"Winter"

It's technically winter down under, which naturally means that the weather is only better than Rochester's about 80% of the time (here is a great picture of Lake Ontario near Rochester, which I assume was probably taken in late April, and the bike was stolen soon after).

It's been raining for about a week on and off, but it still hasn't dropped below 55F. As anyone who has lived in Rochester would know, this is shorts and t-shirts weather. For some reason though, people in Australia are all bundled up; I've even seen people in hats, gloves and scarves! The daylight hours certainly remind me of winter though; the sun rises at about quarter to 7AM, but sets a little before 5PM!

This means that yesterday, when I had to wake up several times before my hungover body allowed me to actually start performing the simplest of tasks, I got to experience a grand total of 2.5 hours of natural illumination. For perspective, that's shorter than the movie Gladiator (General to slave to gladiator to oh dear I've run out of daylight)*. Of course, that does segue nicely into a brief description of Friday night.

Now, I work at a fantastic institution (well it has been for the few days I've worked so far), but I was still not at all prepared for the extremely nice surprise on Friday of having my boss take all of us out for some very nice steaks and drinks at a nearby pub! On top of that, I ran into some of my Australian friends who were attending a 21st birthday celebration one floor up. So after all of my co-workers left (all of them are older and much more responsible than I), and I had imbibed probably a bit more than necessary, I crashed the party upstairs only to find I knew the party girl from my time in the Australian youth choir (I was never that good, but its a nice video).

A few reels of my memory are missing from that point on, but I got home safe and sound, met a bunch of nice people, and graciously let a friend know that her "teeth were too straight". I'm a nice guy like that.

*On an only barely related note, the longest song ever is much longer than that.