Partying like it's 2008

The final days of 2008 were amazing. Those final days were so amazing, in fact, that I essentially did them all over again this year, in the final days of 2009.

Some may view such repetition as a bad thing. I do not. Not when you've identified a surefire recipe for success.

Last year's Christmas was spent with a friend's family – Yogi and the Davis family – overlooking the ocean at Macmasters Beach. This year's Christmas was spent with another friend's family – Shorty and the, uhhhh, Short family – in the slightly less exotic Wagga Wagga.

After driving from Sydney to Wagga on Christmas Eve, I was awoken early the next morning by Shorty's sisters,* both of whom were eager to rip open some gifts before Christmas services.** After a brief, one-hour service – actually pretty painless, especially if you want to put it up against High Holiday services – we were back to the house for a day-long feast.

*Shorty's sisters are in their 20s. Yet to this day they still force the family up at 7 on Christmas morning to open gifts.

**Shorty's birthday quite unfortunately falls on Christmas. So not only did he grow up with the dreaded Christmas/birthday combo gifts, but he's been to Church on his birthday every single year of his life. Even the "but Andy's Jewish!" excuse this year wouldn't fly.

It's absolutely no secret that the Short family can eat. Big time. And we did so on Christmas day, by stuffing ourselves on four varieties of meat – turkey, ham, chicken, pork – and a few of your staple veggies, like potatoes and sweet potatoes and pumpkin. My. Lord.

This was of course topped off by desert, which included fruit salad, ice cream, pavlova, trifle, and the pièce de résistance (well, for me at least), plum pudding with brandy sauce. Oh. My God.

That was lunch. We did it all again for dinner. And then again for breakfast the next day.

We could have kept on feasting on the leftovers all throughout Boxing Day, but instead, it was time to cook up a whole new feast! This time it was to the barbecue, as the Shorts ticked off more types of meat that hadn't been consumed yesterday: rissoles,* sausages and steak. And what Short family barbecue could be complete without a potato bake? Oh, I think there was some salad, too. And most importantly, the plum pudding made another appearance.**

*Basically a hamburger patty, although a little thicker than what you see in the US and usually prepared with herbs and other seasoning mixed in.

**My current list of favorite Australian food that's not commonly available in the US: meat pies, sweet chili sauce, plum pudding with brandy sauce. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few more.

Throughout the day, the rest of our caravan for the trip to Melbourne and Falls converged on Wagga. And so continued the near-identical trip from last year. Again, this isn't a bad thing.

The 27th was a day of transit, from Wagga to Melbourne. We made our way down there by early evening, set up camp at Shorty's brother's apartment, and headed out for a barbecue at a friend's place and drinks. We had a big day ahead of us, so we kind of took it easy. Kind of.

The 28th was Day 3 of the Boxing Day Test match between Australia and Pakistan. First ball at 10:30. Stumps at 6. Seven and a half hours of cricket and no result (not that one was to be expected). I loved it.*

*And bucking the trend that I cited in my post from before this trip, in which I said that I was sports kryptonite for successful home teams, Australia ended up winning this Test match!

And then, it was on to Falls! Up quite early on the 29th, we caravanned it down to Lorne, got to the festival area, slowly made our way to the campsite, set up camp, and got to it.

One massively key point of difference between Falls this year and last year: the weather. Last year, it was freezing at Falls. FREEZING. And rainy. This didn't stop me from having a great time, but it really didn't help. This year? Hot and sunny! And I loved every minute of it.

I'm not sure if the music lived up to last year's, but it was still fantastic, with The Temper Trap, Art Vs Science and Major Lazer being highlights.

And on New Year's Eve, with the Hilltop Hoods on the stage at midnight – a somewhat dubious choice to bring in the New Year, in my opinion – we said goodbye to the Naughts or Naughties or Oughts or whatever the hell we're calling the decade... and then kept on going for several more hours. It was fantastic.

What wasn't fantastic, however, was New Year's Day. First, it had rained that night, and we woke up to a wet and gray morning. Everything was damp. Second, after packing up, it took us all of three and a half hours to drive out of the site. And third, later that night (and perhaps due to an ill-informed lunch of KFC; ironically, my first KFC in exactly a year), my stomach revolted.

Not a great way to start a new year, by any stretch, but the days prior were a great way to close out the preceding one. Just as they were last year.

Farewell, 2009. Helllloooooooooo 2010!

And I think it's gonna be a (good good) time

To nearly quote Elton John.

Last year, in the days leading up to New Year's, I spent Boxing Day in Wagga Wagga, the next few days in Melbourne (partly to catch Day 3 of the Boxing Day Test match*), and the remaining days of 2008 at Falls Festival.

*Looking at the Wikipedia page for the Boxing Day Test match, I didn't realize that Australia had absolutely DOMINATED that match before last year: 9 wins in a row, and 14 wins (and two draws) in the last 18 years. So of course they lost last year. As soon as I enter the arena, you can always count on a dominant sports team to lose it. Just ask the French National Soccer team. Coming off a World Cup victory in 1998 and holding onto an ungodly winning streak, I went to see them play Russia in June 1999 for a qualifying match for Euro 2000. They lost. Of course.

This year, in the days leading up to New Year's, it's exactly the same: Boxing Day in Wagga, a couple of days in Melbourne for the cricket, the last few days of 2009 at Falls Festival. Only difference from last year is that my stay in Wagga will start a few days earlier, with Christmas with the Short family.

If this year is to live up to last year's trip, it has an uphill battle to fight. Last year was epic. Everything about that trip. But I'm pretty confident that this year can match it. Perhaps even exceed it? I wouldn't be surprised.

But let's not get our hopes up, at least not too much. A big week lies ahead of me. It should be good. And I just may report on it here sometime in the next few months.

Have a great Christmas (for those of that ilk) and New Year's, everyone.

Half a month of madness in pictures

For my Christmas break last year, as you may recall, JVA and I took a massive road trip up the coast of Queensland, from Brisbane to the Great Barrier Reef. And then, over the next several weeks, I laboriously attempted to recap the trip over far too many posts on this blog.

For my Christmas break this year, as I previewed in my farewell to 2008, I set out on what was an even more ambitious itinerary, as I went from Sydney to Byron Bay, back to Sydney, up to MacMasters Beach for Christmas, back to Sydney, down to Wagga Wagga, further down to Melbourne, further down to Lorne and The Falls Festival, then back to Sydney along the coast of Victoria and New South Wales.

It was a wild, wild, wild trip, oh yes. And as with the cricket trip to Newcastle, it exceeded any and every expectation that I had for it.* Unlike the cricket trip to Newcastle, however, this was no little three-day weekend, oh no; this was 15 consecutive days of activity, of hootenanny, of hijinx, of hoolbool. In fact, it may have been the most exhilarating, entertaining, manic, jam-packed 15-day stretch of my life. No exaggeration. I've had unbelievable days in the past. I've had great weekends, such as that trip to Newcastle. I've had fantastic months. But on a pound-for-pound basis, for every single day over the past half a month, that trip was insane. INSANE.

*Joe Posnanski -- yes, the man crush is still alive and well -- has recently championed an approach to rating movies in which you base your rating (on a scale of 1 to 5) against your expected rating going into a movie. In lieu of simply rating a movie, I think this is a much more realistic way to gauge how we actually feel about a movie. For example, we all know that feeling when you go to a movie that everyone has been RAVING about and you leave thinking it was good but not great, that you've been let down. So in this case, let's say you were expecting a 5 movie but thought it was only a 4. That's a minus-1 movie to Posnanski. A good movie, yes, but you still feel disappointed. Conversely, if you go into a movie that you've heard nothing about and expect maybe a 3, but leave thinking that that movie was also a 4, well, that's a plus-1 movie to Posnanski. So they're both 4 movies, but you leave the second with a much better feeling than the first.

Anyway. Let's carry this system over to this trip. I expected a 4. That's solid, right? Well, I got a 5. Easily. I sleepwalked to that 5. A 5 hardly does it justice. So let's call this trip a plus-1+. Because unlike the amplifier in This is Spinal Tap, this scale has no leeway to go one notch higher to a 6.

Now the question is, how can I possibly capture this trip with words? And after dedicating several thousand words and five posts to last year’s trip to the Great Barrier Reef, I realize I can't. It was hard enough to do justice to that trip with words; to even try to do the same with this one would be a joke. So Im not going to go down that road. Instead, here’s a bit of a photo/video essay of the trip, with some notes interspersed throughout.

Byron Bay

MacMasters Beach

Lost in the serenity of this beautiful locale, I forgot to take any pictures over my two days there. So instead, you'll just have to picture me on your typical Christmas Day. You know, waking up and taking a dip in the ocean, eating lunch and dinner on a patio overlooking the beach, having some plum pudding for dessert, and drinking plenty of Pimms and lemonade. (It's for moments like these that I love being here.)

Sydney to Melbourne

Melbourne

The Falls Festival

A few quick notes here:

• It was unseasonably cold. Very cold. As low as 5°C (41°F). And off and on rain the whole time. A good camping experience this does not make.
• The musical highlights for me, by far, were Architecture in Helsinki and The Cat Empire. Santogold and Donavon Frankenreiter also did not disappoint.
• It was universally agreed that the lead singer of The Hives is a douche. There was also some debate as to whether he learned his English from Terrance and Phillip.
• New Year's Eve was not in any way a focal point of the festival. And considering how catastrophically awful my last few New Year's have been, I couldn't have been more pleased. On the night of the 31st, there was music, then we counted down to midnight, then Franz Ferdinand came on. C'est tout.

Back to Sydney

Yes, it was a good trip. And I hope these photos and video give a sense of that.

And now we can offically close the book on 2008 and look ahead to a new year that will bring... well, I have no idea. Let's discuss next time.

A farewell to 2008

It’s December 18... and yes, I'm bidding my farewell to 2008. For although there's still two weeks left in the year, this will almost certainly be my last chance to post here.

It was a good year. An active year. A year full of the new and unexpected. Consider:

• I settled into my job;
• I moved houses;
• I made several trips of varying lengths, both domestically and back to the US;
• I inexplicably found an appreciation for cricket;
• I pulled off what may be my proudest accomplishment ever with the Fumblers-B Newy Decathlon;
• I moved houses again;
• I found out that I'm going to lose my job and commenced what has so far been a fruitless search for a new one;
• I screwed up my ankle;
• I grew a moustache;
• And I put on Thanksgiving... in December.

Yes, it was a good year, albeit with varying degrees of tumult. And I'm proud of all I that accomplished. But there's more!! For there's a reason why I won’t be able to post on here for the next few weeks, and it's definitely not because I'm gonna be sitting on my ass.

As you may know, Justin has been here since last weekend. And so far, it's been good. As we might say, VAR good. Plenty of adventures, including Justin’s initiation into the strange, hostile world of Australian bouncers.* But while we've been going out each night this week, I've been working during the day. This is unfortunate. However, after tomorrow, that all changes. For my office will close its doors for two weeks, and I will be free!! What will I/we be up to?

*I'm in no mood to get into this at the moment. Maybe another day. Maybe not.

December 20 to 24 - Justin and I go to Byron Bay, about nine hours north of Sydney. There will be beaches. There will be festiveness. There will be hoolbool.

December 24 to 25 - Justin heads back off to the US, and I spend Christmas at MacMasters Beach with my friend/roommate Yogi and his family. You may recall that I also spent Australia Day Weekend at MacMasters.

December 26 - Yogi and I drive down to Wagga Wagga, home town of Shorty, one of our other roommates. Wagga Wagga also holds the distinction of being the largest inland city in Australia. You know, just in case they ask that in your next trivia night.

December 27 - We -- and I have zero idea who "we" will be -- all head down to Melbourne. I have no idea where I’ll be sleeping this night.

December 28 - A group of us will spend a looooonnnnnng day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for Day 3 of the Boxing Day Test Match between Australia and South Africa. This will be a wild day. A REAL wild day. I have no idea where I'll be sleeping this night, either.

December 29 to January 1 - A large group of us will drive part of the Great Ocean Road (just done with the parents a few weeks earlier) to spend three loooooooonger days at The Falls Music & Arts Festival. We'll be camping out, watching a crap load of live music, taking horrible care of ourselves, getting no sleep, and on the last night, bringing in 2009.* Sounds fantastic, right?**

*It will HAVE to be better than how I brought in 2008, right?

**The funny part is, if you know me AT ALL, you'd know this is not my type of thing. Camping out at a three-day music festival?? Yeah, well, I don't know. But I'm psyched.

January 1 to ?? - We -- again, no clue who "we" will be -- head back to Sydney. I have zero idea how this will be accomplished, how long it will take or how many stops (if any) we'll make along the way. But sometime between the 1st and the 4th, I'll make my way back to Sydney.

Should be a fantastic few weeks, with plenty of nonstop action. So I'll take this opportunity to bid adieu to 2008, and I will see you in 2009! Have a great holiday season, everyone.