Under the weather Down Under

I can't say what has been happening in Melbourne in the past week, because I haven't been outside much. Or make that at all. I got sick on Wednesday night and was laid up in bed for all of Thursday and all of Friday. I felt really guilty calling in sick to work because Thursdays and Fridays are our busiest deadline days, but I had a fever and I couldn't keep any food down. I stayed in bed from 8pm on Wednesday night until 8:30 am on Saturday. Leslie was very good to me and brought me chicken soup, or as much as I would eat, which wasn't very much. I still have sniffles and a cough, but the worst is definitely behind me. I haven't been sick like that in many years. I think maybe I should buy a winter coat. It's cold here, and all I have is a leather jacket (sunny and warm Australia, indeed).

Yesterday I was feeling better, and it was a good thing, too, as the last Harry Potter came out at 9 am yesterday (one good thing about being on Mars is that we got the book at 12.01 London time, at the respectable hour of 9.01 am here). I wasn't so sick anymore that I needed to be confined to the apartment, but I was so excited for the book that I just sat on the couch all day and read it. I finished the whole thing in one go. I'm not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet, but it was a satisfying ending.

Leslie went to take pictures of a soccer club last week and is doing up individual and team photos for them. He's collaborating with one of his classmates, and they've been very busy this week. While I've been lazy in bed he's been dealing with more than 80 pictures. They're due back to the club next week, so he's been spending pretty much all of his free time in front of the laptop correcting pictures. It would be great if he could get more of this kind of thing, team and school portraits. His classmate does a lot of them, and maybe he'll be able to collaborate with her again.

The cat is pretty well settled. When we went to the RSPCA the first time, he was there but we didn't choose him because we thought his long fur would be a problem and because his personal ad said "I would love to spend time exploring a garden," and we don't have a garden. When we went back and the cats we wanted were taken, the people there convinced us he might be okay with not going outside, as he seemed pretty lazy. I can now say, Jazz does not want to explore a garden. He doesn't want to explore anything beyond his blanket on the couch. He doesn't venture beyond the living room very often, although the doors are open and he'd be welcome to. We have the balcony doors open sometimes, and while Leslie can coax him out there sometimes, I think it's cold on his paws, as he comes back in pretty quickly. Lazy is an understatement for this cat. He just wants to lie on the couch and purr and be petted. Since that's what we want from him, it works out for all.

We went into the city to check out some light exhibitions last weekend. The one I have pictured here is a coral garden with lights inside. The exhibitions were on barges in the river. It was kind of an odd installation, but neat.

There's a ferris wheel near the river in the centre of the city, and we took a ride on that too. The view was pretty good from the top, and they gave you a good few goes-round. It looks neat at night, because it's all lit up with different patters. I took some pictures of it moving at different speeds with different coloured lights.

We also went to the National Gallery of Victoria two weeks ago to check out an exhibition devoted to sneakers. It was really odd to see an entire exhibition devoted to sneakers (Air Jordans through the years got their own display case - there must have been 20 pairs), to see runners held up as art. A lot of them were strange, a lot of them were funky, a lot of them made you remember certain times (like Converse All-Stars or Reebok Hi-tops), and a lot of them just looked like normal sneakers. It was a fun exhibition. I like art with a bit of whimsy.

It's a boy!

So, Cass and I adopted a cat- a male long-hair called Jazz. We'd been talking about it for a while and decided to start researching the possibility seriously a couple of weeks ago. Although it does represent a 13 year or so commitment we're hoping that it'll bring us closer together and get our relationship through these dark times. We've looked extensively into what it takes to transport animals out of Australia into either Europe or the US and discovered that it's actually quite an easy undertaking. The fact that Australia has no rabies would seem to help. According to their site, transporting a cat into the US is as simple as presenting your animal at customs and if it doesn't appear sick then you're free to take it in without quarantine. All of the RSPCA's cats come microchipped, which is essential for taking them to Europe. We saw the microchip scan in action - they really do scan the cats like library books, with a portable wand.

We went out to the RSPCA shelter in Burwood last Sunday as a preliminary scouting trip. We had emailed our estate agent to get her to ask the landlord if we could have a cat in the apartment. She had yet to reply, so we weren't exactly sure where we stood. We thought it would be a good idea to check the place out first though to see what the set up was like and what we were going to need. It wasn't as depressing as you might expect, at least not at the cat end of things. They had 5-6 big metal cages about 6ftx6ft in size. Each pen had a small wooden hut inside in which were housed 4-5 cats. You were free to wander in and out of each pen in order to take a look at all the cats and to see how they reacted to you. Each of the cats have their own profile on their web-site designed to give you an idea of which would be best suited to your home. They kind of read like personal ads and are written to appeal to your "awh" instincts. A typical one read "My name may be Chuckles but it's really no laughing matter to be homeless! I'm a sweet girl who's very nervous about being in this strange, noisy place. I just want a new home with someone to love me. I'll need to be mainly indoors."

They were all very well behaved. The worst that could be said of any of them was that they were a bit shy which is pretty understandable given the surroundings. I guess the really wild ones were euthanized upon arrival. The status of each was described alternatively as stray or surrendered (those being the unwanted ones that were signed over to the shelter). When we told them that we wanted our adoptee to be an indoor-only cat they recommended that we get a surrendered one as it was more likely not to have had a taste of life outside. We went from pen to pen and got acquainted with them all. We narrowed it down to two cats, a tabby/white female that was shy but affectionate and a tabby/grey male that seemed affectionate but was so lazy that it was hard to tell for sure. Cass favoured the female, I the male.

On Monday, we received an email from the estate agent giving us the all-clear. We tossed a coin and came up with the female. I called and tried to put a hold on it but they wouldn't let us as they wanted to give it the best chance of being adopted. We went out there again today to discover that our two short-listed ones had been taken already. In fact almost the whole cast had changed since the previous week- a good sign for the cats I guess. One that hadn't however was the one in our apartment right now, and was one that had caught our eye the previous week as it really is a beautiful looking cat. We were convinced that it would have been the first to go as it is quite friendly and very pretty. However it is long-haired so requires more maintenance than most. What put us off on the first round was that it's personal ad seemed to indicated that it would require a garden to wander around, but after talking with one of the attendants we convinced ourselves that this one would adapt quite well to an indoors lifestyle. One of the women who work there said that he seems to be a very lazy cat, which suits us down to the ground. She said he seemed like the kind of cat that would like to curl up on the couch and might not have any inkling to go exploring the great outdoors.

After stocking up on all our cat paraphernalia (a plastic carrier, a litter tray, food bowls, scratching post, cat basket, blanket, litter, toys and food) we took it home on the tram and have since then being let it settle in. It's very well behaved and never so much as mewed on the way back. Cass placed it in the litter box when we got it home to show it where it was, but it seemed to misinterpret this as an identification of its sleeping basket and wouldn't come out for a while. It's since been introduced to the basket but seems to prefer the relative darkness of the kitchen at the moment. It probably just needs a little time to adjust. He seems very obedient - if we put it someplace, it settles down and looks at us, like "okay, I'm here, what do you want me to do next?"

Fun, fun, fun till Daddy takes the T-bird away

Last weekend was a busy one. On Friday we went out to Northcote, a suburb about 45 minutes by tram from here. We went to see a band we've seen before, Buttered Loaf. We're becoming quite the Buttered Loaf groupies - we saw them at a free outdoor concert at the big market in town, at a bar in our neighbourhood, and now at a bar in Northcote. They have a groovy, jazzy sound, and it was a nice night out.

Saturday afternoon was mostly spent running errands of various kinds, and Saturday night we went to a 30th birthday party. The party was held for one of the girls in Leslie's course, and most of his friends from college were there. It was held in an events hall in an outer suburb - we had to take a train to get there. It started at 7, and there was dinner and dancing and drinks until well past 1. Lots of 80s and 90s music was played, the kind of songs that make you say "oh wow, I remember that song!" At least, they make you say that if you grew up in the 80s and 90s. The hostess described her music as "daggy," an Australian word meaning (as near as we can tell) out of style, uncool, a bit naff. Daggy music makes for great dancing, though, and we had fun partying till the wee hours.

On Sunday Leslie had a shoot to do with his friends, and I went to a charity football match with a co-worker and his friends. The footy match was between members of local bands and DJS on a local public radio station. I can't say what the shoot was like, but the football match was awesome. The match was on in an oval a few blocks from our house, and it was billed as "kid, dog and goat-friendly," and while I didn't see any goats, there were plenty of kids and dozens, maybe hundreds, of dogs. Doors opened three hours before the match, and there were a bunch of bands who played to entertain the crowd. Some of the bands playing in the pre-show were also players in the match. Everyone was all over the playing pitch before the match, listening to the music, throwing footballs around, playing with their dogs, playing with their kids. The match itself wasn't very serious football - some of the players' children were on the teams, so there wasn't a lot of tackling. The announcers were all mates with the players, so they made fun of them more than calling the match. Between quarters everyone swarmed the pitch again. It looked like the Sheeps Meadow in the height of summer with all the Frisbee playing and dogs having a ball. During the last quarter three streakers (2 men and a woman, all seemingly unconnected) took to the pitch in the middle of play. They ran around and turned cartwheels and bowed to the crowd. While they were on the field, the announcers didn't call the match at all, just what the streakers were doing. There were plenty of cops there, but when the streakers were through they just went off the pitch and put their clothes back on. No one got arrested, and no one was uptight about it. It was great fun.

In the evening Les and I went to the Astor to see a double bill of Paths of Glory and 12 Angry Men. Both were excellent, but I liked 12 Angry Men much more - in Paths of Glory all the good guys lose and nothing good happens to anyone.