That time of year

The passing of July brings a couple of near milestones to the Aussie Kail house this year. We celebrate 4 years of marriage and Josh's 29th birthday all on the 27th. Not quite the big numbers, but getting close. (Oof....30 next year!) Being in Australia helped us enjoy the celebration for nearly two days as we did dinner and presents here on the 27th, and then received congratulations and calls from family on the 27th in the US.....which is the 28th here - yes, Josh basically turned 29 twice.

Josh burned up some steaks, sweet potatoes and green beans for his birthday dinner this year - who knew that you actually COULD cook sweet potatoes for too long on the grill! Kristi found an amazing cake to celebrate the birthday and we received many thoughtful gifts and salutations. The cake is hard to describe, but comes down to a brownie base with mouse, cream and more chocolate on top - goes very well with a cappuccino in case you are curious. ;-)

We rented a car for the weekend intending to get out of the city, which meant we didn't have to rely on trams as a nice change. Originally we were to go see whales in Warnnambool, but something affected their migration so they were running late this year and hadn't arrived yet. Plan #2 was to go see the Penguin Parade Saturday, but that plan shifted a bit when Josh came down with more of a cold than we thought (after going up and down in health all week) and ended up spending all morning in bed instead of out training. The coach had already said to rest if Josh felt sick so he took the coach's advise and didn't do a darn thing until noon. That didn't stop Kristi from going out for her scheduled 14 mile run - which just made Josh more tired and stay in bed a little longer to rest on her behalf.

In the afternoon we took a trip to the Quilt and Craft Fair to pick up some supplies for our Australia scrapbook. It was inspirational to see what these folks did with yarn, beads and cloth, but it was also a bit overwhelming! There's only so many amazing squares, patterns and sewing gadgets that you can appreciate in one day and I think we achieved that easily. After the fair we decided to explore a bit and just pick any restaurant that we came across for dinner. We ended up at an Italian place in Moonee Ponds (North Melbourne), Marinelli's Restaurant, and had very nice meals - Pollo Della Casa (chicken and avocado linguine) and Calabrese (Olive, salami and capsicum) Gnocchi. The food was great and hit the spot after a long day exploring. Now at the end of the day its another piece of cake, a nice cappuccino and a movie to relax and get ready for more adventures tomorrow!

Teppanyaki & 3D

Transitioning into this new training schedule has been a bit of a challange in that we spend a fair bit of our time on bikes and treadmills and in the pool, leaving less time for the other things in our days. But this weekend we did manage to fit in a few fun outings.

On Friday night we met up with Kristi's colleague, Trudie, and her partner, David, for a Japanese Teppanyaki dinner experience. We had great fun watching the chef prepare our meal right before our eyes and we really enjoyed getting to know Trudie and Dave a bit better. The conversation flowed easily as Dave is a runner, Trudie enjoys knitting and cooking, and they both are fans of Harry Potter! They are also originally from New Zealand so they shared some insightful thoughts on travel planning.

Saturday we treated ourselves to the IMAX matinee of the new Harry Potter movie. It was more expensive than a regular cinema, but we were happy to pay a bit more to see the 20 minute fight scene in 3D! With a booked-out show we were nervous about getting good seats when our trip to the theater was slowed by an extremely pokey tram driver and a protest of Chinese communism that halted all downtown transport, but someone was watching over us because we were in the perfect spot in the que to be one of the first people through the "back" door in the theater that was opened to expedite seating. Needless to say we were quite happy in our primo seats!

Saturday night we were invited to a house warming party for another one of Kristi's colleagues, so we ventured out to Essendon and had great fun meeting other colleagues and their significant others. It made for a great end to a busy day!

Sunday brought long runs and long bike rides, followed by the typical needed things like laundry, a trip to the supermarket, cleaning, and coffee! (Have to say we thought we'd give Starbucks a go to see how it measured up - well, it didn't...we won't be going back!)

Fueling for Training

One week down and a lot of early mornings, but we've made it through so that's good. Some new things have been added to our daily diet - a good number of pills to make the body work better under the load of training. First off is a double-dose of Flaxseed oil for anti-inflammatory, a multi-vitamin for general health, vitamin C to boost the immune system and....well, I guess that is all of the normal ones. Though we did get to start the training with an anti-parasite to...umm...clear out the internals....nothing more to report there. My new coach believes that you have to keep the body well fueled and treat it like the racing animal that it is....similar to a race horse. You would de-worm a racehorse and give it the supplements it needs, so you should do the same for yourself. Seems to work pretty well because my energy levels have been very good so far.

Kristi is getting used to waking up early, though some days she just keeps an eye on me from bed while I drip away in front of the TV on the stationary trainer. Speaking of trainers, they're not cheap down here!! Instead of getting something new, when my bike got repaired the shop ended up having a used one to sell - which so far, though noisy and sometimes a bit smoky, has done the trick without breaking the bank. It was a very opportune time to need to replace a tire on my road bike though (along with the spoke and such), as the old tire now can get shredded by the trainer while saving the life of my tri bike's racing tires!

The trainer was only the first of our accomplishments this week - we also made our own powerbars! Kristi found a recipe online for some bars and we had most of the ingredients so gave it a go. The first batch tastes good and I'm looking forward to enjoying them on the bike and maybe sneaking one to munch on at work every once in a while. During our weekly market run we also picked up a bunch of dried fruit and nuts to add some flavor to the afternoon snacks that we pack - definitely looking forward to some of the mixes we made! (we came up with 8 different flavors using figs, pineapple, cranberries, banana chips, pecans, almonds, walnuts, apricots, pretzels and of course - prunes!) It was pretty surprising how many snack baggies the dried fruit we bought made up - goes to show that doing things at home can be healthy and relatively cheap!
All the training has had some effect on our schedules - up before 6, to bed before 11, and scaling back our wine consumption (though my coach has said that a glass a day is totally fine!) I even woke up before 6 on Saturday morning (though I did go back to sleep for a while!) :-)

Winter in Melbourne

We've reached the end of yet another weekend in Australia, filled with the normal activities: fruit and veg shopping, talking on the phone, running, calling people on the phone, biking, installing a new phone, cooking, checking phone messages, and cleaning the apartment. It's always nice to get in contact with family and friends, due to the time difference the best time to reach folks is over the weekends when we're home during the mornings and early-afternoons. Great talking with everyone and we look forward to catching up with you on the weekends - and if you haven't tried calling us I would recommend it, especially since we've got a new phone that has speakerphone!!!

In other news, we're looking forward to some upcoming travels that we have planned, and have now picked out some sporting goals for the next couple months that will keep both of us quite busy. We are going to travel down to Warnambool for our anniversary at the end of July and then the end of August takes us to Germany for a tour of the Rhine River valley. Our sporting goals include completing the Melbourne Marathon in October and then Josh has recently decided to try his hand at Ironman-distance triathlon starting with Ironman Western Australia on December 2. Its going to be a jam-packed couple of months and has already started with a long run on Saturday, and a bike-run this morning for Josh. The run went fine, and the bike-run went alright for Josh though his bike needed a doctor afterwards with a broken spoke, a flat tire, and an almost-dead chain. Hopefully this means that there won't be further trouble for the rest of training, but at this point who knows!

This coming week brings more winter to Melbourne, 14 degrees (C) and a chance of rain every day. We're still in a major drought, but it definitely seems damp all the time! Our friends from the UK tell us that its like a pleasant London spring/summer - which tells us that we maybe shouldn't visit the UK anytime soon ;-)

Take care all, and do keep in touch!

Bollywood Night at The Roti Man

Always up for an adventure, we found a new Indian restaurant that was advetising a 'Bollywood Night' for last weekend. Being only somewhat familiar with the term Bollywood, and also still being pretty new to Indian food, we felt it would be best to not try it alone. Luckily Charlene and Ian stepped up and we had a great time. All the food was amazing, tasting even better than it looked, and the entertainment was really a lot of fun to watch!
Overall an enjoyable evening was had by all (even though Josh had to get up and dance) and we're now inspired to track down some Bollywood-style movies on our next trip to the video store in Albert Park! If you do get a chance to experience Bollywood in any form, we would highly recommend giving it a try.

Happy Fourth of July!

Josh here, wishing everyone a happy holiday and a great break from work. I know it's a bit early but hey, when I wake up tomorrow it's the Fourth so close enough! Since fireworks are only legal in Canberra and we didn't have time to make the trip there today, Kristi decided to celebrate with the next best thing - Patriotic Fruit Pizza. The plan was to bring the treat to morning tea at work in celebration of July 4th, and we began prep work last weekend getting things ready.

Recipe.....check
Necessary cookware.....check
Mixer.....hmmm......no
Ingredients......hmmm......no - Guess there's some shopping to be done!

We bought some ingredients at the market, then Kristi picked up the dry goods at the grocery. Since we didn't have a hand mixer, she found one of those too - who knew that the grocery was the place to buy small appliances?! Well, in actuality it still isn't. By the time I got home from work the mixer had died, all the windows were open to the outside (it's winter here still by the way), the fans were running, and Kristi was trying to clean out burned chunks of crust from the oven (pretty funny really). Turns out that Aussie sugar is a bit different which led to an odd crust consistency, causing the crust to run over the edges of the pan while cooking, starting a fast burn which then turned into a major-smoke, and I missed all of it...Darn! Luckily the crust did end up getting cooked enough but definately wasn't up to par for sharing at tea. Instead we just enjoyed it ourselves for desert and tried to think of ways to avoid the burning, smoking, utterly American Fourth of July experience next year!

Upon further contemplation of the evening's events, Kristi came to the realization that she may have also miscalculated the amount of butter she added to the recipe when making the conversion to metric...good grief!

Back on Track

We've got some catching up to do with a busy week at work just finishing and us not having talked about our recent adventures! After a couple weekends of exploring on our own, we decided to meet up with our friends Charlene and Ian last weekend for a trip to an arts market and Fitzroy. The day turned out perfect for being inside, with the constant threat of drizzle and generally being grey and cool. We started out with a trip to the Melbourne Museum where we saw the IMAX show 'Deep Sea 3D' which was really quite an experience - nothing like a sea of 10 foot tall jellyfish slowly bobbing themselves right off the screen and into your lap! The main attraction at the museum is the 'Great Wall of China' exhibit which is making its way around the world. Lots of great pictures and facts about the wall, along with very educational videos showing re-enactments of how the wall would be built and highlighting some of the preservation efforts underway to restore the wall to its previous splendor. The pictures and artifacts really helped move this up our list of 'things to see' so who knows maybe we'll have a blog about China on here someday! The rest of the museum is fairly constant, but Josh (as normal) wanted to spend some time in the bug display and got up close and personal with an ant colony - such busy little guys!

After seeing most of what the museum had to offer, we met up with Charlene and Ian to check out the Rose Street Arts Market - which is in Fitzroy and runs each Saturday. There were all sorts of oddities for sale, we just happened to pick up a Frank Sinatra record....that had been turned into a decorative bowl! After arts, we wandered up and down Brunswick Street - stopping in little galleries, clothing stores (and bike shops for Josh) as we went along. Eventually we found our way to some appetizers in one place, and eventually dinner at a Greek restaurant recommended by one of Kristi's colleagues. The suggestions from the waiter were fantastic and our first experience of stuffed zucchini flowers was very good. Dinner was followed by some hot chocolate (the serious kind, not the watered down 'powder from a pouch' kind you find in the US) and then back to our place for more beverages and some board games. All-in-all a great day exploring and fun hanging out with friends!