Post elves and other projects

It's hard to believe how quickly Christmas is approaching! We have been very busy indeed. I've been fighting spring allergies which has included some long running headaches so it's been fairly blurry to me. Fortunately, today has been a great day... no headache and I've been catching up on a lot of things with able assistance from Bernard.

We had a goal of posting our Christmas package to the US by Friday. We didn't quite make it but were happy that we'd make it on Saturday by 2pm to the old post office in the Sydney CBD. Most post offices here are not open on the weekend. The finishing touches took longer than expected and we did not get there in record time so we found ourselves dashing to the post office doors just as the not-so-jolly postal employee was running (really) to lock the doors so we couldn't get in. He did open the door long enough to answer our question about alternate post offices that might be open with a resounding "no" that there was no other option (hmm... more later). As consolation, we carried our box through the streets and up the hill to The Australian pub where we had some yummy pizza, good Aussie beer and a lovely time sitting in the breezy shade reading the newspaper.

Sunday morning, I woke up before Bernard and thought for a bit about how I was disappointed that we'd missed posting the package. Then it occured to me that if any post office was likely to be open on the weekend, it would surely be near the airport. I poked around on the Australia Post website and found there is a post office in Terminal 1 at the international part of Sydney Airport open 6am to 8pm, 7 days per week. I woke Bernard with "hey! there's a post office open today!" We booked a car, breakfasted, showered, and were on our way... short term parking, quick and friendly service and we now have high hopes that our package will arrive before Christmas day. We then extended the car booking and headed down to Brighton-Le-Sands for a fish and chips (aka french fries) lunch in the shade at the beach. Very pleasant.

We spent much of Sunday evening reading contracts and trying to make wedding decisions before giving up and going to bed to mull it over some more. We will keep you posted as soon as there's something definite (and we hope that will be really soon now).

Besides work, the big accomplishment for today is that my AU citizenship application is now submitted... yay! Dual nationality for US citizens is possible as long as the person did not intend to give up their US citizenship. You've all heard me talk about this, I'll say it here again and I'll also be documenting this on paper... I do not intend to give up my US citizenship. I will be quite happy to be a citizen of both the USA and Australia.

That's all for now. Love to you all and goodnight/good morning!

The Pyrmont Growers Market

This is flowering gum from the growers market we went to on Saturday. It was the last session of that market before Christmas and it was packed with people. We usually go to stay a while and browse but knew this month would be crowded so we went for some specific things... and ended up with so much that we had to leave Bernard on the curb with the bags while I went for the car. We now have some pots of gorgeous herbs and are going to attempt growing them again... rosemary, thyme and shallots. Some of the other tasty treats were fresh goat cheese and smoked trout -- yum!

Some changes to the blog

Hi all,

I've made a few changes to the blog.

* Only the most recent day with post(s) will be viewable on the main page. Earlier posts will still be available by clicking "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page or by using the archive over on the side of the page.

* There's a feature that will send email to a group of people when a new post is added to the blog so you don't end up checking the webpage regularly only to repeatedly see that we are irregular about posting new bits. For a test, I've added our parents, sisters and Coby & Bob to receive these email alerts. We can easily add others, change your address to a preferred email address or remove you from list. Just let us know!

* I'm going to try posting by email from time to time which mostly means that you'll see some posts with a photo taken on my phone. There may be some fuzzy photos but this will give the opportunity to give updates while we're on the go.

Hope you're all well and jolly!

Cheers,
Heather

Thanksgiving in Sydney

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

After our 2 weekends of travel with the 3-day work week in between, the week leading up to Thanksgiving was a big week of catching up on work. Friday of Thanksgiving week is a long day for me since we cover a 12-hour shift (6am - 6pm) that day. The day was fairly quiet so I was able to leave a bit early. Bernard and I just relaxed on Friday night since we planned to cram a lot into the next day.

Just after waking on Saturday morning, we agreed on the spring cleaning goals for the day. We've had a bit of a bug problem and are not sure why it's taken so long to realize the major role that our ficus tree has been playing. This is the 4th plague visited on us by the tree... 4th!... but we resisted the urge to carry it to the curb. Problem sorted now... we hope. And we scrubbed walls, deep cleaned the couch, sorted and got rid of stuff, vacuumed... all good. We accomplished all of the goals thanks to Bernard who kept going when I had to shift to making our contributions for Thanksgiving dinner -- the perennially popular cranberry-orange relish and sweet potato souffle.

I sure miss spending Thanksgiving with my family but it's good to be able to spend it with friends. The annual dinner is hosted by Shilo, James and their son Connor. It's a lively affair with 17 adults at the table this year and 2 six-year olds wreaking havoc in the background (and under the table). We had a lovely time and then came straight home for a long snooze.