Sucks to be Pale

Sooo, I've been working on my sunburn the past few days and I think it got it right where I want it.  You know, that little sweet spot right between blistering skin and boiled lobster?  Ya, it feels great.  Well, I kicked off my trip to Australia a couple days ago.  The flight was definitely longer and more painful than I thought it'd be.  I had a middle seat and I'm pretty sure I had the only chair on the entire plane that had a broken recline button.  Yay!  I took a small handful of sleeping pills after the first few hours and kept falling asleep with my face against the touch screen in front of me.  Apparently there is a Call Flight Attendant button on the screen somewhere, because she walked over a couple times after my forehead must have called her over and asked if I needed any assistance.  I was half asleep and totally delirious at this point though, so I just looked at her with what I'm sure was a completely blank and confusing stare and mumbled something that I'm positive wasn't an actual sentence.  She shut it off and walked away.  I felt a little bad making her walk all that way, so after the second time I stuffed a small pillow in between my face and the screen and dozed back off for a bit.  Here are a few photos from the past couple days...

Bondi Beach

Bird show at the zoo overlooking Sydney

I know we're all thinking the same thing, but unfortunately no... I waited and waited for it, but the emu didn't attack the lady

Aloe Vera juice... "Refreshingly Different"  It has the consistency of watered down jelly and nothing about it is "refreshing"

This sign was in the metro station right above the tracks

I don't know how they teach these seals, but the show was amazing

A mom puffing on a cigarette like an old train while she's trying to push her stroller up a hill at the zoo

Oh yeaaah...

Sydney is an absolutely beautiful place.  The beaches are amazing, the people are great, the trains and buses are confusing as hell at first, but I think I'm getting used to them.  I spent all day at Bondi Beach the first day and between the zoo and Manly Beach yesterday.  To get to Manly or the zoo, it's a quick ferry trip from the harbor past the bridge and the Sydney Opera House.  They already tore Oprah's giant 'O' off the bridge, but you can see where it hung.  I'll have to snap a photo of it one of these days...

Oh, You Betcha!

Last night started off innocently enough relaxing on my couch with an ice cold fruit punch CapriSun while watching a rerun of Sarah Palin panning for gold in the middle of Alaska.  One short text message later I found myself sitting with a beer in hand staring disgustingly at the row of vodka shots lining the bar.  Within 15 minutes of downing both I had already pumped $60 into one of those cash-sucking-blackhole pulltab gambling machines that you only seem to find at bars in the Midwest.  And did I win?  Of course I didn’t! Not a thing.  Well, that’s not entirely true; I won $3 which I subsequently reinvested back into the machine in dire hopes to somehow turn my luck around.  Meh… So with little coaxing, we traveled down the road to the next bar where we kicked it off with more shots and a pizza that left the roof of my mouth melted and mangled.  Well one thing led to another and soon enough we were all out in the parking lot lighting off fireworks from the back of a truck.  Of course nothing can go off without a hitch, and when the burning Chinese Lantern managed to get stuck in the tree above the bar, we had no shortage of people scrambling to climb 50 feet up the frozen, snow covered tree to fetch it.  After a few minutes of video taping and laughing at Creature’s expense, we all went inside to warm up and carry on with the night’s activities.  Everything started getting a little foggy at this point, but I vaguely remember drunkenly Rock-Scissor-Paper’ing away my favorite beanie cap for a ridiculous green one that has, “Women want me, Deer fear me” printed in huge letters on the front.  Weird thing is, I’ve never hunted deer a day in my life…