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Here’s a nice interview with R.E.M.’s Mike Mills as he reflects on Chronic Town twenty years after its release. (Link courtesy of Kevin.)

Sommelier, here I come!
The Snook and I almost missed our first wine-tasting class tonight because somebody misread the date on the acceptance letter. Tsk, tsk. Anyway, we’re doing this class through the Sydney Uni CCE with Huon Hooke, who’s this pretty famous Australian wine judge and writer. Tonight we learned all about how wine ages and why every wine doesn’t necessarily get better as it gets older. We tasted four different wines, two reds and two whites, and within each we had an older and younger version. (The oldest as a 20-year-old cabernet savignon. Snookums thought it was a bit past its peak though.) It was pretty cool for a novice like me, because comparing them like that made it easy to see the changes. I even managed to ask a good question: “If the big variable in how the wine ages – and whether it goes bad – is the cork, why the heck are we still using them?” Turns out Mr. Hooke is a big advocate of using other things, like plastic corks and screw tops. Huh. I also had a lot of fun watching the hoity-toity grown-ups spitting out each mouthful like professional tasters. Not me, babe. That wine was too good and expensive to waste. The “young” vintages were all, like, $60/bottle, and the older ones didn’t even have prices listed (because apparently the only way you get them is at auction). I believe wine exists to be drunk, so I downed ’em all. Lest you think I was the only lush, though, I’ll have you know that the woman on the other side of Snookums not only drained each glass before we even discussed it, she admonished the guy pouring for not giving her enough. I at least made a pretense of being there for the learnin’. 🙂

What a glorious spring day. Mmm, I wish you could smell our garden right now. Too bad that whole Internet odor thing was a bust. You’ll just have to look at these pictures I just took and pretend.

           

That first one is just a bit of the waterfall of jasmine that is cascading over the fence between our place and the neighbors’. It smells so amazing. A couple other houses on our street have it too, and you can smell it the second you open a door or window. That second picture is the little lemon tree Mama Snook got us last year. It’s doing much better in our garden than it was on our apartment balcony. In fact, it’s got some little buds and we thing it’s going to flower! The third picture shows some of the gigantic peace lilies we have growing in the back corner. It’s the same plant we used to have on our clothes dryer in London, except much bigger with several large flowers. And last is our neighbors’ lemon tree, which has dozens of large fruit the size of baseballs dangling from it. The closest branch is only a couple feet from the fence, so I’m hoping a stiff breeze might knock some over our way. 🙂

Notre Dame won their first game 22-0. GO IRISH!

In honor of the Salvador Dali exhibition opening in Sydney, the Herald has compiled a list of Sydney’s surreal masterpieces. I’ve seen the weird talking dog statue, but that’s pretty much it (other than Dance Dance Revolution, of course). I’d really like to go to the Grotta Capri Seafood Restaurant that was featured in Muriel’s Wedding. Is there anything surreal in your city?

Friday Five:

1. What’s your favorite piece of clothing that you currently own?
Hmmm. I’m not sure if it counts, but I love my panda shoes somethin’ fierce.

2. What piece of clothing do you most want to acquire?
A month or two ago I would’ve said a knee-length suede coat with (fake) fur at the collar and cuffs. Every girl in Sydney was wearing them this winter, yet every one I tried on was about three sizes too small. I can’t help it; I’ve got broad shoulders. So I gave up on that dream. Nowadays my clothing aspirations aren’t centered on any one specific garment. I’m all about getting down to a size 14 so I can shop in the damn frilly girls’ stores. I hate everything in their windows (it’s all pastel gypsy crap right now), but I hate even more the fact that even if I wanted to wear it, I couldn’t. So that’s what I want.

3. What piece of clothing can you not bring yourself to get rid of? Why?
It’s corny but… my high school letter jacket. I never wear it – in fact, I hardly ever wore it in high school, and it currently resides in my Mom’s basement – but earning that thing was a dream come true. You all know I was the big brain in high school. That’s all the more reason why I wanted to prove I could do something other than that. I wasn’t the greatest tennis player ever, but dammit I earned those varsity letters. (Although, if some greater power offered me the choice to trade the jacket for the body I had back then, I’d do it in a heart beat.)

4. What piece of clothing do you look your best in?
I had to ask the Snook. He says it’s my short black skirt and my long black calf boots. What a cheeky monkey.

5. What has been your biggest fashion accident?
Just check out any of my school pictures up until about 10th grade. Seriously. If it had stripes, or patches, or ribbons, or huge embroidered teddy bears, I probably wore it at some point. Of course, then I passed it on to my sister. 🙂

Oh yeah! I scored a massive 15/15 on this spelling quiz. The 1991 Lagrange County Spelling Bee Champion still has it. *patting self on back* (Link courtesy of Max.)

At last! I finally have Mac OS X 10.2 in my possession. During last weekend’s fruitless trip to the Apple Store I noticed that the Apple seminar road show was swinging through Sydney this week. Today I dragged the Snook down to the Convention Centre in Darling Harbour to check it out. What a haul! I got tons of free stuff: brochures, stickers, a gigantic Jaguar poster. Even better, when I bought the OS they gave me a $50 rebate coupon and a free T-shirt! Now I don’t feel so bad about missing out on the first day action. *grin* Anyway, it’s all installed and I’ve been having some fun playing around with the changes. The new iChat is especially interesting. Pictured here is my current desktop if you wanna check it out. (Yeah, I’m lovin’ the leopard skin.)

After the seminar we headed back out to the Harbour. It was such a beautiful day. I’d been in one of my blue “Why did we leave London?” funks but those never last long in the face of Sydney sunshine. Snookums caved to my whim and we took a ferry all the way around to Circular Quay, under the Bridge and near the Opera House. I never get tired of that. I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures. Here’s the Snook having a rest, a view of the city skyline, and a shot of the big scary entrance face at Luna Park. (Imagine going through that at night as a kid… “Can’t sleep. Clown’ll eat me!”)

       

Oh. My. God. CBS is making a reality television show about hillbillies. They’re going to transplant a real “rural, lower-middle class family” to a Beverly Hills mansion and watch the hilarity ensue. Isn’t that funny? Or do you all find this as completely offensive as I do? Why is it okay to make fun of this segment of the population? “Imagine the episode where they have to interview maids,” laughed CBS VP Ghen Maynard. Yeah, what a riot! Those idiots probably don’t know anything about maids! They probably eat squirrels and stuff! I could die laughing. It’s so fun to exploit poor people for amusement. Ooh, I’ve got another suggestion for CBS’s fall lineup: “The Real Jeffersons”. They could move a poor black family into a rich white apartment building and film the results. Comedy gold, my friends. Hey, I can’t wait for the episode where they try to buy crack from the doorman! Won’t that be funny? What, you mean it’s not socially acceptable to make cracks about black families? Yet it somehow is when they’re poor Appalachian farmers? Bite me, CBS.

(If you’re confused, that was all meant to be sarcasm. I really am pissed about the show and I’m leaving feedback at cbs.com right now.)

Why go to the effort of being a woman of substance, when you will get so much more attention by being a waif? That’s a damn good question.