The President comes to Darwin

Well if you don't know but the Barack Obama came to Darwin. His visit was short just 2 1/2 hours, L was downtown at court for work and she was not allowed to leave the city because they had the road closed. So she decided to hang around. She claims to have seen him but wasn't sure, but it was someone in a car that had really dark windows, waving. It was very exciting for everyone here in Darwin, I think he is generally well regarded. He met some relatives of a ship that was sunk in the harbour in WWII in 1942 by the Japanese. He hugged many elder people who's husbands, fathers were killed on the ship. Everyone felt that he's as compassionate man, which won him big points with the public. He also spoke to the soldiers at the RAAF base here. They were all clamouring to shake his hand.

I, on the other hand, only got to see Air Force One parked at the airport. L and I saw it take off later that evening.

Yesterday was a weird day for weather we got 34mm of rain and it was very bright outside at the time, it rained you'd figure it would be dark but it wasn't. Since all roofs here are corrugated metal when it rains it's noisy inside. Last night was actually quite cool and I was quite chilly after I got out of the shower. Currently we have a fan, the strong one that would blow you across a room, in the shower keeping it cool because it gets so humid in the shower room. Actually we have 2 rooms, 1 room that has 2 sinks a shower and a bath and another room with the toilet by itself. Not sure why they do this maybe we're supposed to huddle in the toilet during a cyclone because it's a small room and the roof can't fall in as easily in a small room. Speaking of Cyclones a guy we met the other day said that where we live, if conditions are right with a high tide and a cyclone, we could be under 1 meter of water. I think I better phone for contents insurance pretty soon. Good job we brought our scuba gear.

At work they got me a 2nd screen for my laptop, it's pretty nice 1920x1080 but they didn't give me an extension cord so it sat at my desk for a week. I brought my own cord in to hook it up. They have funny safety laws here, in an office all computer chords and extension cords have to be certified. I asked what certified meant to the certification company guy and he said "we just look at them". Mind you, you could trip over these chords as they are strewn all over the floor, but a least they'll be inspected. So I have all these great screens and my computer is slower than what I have at home.

Our tadpoles are growing bigger and we'll have to separate them into 2 buckets. Their water is getting pretty green and I read we'll have to change it quite often. In the bucket there is mosquito larva and the tadpoles don't eat them. Although we put a few snails in there and they seemed to have been eaten by something. These tadpoles right now only seem to eat vegetation which L drops in rotten bits of her water plant, which they love, we also feed them lettuce. They don't mind the fish food flakes either. All these guys do is eat so it'll be interesting to see how many become frogs. We dropped a fish in there to see if it would eat the larva but I guess going from clean water that has lots of space into green water with 100's of tadpoles stressed him. It just froze and wouldn't move so we fished him out and put him back in the fish pot. He's ok, maybe we should have put 5 in there so he would have a gang but I won't do that. So the larva are safe ... until the tadpoles get an appetite for them (evil laugh).

Speaking of eating, Ralph our lizard buddy showed up again early last night, but because of the bad weather we didn't eat outside, which was the first time in months. Since we didn't stay outside he didn't stick around long. He ate a few pieces of chicken, papaya, mango and watermelon. He quickly left after that.

Christmas is coming and I must admit I'm not really getting much spirit here. I think without our families and no younger kids around it's just not the same. People don't really put up decorations on the outside of their house or they haven't as of yet. We have been invited to a work friend of L's for Christmas day. They are fellow Canadians. If it is a nice day we'll take some pictures on the beach for something different and to say we did it.

If Santa's reading this I could do with a vacuum cleaner.

Tuesday = buffet at Skycity Darwin

Well it's Tuesday and that means 2 for the price of 1 Tuesdays at Skycity Casino. This may seem that we have a gambling problem but this is far from the truth. It's more like we have a we like to eat buffet at a good price problem. So if you have been following Luna's Facebook page (you will need an account to see her personal Facebook account) you will see that most of her pictures are of her at the a table outside in the buffet restaurant. The only problem with eating out is that Ralph, our blue tongued Skink friend (lizard see blog for pictures), will have to go hungry. A couple of days back he didn't show up for about 3 days and we were worried. Then he did show up and one of his legs was not working well. We were quite worried. Fortunately for him he could slide around on his belly and didn't really require his leg all that much. We have been feeding him well and these last few nights he's been walking on all 4's ... if you call what he does as walking on all 4's. He really just uses his feet to push his big body across the patio. Kinda like 1/2 lizard 1/2 snake. All I can say as he sure must have a well exfoliated belly. L gave him shaved beef the other day that she puts in Pho (Vietnamese soup) and he just gobbled that down. We've fed him mango and papaya and he's eats all that. Needless to say if he is she and this is the breading season ,he/she will have healthy babies. We have determined that Ralph also has a buffet issue. He is really quite fun to feed and watch and he certainly makes dinner time interesting.

Speaking of breading the other night we had a green tree frog in the back yard perched on one of the chair arms doing a brap, brap, brap sound. Well this guy can project real well he was so noisy, but he wasn't the only one there were others calling all over the place. Later his lady friend showed up so we gave them some privacy. Later we found that the female had laid eggs in our fish/plant pond/pot and some in a bucket, that L had laying around, that had a dying plant in it. Well the eggs didn't survive in the fish pond as I think they got eaten by the fish but the bucket has about 50 tadpoles in it as well as some mosquito larva. We were fishing the larva out and putting it in the fish pond and the fish would eat them. That's what I call payback to all those mosquitoes that bit me. The tadpoles we didn't put in the fish pond because they are supposed to get pretty big, according to the Internet. In 3 days they have gotten noticeably bigger. We are afraid that they may eat the baby fish as they become carnivorous (eat meat) when they get older. We'll have to see how they do in the bucket, we are putting lettuce and fish flakes (fish food) in the bucket and some eat it. I guess those will be the guys that get bigger. I have read about these guys and it's easy to say that in a while there won't be 50 left some will most likely get eaten by the others, yikes.

Hi ho hi ho it just the status quo

Well things are settling in to a dull routine with, get up, drive to work, come home, cook dinner, eat outside and see if Ralph shows up. Speaking of Ralph he's been a regular lately although if we are walking around out the backyard when he shows he just crawls off. His loss though because some other critter will eat his morsels of steak. Last night he popped by a little early and went back into the brush only to appear when we had the food out on the table. I think he's got a pretty good nose for food. Well he does actually because he always finds the steak no matter where we put it.

L has decided to change her hair color to all brown/black for a while and will get it cut shorter because it's just too hot in this weather. Lucky for her it'll probably grow back for when we come back to visit Canada in June. I'm sure the hair color change will please my dad. I'll post pictures once the transformation is completed, she just finished dying it as I write this.

It is pretty hot here, we bought a fan to put on the floor and to place outside to keep the midges away. What is a midge? Well it's smaller than a mosquito and they bite. They seem to like L more than me so when she's outside they leave me alone, that way I don't need bug spray ... which I think is a bonus but somehow she doesn't. But the fan is pretty good at blowing them away. Heck the thing sounds like a propeller plane taking off. It pretty much would blow me across the patio if we put it on high. Needless to say that we have been eating cold food due to the fact that this fan works so well.

I have been messing around with Facebook, as it's free to me, and have posted some pics on the price of things I think mum and dad will think they're good you may enjoy them too.
Picture link is below
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.214659338604214.50561.198194326917382&type=3

You can check out our other pictures too while you're there. You don't have to join Facebook. This seems mildly familiar maybe I asked people to do this last week.

Well the Facebook page is here just in case you haven't been there and want to go.
http://www.facebook.com/PerilsOfPaulAndLuna