After a long, grueling eighteen months, Justine has finally finished the last exam in her course!

So, let me be the first to post a congratulatory note on my website. Just think of all the free time you’ll suddenly have! I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say you’ve performed admirably; everyone who’s tasted your awesome creations has enjoyed them immensely and they always look as good as they taste.

So, congratulations!

Saturday morning saw Trav and I meet up in the city for what turned out to be a very long day of shooting. Since Trav’s camera battery had exhausted itself on our last shoot, we left off from last time. The night before, I had reminded Trav to charge his camera, and when looking at mine, decided it didn’t need a charge (what’s the deal with having the meter go directly from “full” to “charge me now“, anyway?).

We walked down and around for a couple of hours before deciding to have breakfast. We ate at a place that claimed to have great juices and smoothies; I ordered a bacon/egg toasted sandwich and Trav ordered a large cooked breakfast (no beans!). Both came with a freshly-made “South American” juice concoction of some sort. The waiter wouldn’t tell us what was in it, and when he brought it out, gave us strict orders not to stir the juice or else. The food wasn’t bad, and the juice was pretty good, even if I did stir it a little near the end of the glass. My palate isn’t great but both Trav and I definitely detected lemon and/or lime juice. That was about as far as our palates took us.

Back to walking and we walked further this time, out of the CBD and down to Southbank, up to Birrarung Marr and back to the CBD while shooting all the while. Deciding to again break for food (another 2-3 hours had passed, oh my!) we ate at a cafe of some sort in Melbourne Central. I had leek and potato soup while Trav ate risotto.

Deciding our legs had done a magnificent job, we both decided to part ways for the day. For some reason, after looking at the photos I took, I must not have been in “the groove” on Saturday since I only ended up with 150 or so (after deleting the ones during the five hours we were walking). Of those, I don’t think there are too many winners, either. Normally on a walk of that duration, I would have way more shots and usually be trying to decide between a multitude of great shots. Not so from this shoot. I think I might have been having too good a time shooting the breeze instead of things in front of me.

Trav taking a photo of the Ferris Wheel at Birrarung Marr.

8th August, 2007

That’s the date we have set for our overseas trip; we already have our tickets paid in full. It’s something we’ve been working towards for a very long time and finally we’re at the point where we’ve decided to jump in with both feet.

Originally, our plan was to move, live and work overseas, but we both weren’t really prepared to commit to it. The return date is September 26th, and the cities we’ll be travelling to are still not set in stone (but will likely include London, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Prague, Rome, Bern and Barcelona) but we’ll be flying both in and out of London, so it will obviously have to be a circular pattern of some sort. Or maybe oval.

We may also have a two-night stopover in Bangkok upon our return. Other details are not yet fully fleshed out but I’ll let you know as they come up.

The other night there was a candle on in our bedroom; Justine had used some cleaning products in the room earlier and we were using the candle in an attempt to diffuse the offending odour of the cleaning products. Strange, you clean because the room is dirty, or smells, or whatever and then you need to do something else to cover that up.

Anyway, Justine had already fallen asleep and so by attrition the role of snuffing out the candle fell to me. I was rather tired at the time but summoned up enough energy to slide out of bed and stumble over to the candle. Holding my hand up behind the candle, I blew at the candle to extinguish it.

It was a split second after that I’d realised my mistake. Since this candle had been “trained” by Justine to burn down the middle (to do so, you let it burn a bit, then before the edge of the candle melts put it out; this creates a harder waxy edge which means the softer middle burns, but I digress) there was a pool of hot, melty wax in the centre of the candle. Until I blew into the wax pool, that is. Hot wax splashed all over my face and neck. Luckily, wax doesn’t have the heat retention of something like oil or, I don’t know, molten metal. Cursing, I brushed as much wax from my face as I could and went back to bed.

The next morning, there were small bits of hardened wax in the bed, and before I got into the shower, I noticed there were still bits of wax on my face which had survived the night.

Taken whilst on a photowalk with Trav one early (and chilly!) morning.

Eight of us recently dined on the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant to celebrate the birthdays of four of us. A good time was had by all.