It's been five years since Mark Link and I first dated - and 26 (or so) since we first met. Our special day is Feb 15 - so we don't really celebrate Valentine's Day. But then I don't really feel the need to celebrate that anyway, because I'm told I'm loved every day, without fail. And while I can't claim (who could?) that our relationship's free of conflict, we have a commitment to work through any problems - because what we have together is so much more than we ever had apart. And I th...

I was just reminded of this story when chatting to a work colleague, and as it's slow this afternoon, I'll use my last hour to tell you why it's no fun to live on the other side of the world from most other land masses (Australia to the uninitiated). So, it was Christmas/New Year 1993/94 and I'd travelled to London to spend the holidays with my best friend Sharon, who was on that obligatory work/travel thing that so many Aussies do (but I never did, having travelled a LOT in my tender yout...

So I came late to American football. It was 1996 and we'd just gotten cable (hey, this IS the other side of the world, right?) and there it was in all its glory and Superbowl Sunday coincided with the Australia Day holiday (but not Australia Day itself) so we invited friends over to watch Dallas thump the bejesus out of Pittsburgh and I made Shake'NBake and chili dogs and we ate candy and cookies and popcorn and tried to play touch in half-time but our backyard was approx 4 foot square so we...

Today I feel pretty good, because I've managed to score about $100 Australian worth of kind-of-free stuff. I'm journalist and spend an awful lot of time on my computer and I often answer those emails that say - "Get paid for your Opinions!" Well today not one but TWO of those sites came through for me - one with a $50 gift card for local department store David Jones which is kind of handy as we have friends getting married in April who are registered with that store. And the other site y...

So I was talking about the Twilight-Zone moment I had lately when six ex-boyfriends got in touch - over quite a short space of time. Some were way out of the box, so I thought I'd give you a run-down. Number one was Andrew - who I dated in high school and hadn't seen for 17 years. My first serious BF and he's the one I talk about in my previous article Link . He's scary-smart and I always felt vaguely intimidated by him. His GF before me was a year older than us, so he had a bit of a ...

Recently an old boyfriend got in touch with me, who I haven't seen for 17 years, and haven't dated for 27 (aaagh I feel old). Actually to digress a moment, he was was the first in a group of 6 exes who've recently made contact. By number 6 I was getting that real Twilight-Zone feeling, I can tell you! Anyway, we communicated by email for a while, and had lunch last week. He hasn't changed a great deal, just looks older. we chatted a bit about old times, and he spent most of the time ...

I received some sad/happy news at the weekend - one of my oldest friends is spending January in Sydney (where we are) away from his Adelaide home (some 1400 kms away or 870 odd miles). That's the happy part - the sad part is he's coming with his wife and youngest son so the kid can get a bone marrow transplant. Brendan's been sick for a while and has Myelodyplasia Syndrome (they think). But at least there's a donor - and he's doing well so far on the drugs they're giving him. We all hav...

I guess everyone in the US is asleep at their extended families' houses dreaming of turkey right about now. Pity me - working in a media hub where the giant TV screens are all tuned to the CRICKET. And it's not just the prospect of five more days of mind-numbing boredom - it's the fact that all the ads on TV are about cricket - there are behuind-the-team specials about cricket - interviews with fans, old players - oh, it just goes ON AND ON AND ON.... If you want to know anything about t...

Well, I've been really bad at blogging about stuff (as I warned Mark I might be), but today I thought to myself I should write about the topic that excites me every day - and that's FOOD. I love the stuff. I love to cook and I've recently discovered I like to grow it, too. If I could talk the other people in our apartment building into it, I'd have chickens in the yard! So here's my latest invention, a pasta sauce that even I thought was pretty darn good. To begin: I needed a portion...

Another trip to Canberra approaches .. out nation's capital and the location of most of my in-laws and my parents, too. As usual the prospect of spending time with my mother sends apprehension through me - even though I only have to make it through lunch. Everyone always chimed in when I used to say "My mother's strange" - all claiming their parents were the maddest, weirdest around. But now I know the truth I can tell people what's wrong with her - and I've found at least another two fa...

First of all- apologies for taking so long to blog again... looking for a new home and being sick (only a cold) left me uninspired. And then, an email arrives and I'm struck with thoughts and feelings. My very first ever boyfriend, who I stayed friends with for years but who then dropped off the face of the earth, has reappeared! He left a message for my father, who passed the email address on to me, and now we're talking. 16 years with not a word... and he's been in Japan and Korea all...

I'm here to tell the government - those TV ads telling motorists there's no such thing as safe speeding just aren't working. And while I haven't been side-swiped by a speeder just yet (large amounts of touch wood here) I'm almost certain it's just a matter of time. What really cheeses me off is how many people just take it for granted. In a conversation at work recently, one of the guys said "Oh, everybody speeds". When I piped up that I didn't - and how irritating I found all the peopl...

So dynamaso and I had our nephew and his friend as house guests for the past few days. (gotta figure out how to link to his blog) Anyhoo - two 14-year-old boys in the house of a childless-by-choice couple could have been a little scary, but I'm pleased to report we had a ball. No doubt you'll get photos from Mark, but I thought I'd just give my perspective. Mitchell brought along his friend Steve and both boys spent large parts of the weekend showing the other adolescent in the house (...