Tennis anyone?

Happy New Year all! The wet weather from late 2010 has carried on into 2011, with no let up in sight. The country north and west of us is pretty much submerged or slowly drying out, as most of you would be aware given the amount of news coverage it seems to be getting globally. Unfortunately this is just part of life in Australia, the land of drought and flood. Hopefully some good will come of it, with agricultural yields likely to be high once full recovery sets in. The recovery, however, will probably take several years. Thankfully we haven't been affected in Brisbane thus far, with the only side effects being higher fruit and vegetable prices.

Despite the rain Laura and I were able to make it out to see some top-tier tennis at the Brisbane International this week. The venue is walking distance from where we are housesitting, so we thought, why not? The first match featured former world number 1 (current world number 8) Andy Roddick. This was significant in that, for Laura, it increased the number of live performances she has seen by men who have dated Mandy Moore to two, the other of course being her trip to Portland a few years back to see Ryan Adams. Now she only needs to see Wilber Valderrama and Zach Braff to round things out.




The tennis was good (we also saw Jelena Dokic) but Steph had a rough night with Edie, who has thrown some pretty serious tantrums lately and still keeps us guessing with her sleeping habits. Otherwise she is doing well, doing lots of colouring in, splashing in the many puddles in the backyard, and playing with the Wii. Her favorite part of staying here though is hanging out with Ella, the dog. Of course, Edie's love for Ella is put to the test each morning when Ella tries to steal her vegiemite toast.


Our Tassie trip is only a couple of weeks away. This will be our last crack at a family adventure before Team Jardine expands yet again in late March and we have to hunker down for a few months. Just to make things interesting, we've bought tickets to see Sufjan Stevens the night we return to Brisbane. Sufjan is someone who was on our "go see if you get the chance regardless of your circumstances, financial or otherwise" list. So we're going for it. He's been playing mostly from his new album, which leans towards techno hip hop (as opposed to the eclectic folk of his past) so it might not suit us, but the reviews have been good and he rarely tours. We figured this might our only chance. We'll catch up with y'all in early Feb.