i am supergirl

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You are Supergirl

Supergirl 85% Spider-Man 75% Hulk 75% Superman 70% Green Lantern 55% Wonder Woman 50% Robin 50% Iron Man 40% Catwoman 35% The Flash 30% Batman 10%

Lean, muscular and feminine. Honest and a defender of the innocent.

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weather

people here say that you can always talk about the weather in melbourne if nothing else. its true though. i think it rarely stays the similar for more than 2 days (sometimes not even 2 hours). this is a current graph of the last few days of melbourne's temperature (the one a few days ago was even more shocking cuz of the 40+ day on the 22 and the hot days just before that).

note how cold it got last nite-- 17!! i realize that's not acutally that cold but its the coldest we've had in a few days and it was a bit drizzly. ray is a sook when it gets that cool after a warm/hot few days. she came by our window at 6am this morning (she's figured out which one it is and how to jump the 6 foot fence to get to it). i called her to the backdoor as soon as i heard her crying at the window and she ran down the side of the house and in the door and started purring. i put her on our bed where she happily slept until my alarm went of 90 min later (my first day back at work). then she just hung around me waiting to see if there'd be breakfast for her (we make her go home for breakfast when she spends the nite).

humidity

melbourne has lots of sun, rain, hail, hot, cold, thunder, lightning, clouds.... (all in the same day sometimes) but it definately isn't usually humid. that's for sydney (and that's the reason sydney didn't tie with vancouver and melbourne for most livable city in the world 2 or 3 years in a row). the past couple days have been really humid here though-- feels like we're back up in sydney-- the gray skies, warm (25-30C) weather and everything feels damp from the humidity. everything is actually pretty damp cuz we had 15mm of rain yesterday afternoon and it never really dried much cuz the sun wasn't out of the clouds enough.
that was the one thing i didn't really like about sydney. nothing ever dried!!! our beds felt damp all the time, our clothes felt damp, my towels didn't dry the entire time we were there... i like it hot but not humid i think.

hot australia day

yesterday we got roped into spending the day helping zac's sister and her boyfriend with the renovations on their new house. normally it wouldn't be that bad but on a day where the temperature is supposed to reach 38C it doesn't sound like a good idea. our motivation was that they have a pool which jay was gonna be fixing the filter on that morning so we would be able to use it. we hadn't seen the house yet but we'd heard about walls and ceiling being ripped out. there were a few more walls and ceilings out that i thought though and a couple of the rooms looked like sheering sheds cuz of the piles of wool insulation crumbled all over the floor (unfortunately i forgot my camera cuz i could have got some good shots). zac and lea's mom came by to see the house too. it was kinda funny cuz i was the only one there when she got there and the look of shock on her face when she saw the mess and half missing walls inside was hilarious. the house is gonna look great when its done but its gonna be a while cuz they have some MAJOR renovation plans for it. the pool is good though (we spent most of the afternoon testing that out and having a bbq-- it wouldn't be a public holiday in australia with out a bbq). zac did end up helping a bit, cleaning bag after bag of the insulation up. my job was to keep lea company. the heat drives her crazy so she just wanted to sit in the one clean, airconditioned room of the house and watch the tennis on tv. i had a hard afternoon 8) i told jay i'd come over and help with painting when they get the new walls up (and hopefully the weather will be a bit cooler: low-mid 30s is nice). that'll be my contribution to the renovations.

nectarines

we have this tree in the backyard that didn't do anything last year-- it lost all its leaves a month after it got them in spring. about 2 weeks ago we finally figured out what all the little green fruits on it this year are: nectarines. before we went to sydney a few of them had started to turn red/yellow but they were still hard and we only got to try 2 of them before we went away. while we were away they ALL seemed to ripen-- dozens of them. zac's sister didn't really do anything with them so we came home to a tree full of them. i finally remembered to pick them 2 days ago (the birds have been having a great time eating all the ones high up and have left several pits dangling from the tree). i picked a 10L bucket full (and thats only as high as i could reach up the tree, i probably could have filled another bucket if i could reach to the top). tonite i spent some time cutting them up so we can freeze them to make smoothies and soy ice cream and whatever else i can think of. i even caught the landlord (who lives nextdoor) picking some this afternoon while he was over to grab some of his extra bricks that he stores down the side of our house (not that i minded cuz we have more than we can figure out what to do with and he did fix a broken light switch for us just before that and his wife had me over for coffee and homemade pastries while he was doing that. i don't think we could ask for better landlords to be living nextdoor).

sunsets

this was the progression of a sunset last nite while we were down the mornington pennisula (the last one the sun was more pink than i could get the camera to show-- bright pinkish red)

this was the sunset the other nite in our yard. we'd had an amazing thunder storm earlier and then the sky went a glowing yellow colour. it went thru darker shades of yellow to orange and then turned almost a redish orange colour before it got to dusk.

sydney

we got back from sydney late last nite (plane delays from storms in another part of the country) and arrived home to a very crowded house (zac's sister and her boyfriend and one of his friends plus ray the cat was visiting). they all left this morning though to move into into their new house. sydney was a good adventure. we did a few tourist-y things around the city (the tower and i did the aquarium-- zac wouldn't go cuz some of the bigger animals have smallish cages). it was amazing.

one of the many views i took photos of from the top of the sydney tower.


















mamma shark and her baby swimming over my head









we also got to go out to the blue mountains for a day (unfortunately a cloudy, cool day) but we still had a good time and saw some amazing things.

this shot looks a lot like one we have in alaska-- except behind us here is a canyon and the escarpment on the far side (so i'm told)











the cool formations here were all formed by wind errosion














unfortunately the weather wasn't the best-- we had 2 mostly sunny days and the rest were overcast or rainy. it was warm most of the time though-- until the last 2 days and when we arrived in melbourne at midnite last nite it was still 25C-- i don't even think sydney cbd got that warm the whole day.


this ibis was just hanging out in one of the parks in the city (i like them cuz they're big and funny looking)












this family of lorikeets lives around zac's "kinda relatives" house that we stayed at. here mum is feeding the baby (who was bigger than both parents and VERY whiny trying to get food ALL the time-- baby would sit on the balcony railing outside the house and cry at us for food a lot or we'd hear him in the trees crying at his parents).




ok-- i can't get more than 5 photos on a post so i'm gonna have to do a second post to tell the rest

sydney continued

this is another shot in the blue mountians (much more scenic than the lookout point). it was an AMAZING rainforest walk-- probably one of the best hikes i've done in my life. there were so many different communities and ecosystems along the walk (all that teaching 6th grade outdoor ed. stuff came back to me and zac)










this was my view every morning. if i left the bathroom door open i could have sat and watched it while going (i didn't). we went swimming in a pool (ocean water) kinda around the side of the hump to the left of the photo most mornings and then we'd go to the right to play in the surf (although it was a bit too rough a couple times.










my favourite shots at the aquarium-- the saltwater croc. he floated a bit around the top where i could get some good views from above and then he decided to rest underwater RIGHT infront of the glass window at the side so i got a nice close up look of him all down the side (and a dozen photos or so)

hottest day (and nite too i think)

this was an abc news artical published yesterday afternoon at 3pm:

Melbourne Gets Cool Relief

Southerly winds have seen temperatures drop in parts of Melbourne.

The mercury has struggled to hit 30 degrees in the CBD.

At Tullamarine the temperature peaked at 37 degrees just after 11:00am AEDT.

It is now unlikely the scorcher forecast for Melbourne will happen, although it will be hot in the northern parts of the state.

The Weather Bureau's Ward Rooney says the weather will remain fine for New Year's Eve celebrations.

"It will be a balmy night," he said.

"In fact, northerlies will re-establish over Melbourne overnight, so a mild to warm night is the prospect."

obviously it was much hotter than that when i left the house just before 4pm. here's the latest update on the artical (what you now see when you click on the link):

Last Update: Saturday, December 31, 2005. 8:34pm (AEDT)

Record high temperatures hit Victoria

Many parts of Victoria have recorded their hottest ever December day.

The mercury has risen to 46 in Horsham and Walpeup, in the state's north west, for the first time since 1980.

And temperatures have reached above 42 in Melbourne, making it the hottest New Year's Eve in more than 140 years.

Peter Blake from the Weather Bureau says this afternoon's southerly wind change did not cool the state down for long.

"Now the northerly has taken over and extremely warm to hot conditions have pushed back over most of southern and northern Victoria and temperatures have certainly increased rapidly again," he said.

it was still really hot at midnite and even after 4am when we biked home it was more than warm enough to be in a tank top. its still pretty in the mid to upper 20s (i've only slept 5 hrs but its too warm in the house so i decided to get up on turn the air conditioner and when it gets cool enough i'll go back to sleep on the couch-- closer to the air conditioner)