Lisa found some photographs taken of me shortly after Aussiecon Three in 1999. We'd just won the 2002 Worldcon bid, but I did have a short time post-convention to go indulge my other hobby.

( Puffing Billy )

A good thing about being home these two weeks is that I can watch the Australian Open coverage on WatchESPN. That's also the bad thing, because it leads me to stay up too late watching matches. So far, our serviceable-but-not-spectacular DSL service is managing to deliver the tennis from Melbourne. I did also sign up for the Tennis Channel ( Read more... )

It's Australian Open time again, which is the Tennis grand slam whose matches happen at times actually convenient for me to watch, with the day sessions starting at 4 PM Pacific and the night sessions available on replay when I get up in the morning. I can run the night session replay as background on my other monitor while working. And working I ( Read more... )

I rarely remember my dreams, but this morning I awoke to one that was strangely vivid and somewhat head-scratching, so I'm going to see if I can get the details down before I do forget it.

( Eventually one too many implausibilities... )

I fell asleep last night during the first set of the Australian Open men's final. I'm glad that when I woke up I didn't immediately turn the set back on, because there's a chance I might have tuned in during the trophy presentation; that's how long the match lasted. I wondered why the match wasn't showing as available for replay on WatchESPN.com ( Read more... )

When I re-entered the USA at LAX on Sunday, I dutifully declared the food items I had brought with me: chocolate, coffee, and tea, none of which raised any hackles of the customs/ag inspector. I asked if Australian honey was indeed on the banned list, and the inspector said that he knew of no such ban and would have passed any honey I'd brought ( Read more... )

The final couple of legs of my long trip home were BART from SFO (two train changes plus a 30 minute delay because of signal problems at Bay Point), which thus took longer than the entire flight MEL-SYD, and a short taxi ride enlivened by the driver having to ask me what the usual fare was on account of he was somewhat transparently trying to cheat ( Read more... )

I have about five minutes here in the United Airlines Red Carpet Club at Melbourne Airport before they call my flight and where I can take advantage of the free (gasp) internet access. I'm checked in and terrorized, have been told I'm allowed to leave the country, and divested of all but AU$0.20 after passing through Duty Free. It's a pity I'm not ( Read more... )

I got back to the hotel tonight early enough to watch the Australia-New Zealand rugby match tonight. In honor of the Bledisloe Cup match tonight, I wore my USA Rugby polo shirt around today, but nobody commented on it ( Read more... )

I spent yesterday taking it as easy as I possibly could and applying copious amounts of ointment to my badly-sunburned legs. Note to self: Do not ever again wear shorts or go swimming during bright, sunny days without applying lots and lots of the high-goop-factor sunscreen. I think this is probably the second-worst sunburn I've ever had in my life ( Read more... )