It’s much harder to think of blog ideas when you’ve settled into a sense of normalcy. It feels as if at this point I’m blogging about regular life, which I doubt any of you were interested in when we lived in Arlington! Anyhoo, you’re here, so we might as well keep you entertained.

We’ve been keeping fairly busy since we got back from Hawaii. We spent a weekend up in the Yarra Valley (about 1.5 hours from Melbourne) and went on a winery tour and explored the town of Healesville.

We went to a show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.  We saw an Australian comedian and were able to understand most of his jokes – at this point last year, we would have been lost!

We made a 2nd annual appearance at the Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular, a beer festival where you can try all sort of wondrous beers that are hard to come by on a day-to-day basis here in Australia.  They even took a photo for us!

It was briefly mentioned in a previous post, but right before we went to Hawaii, we moved house.  We moved to South Yarra, which is a neighborhood about 3km away from our old place and it is closer to the city.  As our previous place was furnished and this one was not, we had to buy quite a bit of furniture.  Luckily IKEA is in Australia and we made good use of it. We’ve been trying to explore things nearby and get ourselves out of the house during these dark, damp winter months by re-implementing our weekly “Handel Happy Hour” on Wednesday nights.  We’ve found a few places we really like.

We have so much more space now and it is actually a detached single family home so it’s very quiet.  We live on a narrow one way street and now I’ve added parallel parking to my wrong-side driving skills. I’m walking 15 minutes to work every day through a park. We’re also closer to a train station – just 2 stops into the city – which is convenient for Sara when she’s actually working in the city.

Our first visitors are coming at the end of this month! We are super excited to share all we know about Melbourne with them. We’ll be really jealous of their US dollars basically getting a 30% discount on everything.  Free lodging and 30% discounts, why wouldn’t you come visit us? I mean, look at your room:

Now that the Australian winter has descended on us, we’re trying to figure out where to go for a warm holiday. There are a few spots in Australia we have on our short list, but then again, its only a 4.5 hour flight to get to Fiji.  Due to limited in-country competition, a lot of international flights are cheaper than some of the domestic options.  So, nothing is planned yet, but we will be heading somewhere warm.

I’ve now lived in Australia for a year. On a day to day basis, things are mostly the same, we live close to a city, we don’t drive much, etc. One main thing that is annoying is that everyone always knows you aren’t from here immediately. So now, in addition to “how tall are you?” I also get “where are you from?”

I’m generally a sports watching bloke, and I’m trying to get into their sports and enjoy watching cricket and footy. But I miss watching baseball, football and hockey. We catch a few games here and there live, but with a 14-16 hour time difference, our best hope is for Friday or Saturday night games in the US, which air at 10am or so the following morning here. For example, the Super Bowl started at 10am on a Monday morning. Not really feasible for Super-bowl like activities. Though on my way to work I saw a group of people in Drew Brees jerseys exiting a limo and heading to a bar. That is a definite thing here, just wear *any* NFL jersey to go watch a game. We met one of our Australian friends due to him wearing a Ben Roethlisberger jersey at a 4th of July party. Sara had to mock his choice and we became friends!

As far as playing sports goes, I really miss softball.  Boy do I enjoying socking dingers.  On the plus side, I’ve played a lot of basketball. I am flabbergasted that they support leagues every weeknight on 10 courts, whereas in DC, it was a struggle to even find a league.  It may shock you to know that I’ve been doing hot yoga two times a week for the last year as well.  I think it is what enables me to play basketball two times a week!

We are way behind on our US TV shows, we don’t have cable or a DVR (called a PVR here) – though most shows are available over free-to-air.  But, episodes sometimes don’t get here for a while and they are on at really odd times.  We have been able to finally watch a few series we never watched using Netflix – Parks and Rec and 30 Rock.

I continue to *love* that prices include tax and that there is (usually) no expectation of tips. It really simplifies life in so many ways. Though it does seem to lead to people (like bartenders) not really trying as hard. Also, we enjoy the Aussie way of ordering at a counter and then sitting down and having the food delivered. With prepaying like that (and no tipping) – once you are done, you just leave – no waiting around for a the check.

The “cafe culture” here continues to grow on me – there is a lot of variety in the all of the independent restaurants and many fewer chains. Makes for very interesting meals and leads to trying some new things.

I still haven’t gotten over beer pricing.