Going to Sydney

Hola, amigos, it's been a while since I rapped atcha. Things have been very quiet down in the En Zed ("zed" is the crazy moon-language term used in New Zealand for the letter 'z'; this leads to things such as a video rental chain being called "Video Ezy", which, if you're not a barbaric savage, is pronounced "vid-ee-oh ehzz-ee", but here it's how it's spelled to pronounce as "vid-ee-oh ee-zee"). Or, if not quiet, at least uneventful. Sure, Kris had a birthday, and Francisco arrived, and Christopher got back from yoga-camp, and the weather has begun to truly reflect the season in this nightmare mirror-world of Winter-in-June, and our cat is still at-large. But little in the way of actual excitement has transpired.

That is, until now. Or at least, a few hours from now and continuing through to next Monday: Kris and I are going to Sydney, Australia for a long weekend. I'm not sure exactly what all we'll be doing, though Kris has a detailed itinerary laid out that includes attending the gala opening of a skate park, and something involving water (she wants me to pack a swimsuit, but the forecasted highs are in the mid-50s; that's about 13 degrees celcius for those more comfortable reckoning in crazy moon-measurements). We'll also be having lunch on Saturday at Tetsuya's with our friend Mel from Weta and her brother and his wife. Tetsuya's was ranked last year as the fourth best restaurant in the world, [20060705: corrected rank of Tetsuya's from 'fifth' to 'fourth' -- Joe]so HUGE thanks to Mel for letting us share her booking, which Kris and I were too retarded to make in time to get an actual reservation. We'll report on that when we get back. Aside from Tetsuya's, the only thing I really want to do is see the new Superman movie, which is why I'm not in charge of figuring out what to do on vacations.

Everyone keeps telling me what a great time we'll have there, and how envious they are of us taking this trip. I was pretty excited anyway, as I've wanted to go to Australia ever since I was a kid, and my dad talked about how great it was, based on the time he was there during his tour in Vietnam. So all this encouragement from folks that have been there has only stoked the fire of anticipation. But really, the reason we're going at all at this time is that it's so easy to get there. I think it's less than a four-hour flight, and the tickets were pretty cheap. It would have been criminal to NOT pop on over to Australia while we're in New Zealand.