And the winner is ...

Today at work was theme day ... the group of people you work with as a team were suppose to dress up together. There were some good groups, there were some bad ones ... I'll let you decide. (pictures)

News From Australia

Various articles (funny & sad) from the local paper - Courier News - of local and national news.

A PREGNANT woman suffered a miscarriage in a toilet after she was ignored by medical staff at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital, it has been claimed. (article)

A CROATIAN motorbike rider was knocked unconscious when lightning struck his penis after he stopped by the roadside for a toilet break. (article)

MORE than a thousand bikini-clad women have descended on Bondi Breach to help set a world record for the biggest swimsuit shoot in history. (article)

Happy Birthday Bresticles!

Friday was Brett's birthday, so we threw him a surprise party at the office. Brett's from New Zealand, thus he's a Kiwi, and Kiwis get made fun of for fornicating with sheep (they don't really, but it's like making fun of Canadians - it's just a natural thing to do) - which is why the gifts we gave Brett were all sheep related.

Also on Friday it was wear you're favorite Hawaiian or brightest shirt day at the office. There was some pretty loud shirts, but nothing quite as unique as David Lennox's outfit (see picture - check out the lime green shoes). Dave's an architect, which makes perfect sense on why he's wearing that outfit. The thing is, this outfit is pretty much standard for Dave.

There really wasn't anything exciting going on this weekend. We watched movies all day on Saturday and rugby on Sunday. The weather was crap, but it's suppose to be gorgeous here starting on Wednesday - low to mid 30's, with the weekend being 34-35 degrees.

Night Photos

Jeff & Craig went out last week and took a bunch of photos of Brisbane at nighttime. Here are a couple of the better ones they took.

Return of the Pink Panther

The weather was wonderful this weekend and I took full advantage of it. On Saturday I laid out next to the pool and did some swimming for a couple of hours and then just walked around the Queen Street mall. There was a big run/walk event on Sunday morning, so we stayed in and ordered pizzas and watched some movies. On Sunday after the race, we went to New Farm park and had a bbq/picnic and tossed the various forms of footballs (American & Australian) around, played a little cricket and some soccer. I think the weather yesterday was even better than Saturday - perfect to have a picnic. So I definitely got plenty of sun over the weekend and my skin hasn't quite tanned yet, so it is a little pink right now. How's the weather back home??

Surfer's Paradise

*** Just uploaded more pictures from the weekend *** - Tuesday 11/09

On Saturday we went back down to Surfer’s Paradise to do some more jet skiing. Craig’s wife Sherri was up from Melbourne to visit for the weekend and to see the troublemakers that Craig hangs out with. We stopped off at Yatala again for some meat pies for breakfast and the first thing we did in Surfer’s Paradise was to head to the lookout floor of the Q1 Building. The Q1 is the world’s tallest residential tower and the 20th tallest building in the world (and the tallest in Australia). Being 300+ m up in the air provided some amazing views of the coast line and the surrounding mountains.
After the Q1, we became beach bums for a couple of hours - laying around, hitting the volleyball around and playing some cricket. Our appointment for jet skiing was at 2:30, but we showed up about 20 minutes late and didn't get on the skis until 3:30. We were suppose to only be out for 2 hours, but since we were repeat customers, the guides kept us out for 2.5 hours. It was a lot funner this time since most of us were experienced handling these beast of machines. I wiped out once, Joe & Kirstyn wiped out twice, and Craig & Sherri wiped out three times - one time when they weren't even moving! Last time we mainly went in a straight line; this time however we were fish tailing, doing 180's and pretty much acting like idiots - which is why we got tossed off so many times.
On the way home we stopped off at a seafood market to get some fresh prawns, oysters and octopus. We saved the seafood for Sunday night, as we had a Mexican cookout after we got back on Saturday night.
The only downfall from all the goofing around on the SeaDoos is that everyone was supersoar afterwards and everyone is walking funny today. Here are the pictures from the day.

Congrats Dad!

Taken from the WFIW website:
Wednesday's blood drive at the Community of Christ Church in Fairfield netted 76 pints of blood for the American Red Cross. Joe Holman was presented a pin for donating 12 gallons of blood over the years.

Bah-Humbug

Hope everyone enjoyed their Labor Day off while I was slaving away at work.

Highway to the Danger Zone

Sorry about the lack of posts recently ... we really haven't had a grand adventure to talk about. The last two weekends we've stayed around Brisbane and tried to take it easy. The Saturday before last (25/08) we had a BBQ at Jeff's flat and here's the pictures from that day. It was a relaxing day of swimming, bbq'ing, games and more bbq'ing.

The true reason of the post is because we went to Riverfire on Saturday night. Riverfire supposedly kicks off the start of the spring season so there's fireworks and a F-111 dump and burn. It's probably the most spectacular display of fireworks I have ever seen. Fireworks are shot off from a half dozen barges in the river, from the bridges and from the top of several downtown buildings - with all of the fireworks being synchronized to music. The best part of the evening tho' is the F-111 dump & burn - two F-111 fighter jets start & end the fireworks show by flying down the river and dumping their fuel, which then lights on fire - Jeff has a great video of this. We watched the fireworks from "The Island", which is a huge party boat that was docked about 50m from one of the barges, so Jeff's pictures turned out quite well. One of the cooler portions of the night was when fireworks went off in a waterfall effect from the adjacent bridge ... the pictures of this are tough to tell, but the video is pretty cool.