Some may notice that on the right hand side of this page in the ‘Links’ section there is a reference to my sister, Larissa’s, weblog – titled Talking to Myself. I just wanted to give her a bit more of a plug, but apart from that I would like to take this opportunity to comment on the name of her blog. I find that title interesting on two counts:

1. It implies she writes her entries for her own amusement and interest, but she seems to get more visitors than I do and many people read her site. Obviously the title is a lie, or at least, has become inaccurate.

2. I think a more interesting title would be ‘Talking to My Sock’.

That’s actually an in-joke; I misheard Larissa when she was telling me the name of the site the other day, but I think that ‘Talking to My Sock’ would be a very good name for a blog, even if it does conjure images of Sunday School puppets. I have a similar and also funny story about another mondegreen that happened last year, I think it was. I emailed with one of the developers of the ESV online, because I noticed a missing space between sentences in Luke 23:56. It turned out the problem was on another Bible site’s copy of the ESV online, but he did comment that “Ointments on the Sabbath” would be a cool name for a band. I was inclined to agree.

Incidentally, an article that Larissa wrote about Dan Brown books for the CASE journal is result number 6 when you Google for larissa johnson. We both thought that was pretty cool. Oh, and Tegan took the photo of Larissa that they used in the article. That’s cool too.

We’re there, and we like it. We’ve set up a new section of this site to record our adventures. Check it out here

Tegan and I have been in Adelaide for the last few days: Tuesday to Friday for a work conference, then Friday night to Sunday just to hang out, relax and do some sight-seeing. And the verdict: we really like it.

For the conference, we were staying in the Hilton where we had a decent but fairly plain room (I probably wouldn’t choose to stay there again). Since Friday nights we were in the Pacific International Suites on Hindmarsh square, which were quite nice. Everything was a bit smaller than at the Hilton, but they had been more recently renovated and were quite nice. We spent yesterday exploring around the CBD, which was good fun. We wandered through Rundle Mall, went to some decent book shops (always good), and spent a great few hours exploring the Central markets.

The Central Markets are, for us, one of the best things about Central Adelaide and had us wondering:
1. Why don’t we have one of these in Canberra?
2. Why don’t we live in Adelaide?

The answer to the second of those questions was: because we don’t have a good job, church or friends or family there, but Adelaide really has a number of things going for it. The city has a really good feel, and we found several good cafés and restaurants, not to mention good bookshops and essentially free wireless internet access in many places (or rather, it comes complimentary, so to speak, because we already have an unlimited account with Internode, the primary ISP involved in it). The city centre in Adelaide feels a bit like a cross between Sydney, Melbourne and a country town: it has the old sandstone buildings and feel of Sydney, the malls and the centralisation of Melbourne, and still a bit of a small-town feel, as everything is fairly close together, etc.

On the topic of the markets, there were several great things:
There was a wonderful little deli, coffee bar, pizza and pasta café called Haigh’s Chocolates, which is another great selling point.

All in all, we had a great time and you can see some of our photos here:
http://homepage.mac.com/mistertim/PhotoAlbum2.html

We had a lovely day yesterday up at the Centennial Winery in Bowral, celebrating my Grandmother’s birthday. It was a lovely afternoon with nine of us from the family there. The food was good, the wine was good, and the company and fun together was even better.
You can view photos of the afternoon here

On the ANZAC Day public holiday (Monday 26 April), about a dozen people from the Russian side of our family gathered at ‘Aunt’ Nina’s house in Figtree (near Wollongong). As usual, we had a great time all catching up over a long late lunch.

And naturally, Tegan having just come back from Hong Kong with new toys, had another chance to try out her new camera, so here are some photos: Link
(Note: this page doesn’t look all that nice yet, but I’ll fit it into the site better soon.)