I turn it on at 5:30 in the morning once I get back from dropping Josh off and log on to check into work. Otherwise I would be crawling back into bed. Because getting up at 4:45 every morning? Seriously overrated.

The Today show listed is just like the Today show that we have back in the States. Almost. I actually like it even more than the American one. They do report on real news, but they also seem to play more practical jokes on each other. Also, at the end of every hour they have their "Hollywood Gossip Guy" come on with the latest juice. AND like every hour and a half they do a countdown of the 'most clicked' on the internet - some sort of rating of what everyone is watching on YouTube. And while I do want to hear the real news, it's also just plain funny to see them scare the co-host with a fake crocodile.

And then naturally, if I'm around, I might switch it on at noon. Not so much to watch, but more to just listen. It gets awfully quiet in this house and it's nice to hear American voices every so often.

What I don't get is what you see listed at 2:30 and 11:00 and what was actually playing at 5:00 when I took this picture - High Definition which actually stands for High Definition Demonstration. For an hour 4 to 5 times a day, all that plays on several stations is a video of pleasant looking mountains and rivers and people bicycling and flowers all dubbed over with music. It is the weirdest thing. And the kicker is that we are pulling straight cable from the wall so we're not even watching in high-def. Everything looks blurry and fuzzy. And it's on 8 channels! So everytime you flip, you keep getting the same thing over and over again!

Thank goodness for the internet and DVDs.