Uninvited Guest

This morning when Diva was out for a surf and Kate and I were lazily having breakfast downstairs, Kate noticed that we had an uninvited guest on our back deck... after taking a few pictures and videos and then a brief moment of hysteria and intentions of calling animal control to remove our visitor we came to our senses, hopped on the internet and learned that he or she was a Coastal Carpet Python, indigenous to these parts of Australia, and pretty much harmless unless you are a rodent or small pet.



I thought it would be okay if we touched it, like just the tail, and told Kate this and then proceed to lightly touch its tail end only to have its head jerk up and me to scream bloody murder and then both us sprint into the house. After that it continued its journey from one end of the deck to the other and then went through a small hole in the fence into the neighbors yard or under their deck. Kate went over and told them that the python had entered their property and that it was not poisonous. The neighbor said they had rats in their backyard, so maybe the snake will eat the rats? Interesting morning to say the least.

It's another beautiful day here in Byron Shire after a wicked thunder and lightning storm last night that we witnessed from the Beachie. The light show was incredible, some of it looked like fireworks, and we watched the black storm cloud engulf us from across the bay. It was really quite something. Once the storm had settled down we found a table and waited for the band to start. There was a guy and some girls at the table next to ours. It looked like the guy had bought these girls beers as a means to pick them up. The girls were not impressed, left the half-full beers on the table and then walked off. The guy stood there looking confused for a while and then put his beer down and walked away too. Then some other people came over and took his table and then one of the bouncers came over to take away the beers but we told him not to as we thought this guy might come back. We moved the beers over to our table and then he came back and we explained what happened/why his beers had been moved. He looked kinda pissed and I sort of thought he might want to fight the guy who was sitting at what used to be his table. He just took one of the beers and walked off again though. After a few more minutes we poured all his abandoned beer into our cups and then hid the empty cups under the table. He returned a bit later, but was looking for his friend, not his beers. So free beer for us! hahaha

Post-Christmas

Our tree!

Well what a weird Christmas! I decided early on on Christmas morning that it really wasn’t Christmas, it was actually just a random day in the middle of June that we decided to have a summer Christmas party on.
On Christmas Eve we all got up early to go down to the special Xmas Eve Farmers Market. Diva picked up supplies for Christmas Day Brunch (We split the Christmas food: I did all the baking, Diva did brunch, and then Laurie did Christmas Dinner in the form of appetizers) and we wondered around for a while. The market was pretty busy, but not as crazy as others had warned us. After that we split up to get other last minute things done- like groceries, liquor, and last minute gifts! I swam and then went home and made the Christmas morning coffee cake, while Diva and Laurie went for a surf. It was pretty busy in town. A ton of last minute shopping. I swear people here woke up on Monday morning and thought to themselves: “Gawdammit, Christmas is on Thursday, isn’t it? I guess I should maybe do something about that.” I’m pretty sure the majority of this town’s 9,000 residents were out and about getting their Christmas shopping done.
Later we created a makeshift Christmess Tree out of a branch I'd pull off a pine type tree the night before. Then I had a Christmas Eve (Eggnog and Kahlua- the eggnog here is not surprisingly not the same. It tastes the same but the consistency is a lot thinner, like milk), Diva and Laurie had Coronas, as decorated our stockins and then proceeded to chop and cook vegetables for Christmas Dinner at the trailer park! A few of Laurie’s friends from home are living in Byron as well, and one couple live and work in one of the trailer parks. They invited us all to have turkey dinner on Christmas Eve and we were to bring the veggies. We made roast potatoes, parsnips, yams, carrots, and onions. Yummy. We also brought dessert in the form of Christmas Tim Tams. We were a little disappointed upon our arrival to the TP to learn that the turkey hadn’t been stuffed (no stuffing) and the gravy was out of a can. Sad day for Sally. Anyways, when we first got there it had just started pouring rain and the thunder and lightning was intense! Once the storm passed the snow shone briefly and we saw a rainbow! Dinner was very good and the turkey was excellent too, especially for first time turkey cooker Justin, and in what looked like a large toaster oven! The turkey was actually, mistakenly, cooked upside down, but in the end I think this really helped make the breast meat moist and was somewhat appropriate as we are Down Undah. So after dinner and several mojitos, a bottle of white wine, and a few beers hilarity ensued when a few glowing snowmen sent from Canada were violated.
We got home pretty late, around 1am, pretty drunk. Forgot to read ‘The Night Before Christmas,’ and neglected to put out cookies for Santa since we knew the cockroaches would definitely get to them before Santa arrived anyway.

On Christmas morning I woke up around 6:30am to the neighboring kids screams of Christmas joy and a brutal hangover. Later Koral and Pablo were up and being loud as usual around 8, so I was out of bed by 9:30am, first time before 10am in probably a good 6 or 7 years.
We started the day with coffee and presents. We decided a few weeks ago that we would stuff each others stocking with a limit of around $10 for each person. After presents Diva made brunch, which consisted of a fruit plate and an excellent giant omelet/frittata, and mimosas, and the coffee cake I’d made the day before. It was so good. I was hoping the mimosa would act as the hair of the dog or whatever that expression is, but I think it only made me feel worse. And then I brought out the candy tray and that only added to the hung feeling.

The aftermath

By this point the overcast sky had started showing some blue, so we headed down to the beach. Christmas on the beach only added to the feeling that it was decided by the town that Christmas was taking place on a random day in June. A lot of people wore Santa hats and a few had little Christmas trees sticking out of the sand. There was also a Borat surfing in a one-piece thong bathing suit, and some guy dancing with the Hazardous Surf sign. We spent about 4 hours on the beach and all got a tad burnt, but that’s only because it was so humid and hot out that we kept sweating off the sunscreen that we’d applied multiple times.

Borat posing with the life guards

We came home and Laurie prepared a spread of cheeses and crackers, veggies and dips, and other appetizer type foods. Along with the candy tray and a cookie tray we were pretty stuffed quite quickly. We ended the night by watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation while enjoying the Frozen Christmas Pudding that I'd made earlier in the week. It was basically just candy cane ice cream, but a pretty appropriate end to the day of Christmas on the beach!
I guess what learned- well learned isn’t the right word because I’m pretty sure that I’ve known this now for a few years, so it is more like a previous notion being reinforced- is that Christmas isn’t about presents, it’s about getting together with the people you love and eating good food. It’s about spending time with your family and doing all those little traditions you’ve established together over the years. And without those little things it just doesn’t seem right, hence it seeming like, to me, that today is a random couple days in June that we decided to have a Christmas themed 48 hours.

Now today is Boxing Day and I was hoping for big sales at all the cute little boutiques in town. I ended up only doing about half of town and there weren’t many sales but I still managed to buy two dresses that I sort of had had my eye on before and one was even $5 off the regular price, woooooooooo. Today has been pretty low key though, got up and went straight for the coffee cake and candy tray… probably not the best idea as I felt sick for a few hours after that. Got to webcam chat with the fam for a little this afternoon and that made me feel much better. I think I was having a bit of the post-Christmas-abroad-blues earlier. Now I think it’s time to hit the Bacardi and use up the rest of the mint for some mid-summer mojitos! Holla!

P.S. My back got a little sun burnt yesterday so my clever Merry Christmas is now semi-permanent. Weeeeeeeeeeee!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

With Love From Byron Bay, Australia!

Pre-Christmas

I would like to take some time to talk about Christmas. The first thing I'd like to do is comment on how different the culture here handles my favorite holiday. There's a big tree in town and some stores play Christmas music and force their employees to wear Santa hats, there are commericials and flyers in the paper about buying that perfect Christmas gift. But not many houses put up lights, there aren't big elaborate displays in the stores. Today was the first day that I noticed people doing holiday preparation type things. The post shop (not an office, a shop) was full of people buying gifts and sending things. But that was about it. No one seems stressed out about getting their Christmas shopping done, or rushing home to start the baking, or making big plans for the big day. It seems almost like a burden. Maybe it's just the situation I'm in. I live with a stripper who I'm pretty sure hasn't started buying for her son yet and doesn't know what she's doing on Christmas day yet. I'm in a town where people come to holiday and have things done for them while they're here. Maybe the rest of Australia isn't like Byron Bay. So needless to say, while you folks back in Ontario will be having a white Christmas, I'll be having a weird one! Anyways, the anti-climax-ness of the holiday season is making it easier to cope with, and the weather still has me convinced it's June 22nd, not Decemeber 22nd! I've still done a ton of Christmas baking though. Shortbread, sugar cookies, peanut butter balls, and I still need to do haystacks, my Mom's coffee cake (for Christmas morning), and the frozen Christmas pudding! We decorated the sugar cookies on Saturday. Thanks to Kate and Diva for documenting the event. Must say that it was my first time decorating Christmas cookies with a sweet tan and in a bikini.

Look how red our red was, amazing! The benefits of Australian food coloring...

Diva's punk snowman

I've watched Home Alone twice now and might watch it once more. We also rented The Family Stone, Polar Express, Elf, Love Actually, and Edward Scissorhands to help with the Christmas spirit. Unfortunately, I forgot to put ALL my Christmas music on this computer before I left as well as the original Grinch that I had saved on a CD.

In other news... Diva got back from WA early last week and yesterday Kate went to Canberra for Christmas at her Uncle's. On Saturday we had dessert for dinner in the form of Ice Cream Sundae's. I almost puked. We also got the internet back today and I found out why it had been disconnected in the first place... outstanding bills! I think the girl we are renting from might be very bad with money or conning a bunch of people. She gets free bread (day olds) delivered from a local bakery on Thursdays and a few local charities have come by to drop off Christmas care packages for her, like non-perishable food items, and she's not even here to receive them. Today's was a big laundry basket full of stuff from Christians Against Poverty. I don't get it.

That Two Month Hiatus was a Bad Idea

Yesterday I bought a season pass to the newly renovated 50m Byron Bay War Memorial Swimming Pool. It cost $63 and gives me unlimited swimming until May 2009. Even though I'll only be in Byron until early February, it still the best deal (15 ticket booklet is $37, 25 visits $55, and one visit $2.80), and I will go almost everyday to try to "get my money's worth." hahaha
Anyway, it was almost 2 months since I'd been in a pool until yesterday afternoon, and boy oh boy do I hurt today! I already went in this morning for a 3k and it was a little painful, not gonna lie! But the familiarity being back in a pool brings is worth it. Definately makes me feel more at home, more comfortable, something like that.
In other news I'm finally getting my own bicycletee today!

This Week in Byron...

Tallow Beach

Earlier this week Kate and I (Diva is still in WA) ventured to a beach we hadn’t been to yet- Tallow Beach. It is on the other side of the Lighthouse hill from town, technically not on the bay. Tallow Beach stretches 7 miles south down to Broken Head, past Suffolk Park and Baywood Chase. It is probably my favorite beach in Byron mainly because there weren’t many people on it. The surf was a little crazy though, just pounding. We didn’t go in.
The next day we took the bus to Mullumbimby, a little town about 20mins inland. It was a hot day, really humid and no breeze that far from the ocean, we were both dehydrated zombies by the end. BUT when we first got there we went to a little café for a snack and I had the BEST MUFFIN OF MY LIFE. It was mixed berry and crumbled when you touched it, it was so delicate but a little crunchy on the outside too! Heaven.

The Best Muffin of my LIFE!

Then we wandered around town, all 2 blocks of it, and then went to another café for lunch. The vibe here was really chill, it was open air and we had a significant sized lizard waddle over to our table at one point. We finished our Mullum adventure at the Chocolate shop, that turned out to be like any old Candy store. We were both a little disappointed but still had a super sugar binge, weeeeeeeeeee!

Our lunch date

On Thursday the shit hit the fan. The internet stopped working. We called the girl we are renting from, AMY, and asked if maybe she had forgotten to pay the bill or something, but she said she had it set up to automatically withdraw from her bank account when payments were due. So I said weird and she said she would look into it. I also asked her why some guy who claimed to be her daughter's father keeps calling the landline asking for her, when he has her mobile number? She said, oh he’s just an alcoholic and mentally unstable, so just ignore him. Mmmmmmkay. So the next day we text her asking if shes made any progress with the internet. She says the account has been “shut down” and one of us could try setting up an account in our name b/c it “mite be easier.” Rage. One of the reasons we moved in to this hellhole was because it included wireless internet! I looked into setting up a new account and the guy told me we wouldn’t have to pay the start-up fee or anything, but we would only want it for not even 2 months and we are paying Amy for bills already so she should be fixing this for us! This internet thing is turning into the straw that broke the camels back. There’s no internet, there are still roaches and it’s still filthy despite our hardcore cleaning efforts, AND there is still a stripper and her 4yr old son. Other then being a roof over our heads it’s not much else. We are going to look into moving in the new year into one of the caravan park’s self-contained cabins. Rent wouldn’t be much more, but it would be cleaner and have wireless. Yes, that’s right: We’d be going from living with a stripper to living in a trailer park. Trying to get the full Aussie experience here in Byron Bay. Did I mention the trailer park has plenty of hippies? And bearded dragons!

On to better news- yesterday was an awesome day!
First Laurie (Kate and Diva’s friend from Toronto who got here about a week ago and is planning to stay in Byron for about 6 months) and I went to brunch in town. It was excellent! Then we sat on the beach for a few hours. The sky was blue and the breeze was lovely! Finally, in late afternoon we met up with some of Laurie’s other friends from Canada (Go Team Canada!) at the Beachie to see Lisa Hunt perform. She did all covers from Motown to 70s disco. It was fucking wild! I'll post the videos I took soon, it's not working right now.

After dancing for about 2hours and a few beers we went to Legendz for pizza, had ice cream, and then called it a night. Good times.

LOST?

Do they look the same or am I going crazy...?

I guess they're not as similar when put side by side.
Anyway, HomeBrand is the 'no-name' brand of Woolworth's here in Oz and seeing all the HomeBrand boxes linging the shelves in Wooly's reminds me of the pantry in the hatch.

Ce Weekend

Well it has been an eventful weekend!
On Friday we had steak.
Saturday was humid as sh*t. I was going to get up early to do laundry and some errands, but since it was overcast and rain was a possible threat I ended up sitting around and not leaving the house until noon. I checked out a few warehouse/outlet type stores in the arts and industrial estate, which is basically our neighborhood. There was a store with running shoes for a decent price so if my Hawaiian ankle injury ever heals enough to allow me to run again I may just buy a pair. I also finally went to the Byron Bay Cookie Co. store and got a few bags of bakehouse seconds. Have yet to try them. Later that day Kate and I went to The Pass for a fellow Canadian's birthday BBQ, Heather, whom we met through Diva (they worked together for a short time here). Unfortunately we were unfashionably late as we arrived in the middle of the singing of Happy Birthday. Whoops. haha. We still had cake... and chicken kebabs. The cake was really good, glutten free but tasted REAL. However, she didn't open the bag of cookies we gave her. We though she was highly likely to share them with all.
After capturing some beautiful pics of the sunset, we biked back into town, downed our last 2 Stella's and then headed over to Kate's work- the Aquarius backpacker (aka hostel. She works in its cafe. It also has a bar.) for some sweet staff discount drinks. We had a few drinks there and met up with Kate's friend Laurie from Toronto, who was with a few of her friends from Canada and we all went down to Main Beach to drink some more gin. We ended up talking to a few schoolies. Cute little 17 year old boys, who told us they were taught in school that Toronto is the capital of Canada. tsk tsk Aussie educators. Then three guys came by asking if they could have one of our plastic cups. They ended up joining us, well Kate anyway, as they were from Chile, Columbia, and Switzerland, and Kate got to speak to them in 4 languages. She was very! excited about it. She didn't get any of their contact info though because the po-po showed up to bust people drinking in public aka almost everyone out on the beach (there were atleast 100). So Kate's foreign trio fled with their booze and the cop eventually came over but our gin was empty so we were fine. But one of Laurie's friends had to "tip out" his beer and the cop wanted this other guy to tip out half a mickey of JD that he had in his bag! Somehow that tragedy was avoided and it was time to go home. Kate was still pretty pumped about her multi-lingual experience on the drunk and helmetted bike ride home... so excited that when we got home and Koral- our housemate, who lives in the garage with her son, and who is an exotic dancer- was still up with her boyfriend and brother drinking, she had a few too many glasses of red wine and ended up on the vomit train. Just a short trip. We learned a lot about Koral though. The life story basically. She's a very sweet girl though and I feel bad about divulging in the details she revealed to us last night on such a public forum. So if you'd like to know more I will happily tell you in a more private manner :)

Today was the first Sunday of the month and that means the Byron Bay Market was on. The market is in a different town in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales every Sunday and Byron gets the 1st one. It rained for most of the morning so I didn't get to the market until probably 2 or 3pm. I regretted not going earlier almost as soon as I got there. It was so cool. So Byron Bay. From a few blocks away you could hear the beating of drums. There was a small drum circle with dancers in the middle, huddled under some trees near the entrance. I guess that this drum circle is usually larger and in the middle of the market field and sometimes has other entertainers like fire breathers, but the rain prevented that from happening today. Anyway, the first thing you see when you enter the market field is a row of food vendors and the smells are amazing and it all looks so good! I was mad with myself for having eaten before leaving the house and therefore not hungry. There was all kinds of other stalls set up- produce, jewelery, clothing, soap and bath products, bedding, massage, tarot reading, healing vibrations, etc etc. A truely Byron experience! I am already looking forward to it when it comes back in January! But I will hopefully go to one of the other towns next weekend.
After the market I walked back from town along the beach for the first time and two interesting things happened. 1. I saw a naked man walking along the beach. I was unware (but was told later) that the section of beach I was on allowed nudity. and 2. I almost stepped on a stingray.

The New Place

Well. We’re all moved in, we actually were a few days ago, since we really don’t have that much stuff accumulated. So by the end of Sunday we were done. About the new place… I’m going to be honest. I’ll start with the good news! YAY! The location is much better. It takes 10mins bike and 30mins walk to get to town and the beach is even closer! The IGA and bottle shop (booooze) is about 3mins bike, maybe 10mins walk. And we bought lights for our bikes so going to town after dark is possible and Kate and I have already completed the late night drunk bike ride home (Don’t worry parents, we wore our helmets)! Another positive about the place is that there is no road noise like the previous place, as we are now in a quiet burb and away from even our street since we’re Apt 3 in a row of 6 townhouse type units. The final good news is that the back deck is quite nice and relaxing. Oh! And in general there are almost NO mozzies here!
Ready for the bad news? Because there’s lots. The first being that there is a girl, Coral, probably early 20s, living in the converted garage with her son, who is about 4 years old and is loud like any 4 year should be. But we were not informed at any point in time previous to our arrival that this would be the case. If it had, we would probably have found another place. Second, the place is a total sty. At first we though Coral had just trashed the place in the first week she had lived here (she moved in a week prior to us). When we showed up to move in she said she had had a party the night before and hadn’t cleaned up yet. Little did we know that her party mess was the least of our problems. In general the place is a little dirty. Kids hand prints and general muck on the walls, carpets that have seen better days. But it’s the kitchen that is total sty and absolutely filthy. The counters and cupboards are covered in a layer of grime, most of the dishes, utensils, and other cookware look to have been put away without being cleaned. The floor is sticky. The fridge has an odor. The walls are DIRTY. Also, you should know that I have an innate disgust of cockroaches and as much as I’d like to say there is a “bit” of a roach problem, that would be a blatant lie. There is a cockroach problem, flat out. How Amy, the owner, lived in such a mess is a mystery to me. For the first few days I probably killed 6-12 roaches during my time in the kitchen per day, while cooking no less. We have gotten into the habit of rinsing and a lot of the time washing the dishes and cookware before we even use it. So far I have cleaned the cupboard doors and handles of about half the kitchen and the countertops and backsplash. Kate took on the big task (she got the rubber gloves) of cleaning out under the sink. We also put a little bowl of baking soda in the fridge and the smell in there seems to have improved. Coral bought roach traps and spray, so we placed the traps around the kitchen and I sprayed in all the cracks and cervices. I would like to think/hope that the problem is decreasing. I have seen a few bigger roaches, like 2cm-ish, what I classify as medium-small, come staggering out into the open looking like a drunk roach, obviously having drank the roach bait kool-aid. This morning I saw one flip on to its back and cease movement. I crushed it just to be sure. One place we didn’t spray was around the oven and stove top (the spray was highly flammable). They seem to be living in the cracks around the two appliances and are often seen crawling in and out of the burners (electric stove, woof. And no drip pans either, super woof) and there are some chard bodies down there too. I’ve gotten rid of roaches in Texas so I don’t see why I can’t get rid of them here. Well I can see actually. Coral is a single mother who seems to have a lot on her plate, and not cleaning up after herself in the kitchen could lead to never getting rid of the fuckers. Ridding of roaches takes total commitment: always wiping up your mess; doing your dishes, or at least rinsing them right away; taking out the garbage regularly; and not leaving puddles on the counter! Ugh. Okay, I don’t want to talk about roaches anymore or the bad smell in that room that has yet to go away :(

In other news:
-We had an excess of zucchini in the fridge (Diva took them from the old house cuz no one wanted them) so yesterday I made zucchini bread. So good!
-Diva is in Perth visiting Elliot until the 17th. His sister is getting married and Diva is Elliot’s date.
- We booked our trip to Tasmania in January! We will meet up with Chelsie and spend a week there!
-Christmas is less than 3 weeks away, but it feels like May in Texas to me here, so I might just skip it this year? Maybe I won’t be sad that I’m missing it at home if I just pretend it’s not happening?
-Yesterday I went on the Lighthouse walk. The lighthouse is up on a hill at the tip of the bay. I also stood on the most easterly point of mainland Australia on the way to the Lighthouse. Very beautiful views on the walk, pictures coming soon!
-On Saturday night Kate’s cousin was in town and we all went to see “Australia” the movie. I thought it was very good, although Nicole Kidman added nothing to the film. It made me want to visit Darwin... so I probably will in a few months!
-An odd thing about the new place that I forgot to mention above is that in a neighboring unit there is a piano or keyboard and every morning at 8am someone starts playing this piano. Every morning at almost the same time, always wakes me up since our window is open. Weird.
-I've got to start posting more often, these are getting way too long!