Tonight’s episode of The Amazing Race (the Singapore one) brought back a lot of fond memories of our trip there in 2001. Check it out. We were at both the Fountain of Wealth and the Zoo! We didn’t swim with the manatees though. (At one point tonight I actually said out loud, “God, I hope a sea cow bites Teri on the ass.”) RIP Jill and John Vito.

Belated Friday Five:

1. What was your biggest accomplishment this year?
Probably the improvement in my health. I dropped thirty pounds and started running and lifting weights. I’m really proud of doing the Nike Women’s Classic 5K Run back in June, and I’m looking forward to improving my time on it again this coming year.

2. What was your biggest disappointment?
Not getting to go home to see my family and friends. Everybody’s moving on and doing new things (new babies, new families, new jobs) but I feel like I’m missing it. I’m optimistic about a summer visit though. I’ve got a job and I’m earning money, and the Snook and I have made plans to budget and save. It’ll be good.

3. Will you be making any New Year’s resolutions?
Doesn’t everybody? I do, but not in any sort of formal “write it down and stick to it” kind of way. I’d like to drop about twenty more pounds and get down to my target dress size. I’d also like to run a ten minute mile. I also plan to finally get all my financial stuff in order (taxes, student loans, etc.). Not the loftiest of goals, but hopefully achievable.

4. Where will you be at midnight? Do you wish you could be somewhere else?
I’ll be partying with a group of our friends in Sydney. (We’re actually not going to be far from the Bridge, so think of us when you see it all lit up with fireworks on TV.) I don’t think there’s anywhere I’d rather be. Christmas made me miss my family, but we’ve never had any special New Year’s traditions. I’m looking forward to ringing in my third new year with the Snook.

5. Aside from (possibly) staying up late, do you have any other New Year’s traditions?
Nope. We’re really boring like that.

Blog Meetup! Yesterday the Snook and I headed into Manly (a northern beach suburb) to meet up with Kristen and her fiancé Mark. It was a beautiful day to explore a new part of Sydney. (Note to future travelers: “Manly” is a misleading name. Most of the guys I saw were less “beefcake” and more “paunchy hairy middle-aged guys in Speedos”.) After walking the beach, we eventually found Kristen and Mark and headed off for some beer and food. We girls had a great time gossiping about our fellow bloggers (just kidding!), while the guys commiserated on being the lesser known partners of such fabulous blogging divas. Five hours and many drinks later, the Snook and I staggered off to catch our ferry home. It was a lot of fun.

The Snook and I just ordered tickets to the third day of the last Ashes test at the SCG next week. (Translation for Yanks: We’re going to watch the Australian cricket players kick some more English ass.) Here’s the cool part: Ticketek have introduced new “ezyTickets” that you print out on your computer. No more waiting to pick up at the box office! They get sent to you as PDFs and you print them out. They’re bar-coded and they’ve even got folding instructions so they’ll go through the regular turnstile scanners. How cool is that? See, this is the kinda stuff the Internet should be used for. It feels very tomorrow.

E-mail is working again. Grrr. It was related to the domain changes I made. Apparently I needed to redesignate the “catch-all” account for my site, but they never mentioned this anywhere in the instructions. So it’s fixed.

I was reading this little article about the Queen’s Christmas message (which we caught on TV here) when I got to the last paragraph and my jaw dropped. They killed off Jamie Mitchell on Eastenders? He was my favorite! What, did he get too popular and want to move on to other things? How did poor Sonia take it? I’ve been away from the show for far too long.

I’ve just discovered that e-mails to my w-g address are currently not going through. I’m changing some domain stuff, so hopefully that’s the source of the problem and it’ll be resolved soon. If you need to contact me in the meantime, there’s an alternate address here.

The diary of Samuel Pepys as a weblog. Neat! I studied Pepys in a class on 17th century literature. It was much better than I expected. Restoration England was a bawdy and exciting place. I especially like the footnotes that accompany this version. To answer John‘s question, I think this is genius.

Wow. I would love to have the entire text of “Romeo and Juliet” as a poster. What a cool idea. I wonder if it’s very hard to read though? (Link courtesy of Steve.)

Holy crap. Moire has alerted me to an old Hoosier tradition that dictates than if a younger sister gets married before an older one, the older has to dance in a pig trough at the younger’s wedding reception. I’m not kidding. Apparently they even made special stockings for the older sister to wear. Good grief.