Rules of the House. So true. Our cats don’t want to curl up with us, though. They have both figured out that the funny metal thing at the end of the bed mysteriously gets hot at the same time every night, so they’ve taken to sleeping near it.

Babies, babies!
Congratulations to my brother Anthony and his wife Kara, who are expecting their third child. (Good grief! Between the Howards and the Carbos, we’ve now achieved an actual basketball team. Tall, hearty Midwestern stock, every single one of ’em!)

And additional congratulations to a knitter friend of mine in Sydney, who is expecting her second. (She hasn’t blogged it yet, so it’s still on the down-low.)

“Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth.” Fascinating article about people who reject vaccines, evolution, global warming, tobacco research, and more. (And yes, Mr. Snook, I count people who think that there is a secret cabal of evil dentists promoting the removal of wisdom teeth as a money-making scheme amongst the conspiracy theorists!)

Food Connect Sydney
Last night when I got home I headed over to Michael’s house to pick up our first box from Food Connect Sydney. We had previously gotten veggie boxes from the Chippendale Fresh Food Co-Op, but the Snook hasn’t been thrilled with the quality recently. It’s also more of a hike to pick them up at Central. When Michael blogged about Food Connect recently, we decided to give them a try. It’s a little more expensive, but they’ve got some nice perks (like managing your account online). Just about everything is certified organic too, which is nice. I also like their blog and the notes about where the food comes from. The quality looks good and it’s definitely convenient. So far so good!

Tourism Australia have premiered their new ad… and not everybody likes it. Count me in with Nick Bryant though: I think it’s pretty brilliant. As he puts it, “the rest of the world loves the very clichés which make many Australians cringe.” Yes, there’s more than a whiff of bogan about it. But there are a lot of tourists in the U.S. who don’t care about our sophisticated coffee culture or wineries or modern architecture. They want the postcard, and that’s what the ad is. When my family came to visit, they wanted to see kangaroos, dammit! There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not saying we have to perform some Epcot-version of Australianness for the tourists, but we do have to acknowledge that this stuff is a draw for them.