NSM A Sight for Sore Eyes

With Laura away for another weekend race event, I decided to check out the National Sports Museum. Housed in the Melbourne Cricket Ground (the MCG  ... or "the G"), it holds the relics and recognizes the legends of Australia's sporting past.  Coming highly recommended by all the travel guides, it contains an impressive collection of memorabilia.  Fortunately for you, pictures are not permissible.  Lets just say the entire history of Australian sport crammed into an underground section of of even Australia's largest stadium tends to look like a scrap-booker gone bonkers.  This is what it looks like ...

From Coolfunpics.com

Seriously, so much stuff!  Could.  Not.  Focus.  I retained zero information and my eyes went batty.  If I could portray a visual of the AFL Hall of Fame room for you.   Close your eyes (while reading this) and put yourself in a 15 ft. x 15 ft. room with probably a 25 ft. ceiling.  There is one door into this room.  Now picture all four walls completely canvassed in 8in. wide by 1ft. tall tiles of varying grey-scale at varying depths.  Those lucky enough to be inducted into the AFL HOF have their image and career details on a tile.  These dedicated tiles make up a small percentage of those in the room and are scattered randomly.  I challenge anyone to spend more than 10 minutes in that room and not end up in a padded cell.  I attempted to regain sanity taking in Shane Warne's (the "Michael Jordan of cricket") hologram recap his career.  Holograms are not easy on the eyes either.

On the plus side, the NSM has an awesome simulation area.  It's probably supposed to be geared towards kids, but I spent a solid hour and a half there honing my Australian sport skills.  I replicated Gary Ablett Jr.'s 45m goal on "pro" mode first kick, then subsequently missed every other attempt.  I can't handball to save my life.  I can hit the stumps (in cricket) with the best of them.  I was never an accomplished shooter in basketball, and was predictably worse without the backboard as is scenario in netball.  And, like any other human with even an ounce of athleticism, I can beat a goaltender with ease on penalty kicks.

The G

Growing the cricket pitches outside the G

Melbourne hosted the Olympics in 1956.  Such a sporting city
and gaining notoriety from being "most livable city" 3 years
running, I wouldn't be surprised to see them back here in our lifetime.

I think this picture of the museum is legal.

Statue of Shane Warne

Commemorating the first game of Australian Rules Football played on these grounds.

Movember Update.

Jeffie sure is a sport.  He's working at continuing to grow out his mo, and puts up with me taking pictures of him every other day - in the name of the blog...what a guy!

Here they are...enjoy!

Movember 1st 

Movember 3rd

Movember 5th

Movember 8th 

Movember 11th

A Herd of Elephants in Melbourne.

The Melbourne Zoo is celebrating 150 years, and as part of the celebration, they have 50 life-size models of the famous elephant calf, Mali painted by a bunch of artists on display throughout Melbourne.

I thought it would be cool to download the app and go see all of the models.  Jeff didn't think so.  We compromised and took pictures of the ones that we ran into on our trip into the CBD on Sunday.  There were lots of other people that had the same idea I did, only they actually did go on the tour of the Mali's...lots of folks looking at iPhones and printed maps and getting pictures of all 50 Mali's, but not us.  We only saw about 6...not nearly as impressive as showing you 50 different elephant calves.

Faces of Mali.

We'll try harder next time.

They are going to auction them off...maybe we'll get one - what would we do with it?

Want to know what's even worse?  Jeff has lost the pictures off of his iPhone, so now we only have a picture of ONE Mali.  Sad.  All of the Mali's can be seen before they went to auction at this link - Mali's in Melbourne.

photo credit:  Melbourne Zoo
http://www.zoo.org.au/melbourne/whats-on/mali-zoo

Movember.

Across the globe each November, guys give up their clean-shaven faces in the name of supporting Prostate Cancer and men's mental health, hence renaming the month...Movember.  They start with a clean-shaven face on Movember 1st, then for the rest of the month groom, trim, and wax their moustaches into face finery.

Last year I was proud to see all of the guys on my team at work join in the Movember movement (and quite pleased when they all shaved on 1 December!), and I'm even prouder this year that Jeffie has joined in the festivities.  

Jeffie has joined to honor BigBull.  Earlier this year, BigBull was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer.  We are pleased and very relieved to report that his surgery in September was successful and he is on the road to recovery and living a long and happy life :).  In fact, he started back to work late this week.

Jeffie and BigBull at the 12 Apostles in April 2012.  BigBull is a
lifelong Mo sporter!

I'll be keeping a regular photo-history going of Jeff's mo-growing...enjoy!  Jeff has never grown any sort of facial hair, so this could be interesting...what if he becomes a lifelong mo-grower?

Movember 1st

Movember 3rd

If you would like to support the MO RETREAT MO SURRENDER  team, click on the link and you can take a gander at the boys on the team and have the option of supporting the team or just a team member.  Should you choose to donate, please know that it will be converted to Australian dollars and you may incur a conversion/transaction fee.  If you'd like me to donate for you, please let me know and I will take care of it from our Australian account.

Way to go, Jeffie!  I'm so proud of you for parting with your clean-shaven face and supporting a great cause!

Oktoberfest...Melbourne Style.

Oktoberfest came to Melbourne this past weekend, and we decided to join some friends and partake in the festivities.

We arrived at the local German club, Club Tivoli, and proceeded to claim territory and try the brews on offer.  For an extra $5, you got to keep this kickin' 1/2 litre PLASTIC mug.  The best part...it has a German boxing a kangaroo wearing leiderhosen.  What's better than that?

While the steins may not have been proper German, the people and food truly were.  We had sausages, potato cakes, and bretzels (not the best bretzel, but perfect for soaking up a bit of alcohol).

Laura introduced the crowd to the pretzel necklace, an invention pioneered at an Asheville Beer Festival we attended with our good friends the Foleys.  Nobody had ever put pretzels on a string prior to that event ... trust us, we researched it.  She also attempted to dance with one of the old German veterans manning the grill.  He gave it a go and then sternly pointed to Laura and stated "can't dance".

The carnage:

Evolution of the pretzel necklace

One of the crew "helping" out the chefs

Is that a zipper?  Cause that seems odd.

The Best Eggs in the World?

Jeff and Matt headed out for one last ski day in the Aussie Alps.  This time, they were blessed with beautiful weather and sunny skies (much different from the last time...see previous blog post here).

After a great day of skiing, with some interesting conversations with some fellow skiers, they departed with the intent of locating and purchasing "The Best Eggs in the World."

You see, as the story goes, during their last trip, they passed several signs on the way up to the mountain and the way back from the mountain talking of "The Best Eggs in the World."  Yet, they didn't stop because of the less than ideal weather (and because they were busy spotting wombats and roos in the country-side).

So, they find the roadside stand.  It's about an hour outside of Melbourne, about five minutes off the beaten path, at a farmhouse that seemingly has an entire valley to themselves.  Jeff challenged his claim, and the farmer ... eyeing the American suspiciously ... "never had a complaint".  Sounded like a nice enough bloke.

Jeff had some eggs for brekkie this morning, and says that they are quite good - a bigger yoke to white ratio than normal.  Have we found the Best Eggs in the World?

Isn't it obvious which one of the three is the "Best Egg in the World"?

Home Maintenance.

Since we have moved out of the condo and into a stand alone house, Jeff has had to take up some home maintenance again.

And, it is very time consuming and stressful.

Our non-powered lawn mower.

The "yard" that we're responsible for is about 3'x9'.  I think it takes him about 2 minutes to complete his chore.