Guest Blogger: Shawn!

Well, isn't this a treat?  Today we've got a guest blogger, my husband Shawn.  We have likened this situation to Family Circus Cartoons where little Billy takes over for his Dad.  And now that I've compared my blog to a Family Circus cartoon....I think it's definately time to hand this over to Shawn:

I am fairly confident in my assumption that not a lot of you dear readers who come to this blog have ever played a lot of Fantasy Sports. No I am not talking about Unicorn Horseshoes or the like, but the yearly male obsession (and sometimes female) of combining sports, numerous stats and overly complicated math formulas, all coming together to form into the new age pissing contest.  Doesn’t fit me at all right?

                Right, so the point is that this genre has helped produced one of my favorite (and easiest to write) styles. This is the almighty list of list, and in most cases a top 10 best list. Pretty simple to understand, I write lists, with tens things each, you then read them.

                As today, Monday, August 20^th 2012 is the 1^st of what will be many anniversaries with my beautiful wife, your down under blogger Devon,  have themed these lists around her. Some, of course have nothing to do with anything really, but that’s just because sometimes I can’t even form complete sentences let alone a whole list. Onward then.

                Devon’s Top 10 Favorite Sports Athletes (at least from my perspective in no particular order)

1.       Eli Manning

2.       Peyton Manning

3.       Cooper Manning

4.       Tom Brady

5.       Dhani Jones

6.       Felix Pie

7.       Nick Markakis

8.       Reggie Miller

9.       Baby Daisuke

10.   Albert Pooooooholes (Spelled Phonetically)

What is fun to note is that I have thrown in someone who absolutely is NOT a favorite of my wife’s. It’s like the old Sesame Street segment “One of these things is not like the other."

These were always super hard as a kid…. ok they are super hard now, forget age at all. I mean who would have guessed that the guy in the upper right hand corner is not a ukelele owning hipster and is in fact doing the wrong thing? We all learned in school, pretending to be something you’re not is wrong. I mean the skullcap does its best to hide the truth, but let's look closer shall we. Notice the Abercrombie and Fitch shirt?? How about the  Orangy- Brown covered walls…does he honestly look like he knows that colors Pantone number?? Didn’t think so. The other 3 are clear. Who shoots themselves playing a ukulele in black and white? Whose artistic expression is verse through a stunning interpretation of deconstructed ukulele? And the third guy is clearly in his old room back at mom’s house and pushing 30 (don’t judge he’s saving money to produce his indie film based on a struggling actor whose latest role is about a down on his luck writer, writing a screen play about of a penniless ukelele player...also thanks mom for letting me live at home after college)

Wow, barely even into the lists and I am already pretty fired up. Interestingly enough I have always had this innate ability to get WAY too excited for absolutely no reason. When I have reason to be excited, well sometimes…it’s the exact opposite. For those that witnessed my birthday at tiny house, I am still apologizing for not jumping out of my pants at swimming with a shark, stone-faced ftw.  Exsists though a medium that without fail gets me uber excited, and with draws the ire of my wife.

Top 10 Disney Channel Original Movies in order of how fired up I get.

1.       Jump In

2.       Going to the Mat

3.       Luck of the Irish

4.       Starstruck

5.       Lemonade Mouth

6.       Eddie’s Million dollar cook off

7.       Minutemen

8.       Motocrossed

9.       Hatching Pete

10.   Now you see it…

( Author’s note:  My favorite movie on here hands down is Luck of the Irish. Go see it now if you haven’t. Don’t even finish reading this, run out now, see it and come back, I’ll still be here. There don't you feel better.)

I don't think she understands...could she have been born without heartstrings too be tugged at??(alright in all fairness the roles here are reversed....she gets very emotional at certain movies, which is really cute. I on the other hand become a weepy pile only when Artax is taken by the Swamp of Sadness.....why are you so sad Artax....and I'm crying..see easy peasy)

I am fairly certain though that my knowledge of "the classics" is what escalated me to the forefront of all the suitors that would come to call on Devon. I mean she did graduate with a degree in film so it only makes sense that she would fall madly and unexplainably in love with a film connoisseur like myself. 

So Devon has made most of her blogs about the escapades of Australia. Apparently the general consensus is that all we do is look/pat/snuggle/photograph animals. It is a passion of ours, and as such we spend a good amount of time debating the wonders of australian animals

Top 10 Australian animals 

1. Wombat
2. Wombat
3. Wombat
4. Wombat
5. 2 Wombats ( Lower on the list because its hard to give equal affection to both)
6. Wombat
7. Wombat
8. Wombat
9. Wombat
10. Tasmanian Devils

Yeah I am sure you thought they would all be wombat, but you gotta give some love to the tazzy (for real, they need the love)  I really don't know how to explain this any better. You've seen the photos.



I am willing to testify that they are the cutest things ever.....well except for maybe.....

See what I almost did there. I thought about adding lots of pictures of Devon and I but lets be honest with each other. Much cuter in person anyway. Plus I think we have one total picture of us that one of the two of us doesn't look like a total goober.Besides you have plenty of blog reading time left before we leave Australia, I will make sure it is spent looking at me and her, doing stuff, looking awesome. your welcome.

Alright so while I like lists and all and this has been fun there is a specific reason that I wanted to hijack Devon's blog. 

Top to Reason's why I love Devon (Reverse style cause I am tricky)

10. Everything is fair game for a random song
9. All the little light bulb moments.....Friend-z eh?
8.Her sense of justice, or better yet willingness to stand up against  injustice
7.Having a great partner for Halloween costume duo's
6. Professor, Morgif, Reverend Duck, Lumpy and all the other Stuffy Crew
5.Her willingness to let me win every single video game (and letting me to use toadette)
4.Allowing me to be a huge dork, and not making me sleep on the couch for it
3.She's funny...i guess...sometimes...well to me at least
2.Her love of animals....most specifically our boys C&R...we miss you guys
1.Her ability to make always me happy....nobody does it better, ever....Happy anniversary muffin, first of a million together. All my love.

SKS

Dingoin' out of my mind.

There is something to be said about Australia's willingness to let you touch its' native animals at completely legitimate zoological establishments.  It's like the country got together and had a nice chat about it.  "Our animals are excellent and unique, right?  We should totally let people touch them"

Then they broke for tea and bikkies.  (Seriously, this is one of my favorite things about Australia...and maybe it was really me just breaking for tea and bikkies....)

Coming from years of volunteering at a zoo in the states and through our travels around zoos in the US, I can say that something that I always felt was lacking was animal encounter opportunities.  Honestly, who doesn't want to have a cuddle or some pats with an animal?  And guess what?  Seeing animals in captivity is one thing, but touching and having an experience with that animals is on an entirely different level. It makes you care more.  It means something.  Even if it's just with say...a bird.  A scary, scary bird.

Ironically wearing an owl hat.

No?  No one else feels me on that one?  Birds are frightening.  AND LOOK AT THEM.  First off, they are very nearly forming a pack there on my arm.  Secondly, and if I remember my docent training correctly, birds are like sharks and are prone to feeding frenzies in which they are indiscriminate in their killing.*

Anyway, enough of my bird-terrors animal-loving, conservation rant.

Besides Healsville making you think twice about using too much toilet paper....

She works out.

...petting their animals is as. cool.  as.  all.  get.  out.  So when Alyssa booked her trip, the literal first thing I did (besides squeals of joy for a visitor from home) was immediately start planning our return trip to the Healsville Sanctuary for as many animal pats as the day would allow.

Weeks earlier through my zoo membership magazine, I learned that Healsville is now offering echidna pats.  Maybe some of you don't know what an enkidna is.  (unless you've played sonic and knuckles.  hint: he's not sonic.  sonic is the hedgehog.  and no, it's not the two tailed fox either.  it's the red guy.)

Natural habitat of the Echidna, note it's natural predator the...uh, robot fish?  And yes, this is actually what Australia looks like, ocean, palm trees and golden coins floating in the air.  Squint and you can see my apartment in the background.

To be fair, if you didn't know what an echidna was, blogger doesn't even seem to know what it is either, because it keeps encouraging me to change it to enchilada.  So get your learnin' caps on kids: An Echidna is one of the three egg laying mammals, along with platypus and me.  What?  You're trying to say laying eggs wouldn't be easier than live births?  All the incubation takes place outside of the body.  Count me in.  THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

But I digress with dreams of being a dinosaur (I've got the t-rex arms down....)

When I called to book a formerly-baby-now-juvenile wombat encounter for Shawn and Alyssa, they informed me that they were only taking reservations for echidnas on the day of due to the fact that they tend to be the devon of animals temperamental.  So I just booked the wombats and figured we could book more on the day as time and desire would allow.

Thankfully this time around I had the super powers of SEABANDS!  which prevented me from feeling vomitious on the bus ride to Healsville.  And when we got there, we decided to book dingoes for all three of us AND put down for a tentative enchidna enounter for me and alyssa.

First we wandered around the saaaannnccctttuuuuuaarrrryyyy (say it like the hunchback) a bit while we waited for dingoes.  We ate some Vegemite sandwich and saw the bird show, and at the end there was a man of indigenous decent who threw boomerangs (I raised my hand when he asked who wanted the boomerang, but go figure, some adorable child got it, though originally he was looking for a blonde 30 year old) and played the didgeridoo.

 After that, it was time for dingoes.

Before we continue, I'm going to lay down some ground rules.
1) No "dingo ate my baby" jokes.  C'mon you guys are above that.  And besides, it really did eat her baby and babies eaten by wild animals is very sad.
2)  Seriously.  Get them out of your system before moving on.
3) I mean it.

okay? okay.  Everyone just thinks of dingoes as dogs.  But I can say, dingoes are NOT dogs.  They are more awesome than dogs.  They are like cats.  Here's some fun facts about dingoes.

Unlike dogs, dingoes are NOT food motivated and certainly don't do things just to please you.  They do things when they want and if they want.  (Yay!  Cat dogs!)

Unlike dogs, who can just move their paws up and down, dingoes can move their paws like we can move our hands, in all directions.  Making it tricky to keep them in an enclosure with a latch on it.

Because unlike some breeds of dogs....

DINGOES ARE SMART!

The encounter started out by just sort of letting them get used to us and then we got to take photos by them.  At this point, the adorable dingoes started to give us kisses.  It was, hands down, so far my favorite animal encounter.  EVER. 

Pro Tip:  When you're in an animal encounter and someone asks you if you'd like to go again, don't look about your group like, oh that person would probably like another picture with the animal.  NO.  Immediately volunteer.  Then you get a picture of just you with the animal AND bonus, more kisses if you're with the dingoes.  That right there is worth any scorn from anyone who didn't speak up.

After that we immediately went over to the echidna encounter.  The echidna is another smart animal, because unlike stupid humans, it doesn't like to come out of it's burrow when it's stormy out. (side note: I need a burrow) Thankfully, this little girl was able to be coaxed out of her burrow for what was essentially some insectivore mash, aka mushed up insects and meat.  YURM!  She was completely adorable and since it was just me and Alyssa (with Shawn peering over the side of the enclosure...we were fast friends with the zoo encounter employee at this point) we got to spend lots of time with the little one.  Although they have spikes, they're still pretty soft and unlike say...a porcupine, they can't lose those spines.  I still owe Kendra an encounter with one for her birthday, so I'm excited to be able to do it again.

We ALSO spent some time in the wild bird enclosure where you get to hand feed birds.  And they fly around you and sit on you and really consider pecking out your eyes.  Generally, reliving it makes me feel nervous.

After that, we headed over to the wombat area where Shawn and Alyssa were going to have an encounter with the juvenile wombats.  I sat quietly watching the Tasmanian Devils run amok in their enclosure.  I'd like to say I had a nice chat with a docent that wandered in, but it wasn't a nice chat at all.  She was just complaining that it had been raining.  Another note to zoo volunteers, I'm not there to listen to you complain, so if you can't give me a fun fact about Tasmanian devils, please just keep on moving.

In closing, I present to you a really amazing montage.  Now, I know after seeing this you'll all be like, devon, whyyyyy did you give up on such a promising film career??!!  And then you will shed some tears for all that the world has lost.  (god, i miss my macintosh......)

*yeah, that is completely untrue.

She's a Rainaic.

You've been holding back on me, United States.  All these years, you've been telling me lies and it's only just now that I've moved to Australia that I've been able to figure it out.

Let me give you a typical scenario:  it's the 4th of July.  It's RAINING (it does that) and oops, the fireworks are cancelled because you can't have fireworks in the rain.  I mean that's what they tell us right?  and you think one of two things:

1) "well naturally you can't have fireworks in the rain, how would you light the wicks?" (conveniently forgetting these things are all remote controlled now a days)
2) "well, naturally you can't have fireworks in the rain, how would you see the fireworks with all the clouds?" (conveniently forgetting CLOUDS ARE UP REALLY HIGH.)

but year after year, storm after storm, we believe that you simply cannot shoot off fireworks in the rain.  because that is what we've been told.

Well, prepare to have your world shattered as i present to you....fireworks.  IN THE RAIN!

okay, i'll let you in on a little secret.  I get it, US. Even though you CAN have fireworks in the rain, maybe it's not something that most people would really go for.  At least not in the winter.  It's cold.  And wet.  But it DOES make the fireworks look really neat.  So perhaps under a covering?  But in Australia's defense, they can really only shoot of fireworks in the winter, because in the summer, there's pretty much a total fire-ban because of all the wildfires.  Even though fireworks are awesome, burning down your entire countryside is decidedly not. 

Because Melbourne is tryin' real hard to get people on board with coming here in the wintertime (where it's really more like winter-light, than anything a new englander would be used to) they had a neat little thing at the docklands every Friday in July.  The docklands is a little baby waterfront, with some shops, a broken down ferris wheels (I make it sound so glam, right?) and some sick apartments.

View of the city from my future apartment

Since I had to work mostly every day while alyssa was here, i was trying to come up with night time activities (which are often few and far between if you're not planning on hitting up the pub)  So we thought this might be nice.  I hadn't really gotten to do much with Alyssa since she arrived on Thursday, but we did grab dinner in the city on Wednesday and she and Shawn hit up the zoo on Thursday while I was at work.  During the fireworks however, I'm not sure we assumed it would torrential downpour but with several umbrellas, we sort of made the most of it.  After all, if the street performers could withstand it without umbrellas (ellas ellas ellas), who am I to complain?

Hangin with Dame Edna.

Shawn warming himself like a hobo at a restaurant

After the fireworks, we headed to the casino for a nice dinner (an interesting journey in itself since they stopped running our tram, and upon taking another one had a bit of difficulty viewing the landmarks because the windows were so fogged up)  Dinner wasn't too bad, and the next day we were headed to Healesville Sanctuary for animal encounters.

waterlogged and starving

waiting for carbs.

*i cannot help that these videos only contain stereotypical Aussie songs.

He gave me a Vegemite Sandwich

It had to happen sometime.

America the Beautiful

I think I've earned the award for worlds worst blogger.  But, I will also note, as I type this we JUST HAD ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE.  Is the world ending because I'm blogging?  Or is that just because it's 2012?  Mull over that.

In the next few weeks, expect more posts, sisterwife #1 Alyssa will be here on TUESDAY and we're going to have so much to do!  Since you all probably don't want to hear about my day to day adventures on database management, (or do you?) I haven't had much to report as of late.  After Alyssa vacates back to the states (if i let her..wha ha ha) there will even be a newwwww interactive blog to look forward to, compliments of an accidental co-operative idea from the lovely nicole of RWU fame!

If there is anything that I am longing for like nobody's business, it's American food.  In fact, Shawn and I have been on a great quest since we've arrived in Melbourne, if for nothing else then to find a 'normal' hamburger.  (they are always sneaking weird ingredients into the mince here, it's not just like...ground meat and cheese, it's spiced meat.  stop spicing the meat, and stop putting onions in it.)  After not having delicious American food for so long, i have turned into a looney tunes character marooned on an island and now sort of see everyone like this:

Better hallucinating hot dogs than turkeys?

To quell our US food cravings, we insisted on celebrating the 4th of July here.  Shawn, as a surprise to me, went to the USA grocery store (seriously this was an epic feat, it's like 2 hours by bus from our house) and got me tons of US treats.  Sadly, they were all out of cheezits.  (re: someone friggen send us some cheezits. I am NOT kidding)  But he did get:

 The Reeses and the Wheat Thins STILL exist in the house.  I am rationing.  Nutter butters....were gone in .43 seconds.

 We had a proper 4th of July meal, with hot dogs and potato salad and corn on the cob.  Delicious.

Even a little burnt

BRAND NAME CONDIMENTS!

Still, every few weeks, the craving for American food is nearly unbearable.  And thankfully, Shawn's school friends wanted to go out for dinner AND they wanted him to pick.  Shawn stumbled across an American style diner, (run by an ex-pat), so that's where we headed.  The burgers weren't so great, but the milkshakes, (real, real, real milkshakes, made with ice cream!) were AMAZING.  This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that mine was Peanut Butter and Captain Crunch.  But Shawn's Junior Mint and Oreo was pretty good too. And since I wanted American food so badly, I broke two cardinal rules this night:  1) I got dessert even though I had a milkshake.  It was Key Lime Pie.  I couldn't resist.  2) I shared dairy.  Please understand what a gigantic deal this was for me.  I let someone else (WHO I HAD JUST MET!) drink out of my milkshake.  I am trying not to dwell on this.  Moving very quickly onward.

Shawn's friends were a complete delight, and took lots of pictures.  I'm excited to hang out with them again, they were adorable!  (and my height and we all know how much I love having friends that are the same height as me)  The waiter of the joint was an American too and yup, just sliiiiiightly rude.  Awww, reminds me of waitstaff back home :) 

We felt Pey's dessert needed MORE American flags

HORSE DRESS.

Challenge Burger.

I feel the Earth move under my feet.

My father has a fascination with storms.  When we were little and there would be a tornado watch, he would always say how he'd like to see one.  God only knows why he thought they were fascinating, I grew up with a healthy fear of weather, and every time we had a watch or a warning I would recite what I would need to do.  I learned my recitations from tv and movies, and from that book about the night of the 7 tornadoes that my 4th grade teacher Mr. Spillane read to us.  (tornadoes at night?  horrifying.  How would you even see it coming?)

Here is my very limited tornado preparedness mantra:
If you were in your house, you'd go to the south east corner of your basement (I had/have no idea how to tell direction so that would be helpful), and stay away from windows.  And you get under a mattress (note, drag mattresses down into the basement)
If you were outside of the house, you should get under an underpass, because that's what that dad did with his kids and they were fine. (though I think they say NOT to do that now...)
If there aren't any underpasses, lie in a ditch. (this STILL seems unhelpful, because what, if the tornado can't see you, it can't suck you up?  I understand it will probably help me from getting impaled with a straw, but still....)

I'm not sure what my dad's stance is on earthquakes.  I know when I was younger, he told me behind my cousins house in Tolland that there was a fault line.  I'm pretty sure it was just a quarry.  As a child you actually couldn't trust much what my dad said.  If you fell asleep in the car, he'd tell you you'd missed all these fun things. (re: Herbie Hall of Fame, which is the hall of fame for Volkswagon beetles)  He also told me that those giant water towers made apple sauce (all the apples compress down on each other, how ELSE did I think it got made?) and told one cousin on our trip to Illinois that Hostess had a 50 ft. Twinkie in storage when we drove by the factory.  When he learned my dad had been joking, he was devastated.  What can I say, my dad's a pretty convincing guy.

But I digress.
  
Although pretty famous for its blizzards, New England isn't exactly what you'd call a severe weather hot-spot.  Thus there are only a few natural weather/occurrences that a New Englanders' brains are equipped to handle.  This makes it a bit challenging when something out of the realm of my weather knowledge and experience occurs.

Case.  in.  point.

In July of 2008, Shawn and I were living in Rhode Island.  I was heading home from work, chatting with my brother on my cell when a vicious storm hit.  Looking out my window, I see a funnel cloud begin to descend from the heavens.

Me: Uh....there's a tornado.
Brother: Are you serious?
Me: Uh......what do I do?
Brother: Get out of the car and lie in a ditch! (He swears he did not say that, I swear he did.)
Me: NO!  I'll drive back to work and hide in the basement.

You see, in situations like these, you don't really know what you're supposed to do.  Do you lie in ditch?  Do you hide in a basement?  Because New Englanders are not often faced with this situation, we don't really know how we're supposed to react.  Or maybe that's just me.  (Side note, we DO have blizzard skills.  Things I like to say in a blizzard "NO, YOU IDIOT, why are you breaking on the hill???  NOW WE ARE ALL GOING BACKWARDS!"  Seriously, don't break on a hill when it's snowing.  it's just bad news.  This public service announcement brought to you by the "don't break on the hill, ya idiot coalition for keeping a constant speed on hills in blizzards")

The tornado was barely a 1 on the F scale but my brain had fried anyway (we later theorized that the storm was brought upon by our discussion of this horrible piece of rubbish that I refuse to acknowledge as a movie, lest causing more tornado touchdowns)

There is a second part to this story.  The part when I arrive home.  Brain fried, doubting my choice of residency, shaken AND stirred, and in need of comfort.  I arrive home to then-boyfriend-now-husband seeking solace.


Me: I saw a tornado on the way home.  I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED.  (my performance is nothing short of oscar worthy)
Shawn: Did you remember to pick up the milk?  We are out of milk.
Me: I could have been KILLED and all you care about is milk??!
Shawn: I like milk.

He does like milk.

Shawn was used to my penchant for...uh...'theatrics', but honestly, I WAS pretty freaked out.  I mean a tornado, in NEW ENGLAND?  What was next?  Epic Mississippi  river style floods? 

Fast forward to the week of our wedding.  We took a mini-moon in Connecticut and went to Lake Compounce.  While standing on a staircase for a water ride, several stories up, the structure began to sway.  I clutched on to Shawn for dear life, (what, I already feel pretty vulnerable in a bathing suit, we don't need to add the possibility of plummeting to my death into the equation) and the man in front of us joked "earthquake!"  well all kidding aside,  it was. 

So there you have it.  I survived a very minor tornado and a very minor earthquake.  I also knew in my heart of hearts right out in the open that I have NO BUSINESS living any place that is prone to natural disasters.  (God love Japan, I could never live there because of the tsunami factor.  I am terrified of the ocean/earthquake combo)

Melbourne, Australia on the other hand, is not really a city prone to many natural disasters.  Yes they get the odd cyclone (that's a pacific ocean hurricane for you US folks), but so did New England.  You get plenty of warning for hurricanes/cyclones, so they are pretty easy to avoid.

Our evening went thusly. I had just arrived home from my first day at the Accounting firm, so I was tired.  Since it is winter and I want to blend in with the locals, my skin is doing it's very best effort to crockodile-ize.  (Seriously, ask my parents, I am itching like crazy on skype.)  Anyway, this particular evening, I was watching Good Game's wrap up of E3 and slathering my feet with lotion when something odd started to happen.

There was a very loud banging.

My thoughts were the following.

1) why are they working on the apartments this late at night?  aren't they supposed to be done by 4pm? (For those of you following along at home, they have started the 2 year fixing your crappy living residence project)
2) Maybe it's not the trades, maybe it's the neighbors?  what the hell are they bringing up the stairs that's making so much racket??
3) why is our door shaking?  IS SOMEONE TRYING TO BREAK INTO OUR APARTMENT?

I realize very quickly that this is an earthquake and all my 'survival' training kicks in.

Leaping off the couch, I run for the nearest door frame.

Me: Shawn!  We need to get in a door frame!*
Shawn, sits nonchalantly at the table, and looks at me, as he saunters towards the doorway.
Me: no wait!  We're on the third floor!  aren't we supposed to go outside??!!  isn't that what you do?? (I begin to turn in circles because that is what I do when i panic)
Shawn, gives me a look that lets me know in no uncertain terms, we are NOT going outside. (I guess I did have a hand full of lotion and one sock on)

Perhaps I may have over-reacted, but in my defense it WAS a 5.4 AND it's the biggest this area has had in like 100 years.  I've never been in a real earthquake before, so I wasn't sure if the shaking would just get bigger, or if the swaying of our apartment (which is apparently made of jello, children's laughter, and twigs) was an indication that we should not be in it. 

Since Shawn was unconcerned (he went back to studying) I called C&K and did admittedly panic a little bit when I couldn't get through on the phone.  Eventually we had some texts, so I felt a bit more calm. 

Though i'm still worried about the structural integrity of our apartment (though, that's really nothing new), I realized it could have been so much worse and happy to add another mostly harmless natural event to my repertoire.   

 It was fun today chatting at work, and hearing everyone's stories about where they were and what they were doing. I most certainly did may or may not have tried to play it cool and neglected to tell about the pure unadulterated panic. 

*I briefly considered getting in the tub, but I think that's tornado related and it also has to do with having a mattress.

The things I do for love, or who the hell am I kidding this was totally for me too.

I collect the 7 deadly sins like Pokemon.  Currently, I'm being pretty successful with sloth (I managed to get the exercise charts up on the wall and blew up the gym ball, that's a start, right?).  But one deadly sin isn't really enough, so I decided to work on another.

Before I came to Australia, one of my amazing student workers Nicole and I did what any normal two people would do during a work day and that's, look up what McDonald's Australia has to offer.  For those of you who don't know, McDonald's around the world offer a unique menu depending on the country you're in.  For instance, when we went to Japan, they had the MEGA TERIYAKI BURGER!!!  (sort of tasted like a sausage mcmuffin.)  Now, I am of the FIRM belief that the only way you to truly learn about a country it so eat its' food.  And the a nice way you can learn about how a country views America, is to eat at McDonalds.  On this day, not only did Nicole and I discover that they had the original apple pies (which actually made me really excited), but we saw a section that was labeled 'dinner'.  I thought oh maybe they only have certain things during dinner time?

Wooooo boy was I mistaken.

No, you see, McDonalds Dinner means...a FAMILY SIZED HAPPY MEAL.

So naturally, as soon as Shawn found out about this, we were goingtogetmcdonaldsdinnerbox.

Before you start thinking how disgusting it was and how much food the two of us actually consumed, please note, to get to McDonalds we literally have to walk uphill scale the sheer face of a mountain.  And then cross a 4 lane highway with NO CROSSWALKS.  so we were pretty much jeopardizing our lives to get this dinner box.  Also, since I can't (re: am too lazy to) do the calorie conversion from kilojoules, I didn't feel so bad about eating this, because calories in foreign countries don't count.  (everyone knows that.) PS, i have to WALK EVERYWHERE.  I will eat what I want.

When we arrived at this McDonalds, we didn't see it on the menu.  So we both freaked out and made an emergency plan.  Then instead of going up to the cashier like a normal human, I had to look up on my phone the homepage for McDonalds dinner so I could SHOW the cashier (because unlike a normal human, I cannot just ASK.  Does anyone else do this?).  We literally sat there for like 10 minutes trying to decide if maybe we should just walk to Hungry Jacks (that's Burger King, but they changed the name here) instead because we didn't want to feel like fools if they didn't have it.   But then we'd already been in McDonalds for 10 minutes sitting at a table in front of the registers and it would look totally weird if we just walked out.  So, we had to create an emergency plan of something to order in case they didn't have it.  (note, the special burgers here are the EL Maco, with sour cream and taco sauce, and The McOz which has beets on it.  Beets on burgers are a thing here, and no, I haven't tried it yet.)

But it turns out they did have it.  So we didn't have to be worried.  The cashier WAS new and quite confused though, but we got through it in the end.   

There are two types of McDonalds dinner you can order, the Family Value Box and the Family Favourites Box.  I thought the Favorites Box might be a bit much, so we went with the Value Menu.   

Happy Meal for the Whole Family!

In this magical box was:

• 2 Big Macs

• 2 Cheeseburgers

• 4 Small Fries

• 1 6 pack of McNuggets

• *2 Medium and 2 Small Sodas

Shawn does not eat condiments.  So we had to special order the burgers.  Usually I do it, because I say "just meat and cheese" and he's says "just meat and cheese and not any of that other garbage." which horrifies me.  Anyway, this left us with a predicament on who was eating what. 

Me: Are you going to eat a Big Mac?
Shawn: No, I'm going to eat the two cheeseburgers.
Me: I don't want to eat two Big Macs, Shawn!
Shawn: I don't like Big Macs.
Me: We will get it with just meat and cheese!
Shawn: What's the point in that?
Me: The point is I AM NOT EATING TWO BIG MACS.

In the end, we got 1 Big Mac and the two cheeseburgers just meat and cheese because if I wanted a cheeseburger I have ketchup and mustard at the apartment.   Also, he did eat a big mac after i pointed out it's just a double cheeseburger with MORE BREAD.

We also decided that wasn't enough food.  Because McDonalds here is the BEST (aka the 1980's McDonalds we all love from our childhood) we had to get cookies (the old kind with Grimmace and Birdy on them) and I got an apple pie.  Y'know for documentation purposes.  This is purely scientific.

All snug in the box.

Baby fries

All unwrapped and ready to go, with a cookie cameo.

Once we got home and got situated and Shawn turned to me and I swear to whatever god you believe in that he said "We should put cheese on these fries."

So we did.

Does it really matter at this point?

And I don't care what you think, this sh*t was delicious.

I'll leave you with a very sexy video.  If you feel the need to turn the lights down low, get a glass of wine, no one's gonna judge you.  I suggest you make this full screen.




I'm so sorry  You're SO welcome for this blog post. <3 Devon ;)

*Before you start thinking these are US sizes, they are not.  Remember McDonalds when you were a kid and a small soda was the size of the juice cups they give you now?  That's a medium here.  And the smalls?  The kids size cups.