Suburb jumping

So I haven't updated this in a while. Many things have happened around here, not all of which I'll write about. Patrick's school has picked up some and he had his first midterm yesterday. Work has remained about the same (though I never realized that not having long nails would be a limitation as it was yesterday when I spent hours trying to peel the labels off of edible metallic color powders).

I'm ten pages away from finishing my first script in two years and about eight pages away from finishing my second. If only I could survive working for two days a week -- man I would finish my novel in no time. :)

Patrick and I have finally started venturing outside of the city limits to get a taste of what the suburbs have to offer. Three weeks ago, we took a train to Upper Ferntree Gully and climbed the 1000 Step Memorial Trail, built to let people "experience a sense of the exhaustion felt by the Australian soldiers following the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea in World War II." Yes, there are a thousand stairs and yes, it was a beautiful climb...and exhausting.






Spot the Jordan!

I climbed this trail when I lived here last time with my friends Zoe and Dean. After Patrick and I finished, we took the train to the end of the line -- a town called Belgrave -- and watched Inception again.

Two weekends ago, we went to Werribee South. Unfortunately, the city uses the weekends to repair train tracks so we only had about an hour to walk around before the final bus back to the city so we walked around, collected shells, enjoyed the calm water and waited for the sun to set. I've only ever seen water this calm on a lake :) We think we'll go again, though, because there's a zoo and winery there. Should be fun, if we can get there early enough.







Patrick's "Spring Break" begins next Friday and we both have off for 16 days. So we're taking two trains up the east coast. We'll hit Sydney, Byron Bay, Brisbane, Townsville (and Magnetic Island), and eventually Cairns and Port Douglas where we'll go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, take a Crocodile Tour on the Daintree River and eat homemade ice cream in the Daintree Rainforest. at least, I hope we can get to all of that. It'll be fast-paced to be sure, but fun. We're going to sleep on the train and only carry backpacks. Should be fun :D

Otherwise, I've kept myself busy by making weird hand paintings...



and pretending that a Purple People Eater slapped me...



Will write again,
Jordan and Patrick