Wild Flag

Matthew, Jon, Adrian and I saw the Portland band Wild Flag last night, and it was a great show. I was towards the front on Carrie's side, and I danced like a silly person.

Japanese Class

Konnichiwa. I started a beginners Japanese class last week. It seems good so far, as there are only 5 or 6 people in the class, and the teacher has been teaching Japanese for 25+ years. Wish me luck!

BTW, if you haven't already discovered the website Forvo, it's pretty cool. If a user has a word they don't know how to pronounce, they submit it, and another user (native-speaker of that language) records the requested word for the website.

Around the House

As I've already mentioned, we've had a lot of rain. All the moisture has caused some mold in our house, so we bought several containers of Damp Rid brand desiccant. One was a hanger-type, which we put in our wardrobe. Well, it's really working! I can't believe how much moisture it absorbed in only one week:

It works!

In other news, we finally got a microwave. We haven't had one in a year and a half, because we thought "maybe we don't really need one?" and also were holding out on buying yet another device with an Aussie plug that we'll have to get rid of when we move back to the USA. However, I got tired of not wanting to eat leftovers because reheating on the stove takes too long! So, we got one second-hand through Gumtree, an Aussie website that's similar to Craigslist. Hooray!

So convenient!

Finally, we also bought a second-hand wine fridge. (So much for restraint on extra devices!) Unfortunately, the only spot it fits gets a few hours of direct sunlight every day. So, Matthew was very crafty and made a decorative heat and light barrier out of some styrofoam, poster board and decorative paper.

So pretty!

Rainy Summer

You may have already heard me complaining on Google+ and FB that this summer has been quite rainy in Sydney. We really only got to the beach once or twice. :(

Chicago Daily News negatives collection, courtesy of Chicago History Museum.

Well, an article in today's Sydney Morning Herald totally backs me up:
- Sydney has not had a December so cool since 1960
- It has not been this wet since 1991
- Observatory Hill had 48 days of rain, the most since the bicentenary [1988]
- The summer hasn't been so overcast since 1954.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy we didn't have crazy hot days in the 40s like last summer, it was just a bit of a bummer we had so much rain. I guess Sydney didn't want us to feel homesick for Portland weather!

Anyway, hope you had a happy Leap Day, and now we're on to Autumn down here in the Southern Hemisphere.