"I Never Get Sick"

Famous last words... 


Either


1.  It's taking me a while to acclimate to Sydney germs


OR


2.  Walking in the rain really does make you sick


I've got my second cold coming on since we got here.  Sucks.

Normal Business Hours?

I went to see "Say a Little Prayer" at the Chatswood RSL today.  It is basically a large room with a bar at one end and a stage in the middle.  Quite an interesting afternoon.  It was over at about 4pm so I decided to go over to the mall for a tiny bit of retail therapy at Myer (a department store).  After that, I remembered that I needed some items from Priceline.  I thought after Priceline I could walk over to Muffin Break and get a couple of lovely muffins for Mr. Smith and I.  Heck, I could even pick up a Boost fruit smoothie for the train ride home.

Suddenly I'm being coaxed out of the Priceline to this:

A mall.

Saturday.

5:30pm.

Deserted.

Huh?

So I went home.  I ended up getting a sweet Korean pancake for the train ride home.  Delish!  How can you go wrong with cinnamon and sugar?

Rock the Ballet

Mr. Smith and I attended Rock the Ballet on Thursday night at the State Theatre in Sydney's CBD.  I promised that I would give it a review, so here goes.


OMG!  What an awesome show!  There were six male dancers and one female dancer.  They were all great.  The second "half" of the show was even more spectacular than the first.  They had a lot of Michael Jackson songs.  You know, the usual hits that everyone expects to hear from MJ.  But there was one that reminded me how much I missed him...  In the Closet


And of course they closed the show with the men dancing to I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred.


Final recommendation is to buy a ticket already.  LOL!

Will You Pledge?

Just saw a commercial on TV.  The commercial aims to get the people of Australia to commit to performing one million acts of kindness, one person at a time.  It's simply called 1 Million Acts of Kindness.  When I logged in, there were 180,704 promises made.  Mine will be number 180,705.


What can you do?

Ahhh... a Night Out in the Theatre

Guess what?  It's raining again.  Thought I would take a moment to talk about the musical from Wednesday night.  We attended An Officer and a Gentleman: The Musical at the Sydney Lyric in Pyrmont.  Yes, it was raining.  They say that winter is the rainy season here in Sydney, but really this is too much.  I cannot believe how much it rains here.

But I digress.


We walked over to the Lyric (the rain had let up for a second) and had dinner in one of the "food court" type restaurants.  But really the food was awesome.  Nothing like fast food or anything like that.  It was a Chinese place and then afterward we got dessert and coffee at a little cafe.  So far, so good.


We made our way over to the Lyric.  I should explain for those of you who don't know.  The Lyric is located in the Star Casino.  It's actually spread over two buildings, I think.  So that's why they have all the choices for dinner inside.  Pretty convenient, actually.  There are sit-down restaurants inside, too, but the food court is more our speed, if you catch my drift.  And if you know us, you do.  :)


So, we walked over to the Lyric and go inside.  Mr. Smith had a term for the seating style (he's the expert), maybe he said colonial?  No, that's not right.  But I'm pretty sure it starts with the hard "c" sound.  And now you'll never know because Mr. Smith doesn't read my blog.  Anyway it just means that the seats go all the way across the row with no breaks in the middle for an aisle.  But there was plenty of legroom.  If you've ever been to a Broadway theatre, you know what I mean.  I could stretch out here.  And Mr. Smith's knees weren't in his chin.  :)


The musical pretty much followed the movie exactly.  The music was not very memorable until the last song, "Up Where We Belong," and the mix didn't seem right for some of the songs (the music was too loud for their voices to be heard).  But the performers were excellent.  Especially the guy who played the sarge.  Lovely singing voices.


It wasn't until after intermission that I realized that they didn't hand out any Playbills.  I did find a flyer hanging in a pocket outside that listed the main character's real names, but nothing like what you get on Broadway.  I don't know if this is common in Australia or just at the Lyric or just for this musical.  I guess I'll find out more as we go along.


On Thursday we are going to see Rasta Thomas' Rock the Ballet at State Theatre.  Here is a blurb from the website:

Direct from New York and following on from sell out seasons in Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna and Frankfurt comes Rasta Thomas’Rock the Ballet starring the Bad Boys of Dance. Rock the Ballet is a fusion of classic Direct from New York and following on from sell out seasons in Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna and Frankfurt comes Rasta Thomas’Rock the Ballet starring the Bad Boys of Dance. Rock the Ballet is a fusion of classic Ballet technique blended with the excitement of musical theatre, hip hop, ballet, tap, contemporary, gymnastics and more.

Rasta Thomas’ Rock the Ballet features a stellar soundtrack including some of the biggest hits from U2, Michael Jackson, Prince, Queen, Coldplay and Lenny Kravitz. Set against a backdrop of video projected scenery, the show is exciting, fun, fleshy, raunchy powerful, and brilliantly entertaining.

Founder, Director & Principal Dancer, Rasta Thomas describes Rock the Ballet as “a new type of ballet for the 21st century and we are calling it Pop-Ballet”.

I'll let you all know how it goes! 

New Zumba Instructor

Last week was the first week my gym changed Zumba from Tuesday at 7.15pm to Tuesday at 6pm.  Last Tuesday also happened to be a day from hell, so I skipped.  That means that tonight I met my new Zumba instructor for the first time.  I'm going to miss Jenny.  She was a sweetheart and a good instructor.  However, I must admit that I totally L.O.V.E. my new Zumba instructor.  She goes from 6pm-7pm and we barely stop to breathe.  The music is loud and she smiles infectiously the entire time.  She told me her name, but I don't know how to spell it.  Who am I kidding?  I don't even remember how to pronounce it.  I'm not sure of her nationality, but perhaps Jamaican?  I can't wait for next week.


After class I walked home.  It's still raining.  It was only drizzling, so I decided to walk since I was already wet.  LOL!  But then it started pouring rain during the last fifteen minutes of my walk.  By the time I got home I looked like a wet rat and probably didn't smell much better.  Not to mention that I was completely freezing.


Tomorrow night Mr. Smith and I are going to see An Officer and a Gentleman, the Musical.  I'm looking forward to it.  I wonder where we'll eat?  Please pray that it stops raining.  I don't know how much more I can take.  Maybe we should build an ark.

Rainy Long Weekend

The weekend started off beautifully.  Mr. Smith and I invited friends over for brunch.  We prepared French toast with cinnamon, powdered sugar and syrup.  We had scrambled eggs and some lovely bacon.  There was fruit, fruit juices and Finding Nemo.  :)


I'm pretty sure everyone got enough to eat and, as far as I can tell, no one has died yet.  That's a concern lately because I'm out of practice when it comes to cooking.  I did make a pretty awesome lasagna a couple of weeks ago, but it was very liquid-y for some reason that I still cannot figure out.  But it tasted awesome.  My mom always told me that that was more important.  As long as it tastes good, who cares what it looks like.


But I digress.  After our friends left, Mr. Smith was dying to get out of the house.  So we went down to the park for a little frisbee throwing.  My spell check just told me that I spelled frisbee wrong.  There it goes again. That's the only way I know how to spell it.  Maybe it wants me to capitalize it.  Hold on.  "Where is my Frisbee?"  Aha!  That did it.  Apparently you are supposed to capitalize Frisbee.  Now you've learned something today.  :)


After a bit of tossing around the ole Frisbee, we sat on a bench and watched other people exercising their dogs.  It was nice.


Yesterday we risked melting and went to the Kirribilli markets.  It looked like it was going to pour raining any minute.  So we ate fish and chips, walked around the markets (I bought two pairs of earrings!) and then went back home.  We were only out about two hours.  Not long after, the heavens opened up and it started to pour rain.  It hasn't stopped since.


Mr. Smith had plans to see Prometheus today and we decided not to let the rain keep us from it.  We took the train to Chatswood.  It was raining, but not too bad.  At least the rain wasn't coming at us sideways or anything.  We had lunch at a Mexican place.  I had the nachos.  They weren't bad, but I think I've outgrown nachos for lunch.  Really should just be a snack.  I think I'll have the savory crepes next time.  Mr. Smith had a burrito, but I got the feeling he didn't enjoy it very much.  Plus, he said it was cold even though they did heat it up.  Not sure what he'll try next time.


So we made our way to the theatre.  I had been thinking about movie theatre popcorn since we made plans to go, so I was pretty excited.  We got to the concession stand, which they call simply the candy shop.  I ordered a small popcorn with extra butter (which everyone knows doesn't count if you get it AT the movie theatre).  The girl at the counter tells me that they don't add extra butter and besides, "There's already plenty of butter and salt on it."  Okay... schooled by a teenage concession stand girl.  LOL!  No, I suppose I don't NEED extra butter, but I want it okay?  And for the record... the popcorn pretty much sucked and could have definitely used some liquid fortification in the form of artery-clogging fake butter.  :)


Anyhoo, Prometheus was a good movie.  I won't ruin it for you, but just know that if you're going to watch it you're going to need to suspend disbelief.  A lot of it.  But it was entertaining and isn't that what it's all about?


So it's still raining and it's supposed to continue to rain for the next couple of days.  I guess I need to recognize that in Sydney during the winter it rains quite a bit.  So I'm going to Zumba tomorrow night no matter what.  Last Tuesday sucked rocks, but tomorrow will be great!

My Mr. Smith

My bridge over troubled waters...

Singapore Orchids

On yesterday...
a.k.a.  Saturday, 02 June 2012
a.k.a.  day one of gloomy, rainy, overcast weekend
a.k.a.  self-imposed last day to find a laundry basket


Mr. Smith and I headed out to Chatswood to purchase the aforementioned laundry basket.  For those of you in the know... our old laundry basket (built by Mr. Smith's own two hands) was simply too large for our current abode.  And although it survived the boat trip over from the states, it needed a bit of repair.  So we decided to donate it to Salvos and buy a new, smaller one.  We did find one we both agreed on (a miracle in itself!) and it was on sale.  BONUS!


On our way back home, an arrangement of flowers practically jumped into my view and made me stop in my tracks.  Take a gander:

Mr. Smith suggested that I buy the arrangement, so I did.  Thankfully it was only $20 because there was no price posted and bouquets of flowers can be pretty pricey here.  So I asked the shopkeeper what type of flowers these are.  She says they are Singapore orchids.  Absolutely gorgeous!  Enjoy mine or get your own.  :)

World Environment Day

I learned at church tonight that Tuesday, June 5, 2012 is World Environment Day.  We were informed that the United Nations (who knew?) has declared the theme for this year to be Green Economy: Does it include YOU?  From the WED website...


"The UN Environment Programme defines the Green Economy as one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.  In its simplest expression, a green economy can be thought of as one which is low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive.


Practically speaking, a Green Economy is one whose growth in income and employment is driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.  These investments need to be catalyzed and supported by targeted public expenditure, policy reforms and regulation changes."


To learn more about where you fit into the Green Economy, visit the World Environment Day website.

God of the sun and the moon

Of the mountains, deserts and plains

God of the mighty oceans, of rivers, lakes and streams

God of all creatures that live in seas and fly in the air

Of every living thing that grows and moves on this sacred Earth.

We are formed by Christ into Your People

Called to bring the world into Your marvelous light

As the Body of Christ, we are messengers of ecological vocation

We are entrusted with caring for this Earth which You have created.

Help us to love and respect it

To repair what we have damaged

To care for what You have made good and holy

Give us the wisdom and the passion to change our minds, our hearts and our ways.

Let us be mustard seeds in our world

Bringing about ecological conversion which grows and

Spreads to every corner of the Earth

For our sake now and for every generation which is to come

We ask this through Christ, Our Lord. 

Amen

Catholic Earthcare Australia, 2002