Spring

Spring has sprung here in Melbourne (pronounced "Melbun" if you are a local...we are trying to work on that!), and yesterday we had temps that were almost 30 C (about 85 degrees F), with 100 km/h gusts of winds (that's 60 mph). Today we are back down in the 60's, which I think is seasonal for this time of year. The weather in Melbourne is actually known for having 4 seasons in one day. It will go from nice and sunny to cold and rainy in a matter of 30 minutes. The locals always tell us that if we don't like the weather we just have to wait an hour and it will change. :) The crazy weather does make for some cool-looking clouds and beautiful sunsets though!

View of the CBD near our house

Erik has been very busy with work this last week.  He was sort of thrown into a training study for elite triathletes who are doing heat and altitude training.  I think that he is really enjoying being back doing "science" after a significant amount of time off.  This study isn't really his area of research, but it's very interesting and it is a short study, so it was a good way for him to get started at VU.  I've been spending some time during the day visiting him on campus, which is in this brand new 70 million dollar facility.

I scored an old school pink Trek mountain/hybrid bike last weekend off of Gumtree (like Craigslist), which now makes it easier for me to get around town.  Public transport is close and convenient, but it is often unreliable and slow, so biking is better when possible.

Our container arrived on Sunday and will be in customs/quarantine for the next 10-14 days, so hopefully by early October we will have our "stuff"!  There have been more recent break-ins in our 'hood to our neighbor's house (twice, probably by the same people who took laptops and jewelry the first time and the TV the next time), which makes us a bit uneasy.  We don't have great concern for our safety, but we do have concerns about our valuables.  The police have some leads so hopefully the hoodlums will get caught and we can live in peace. :)  Apparently the type of place we are living is targeted because there is an alleyway behind our house for the garages, so it's just garages back-to-back on both sides and there isn't much visibility back there.

We successfully streamed our first college football game this weekend.  We had to wait until the game was long over to watch it, but we spent our Sunday evening watching the FSU/Oklahoma game, which turned out to be a pretty good game of football!  Obviously Erik was disappointed with the result, but it was exciting to be able to watch the game thanks to ESPN3.  We watched bits and pieces of a few other games live on Sunday morning, too.  Thank goodness for the Internet!! :)