Visitors

This month is the month of visitors. Emily's immediate family is coming to visit for 4 weeks. I'm looking forward to taking Tim kite flying if the weather holds up. Emily's marble run is also likely to get a work out (I will link to her marble run once she blogs about it :P ).

I've also got an important visitor coming from Australia. A friend of mine from a few years ago finished a big step in her training (she's a real medical doctor, not one of these fake computer science doctor's...). She's coming to visit for a week in the middle of October and I'm insisting on hosting her in my apartment. No hotels for visitors! Not now that my place is big enough. :)

Anyway, this means I have to get rid of my cold quick smart. Yes, I forgot to mention that I've been sick for about 3 weeks. It wasn't really noticeable to start with - just a headache that lasted for weeks on end. Only in the last few days did it flare up into a proper head cold. At least that means it's near the end. Or I am. One or the other. ;)

Chinese Yo-yos

Emily spent a few hours today trying to teach me how to use a Chinese Yo-yo. She has a lot of experience, but I think we can agree that I'm not the best student. :)

Still, she persevered and managed to teach me the correct way to make it spin, and got me to the point of 'throwing' the yo-yo into the air for her to catch. We succeeded a couple of times, though mainly due to her skill at catching than my skill at throwing...

I'm hoping that she'll continue to teach me. At the very least, this should be good exercise for my arms and backs. At the worst, it is something else to do when the wind dies and the kites won't fly.

One day, we might be able to throw a pair of yo-yos to each other, without the danger of ripping skin from toes... :D

P n' E at the PNE

Emily and I went to "The Fair at the PNE" on this long weekend. It's basically a smaller version of the Sydney Easter Show. Much to Emily's dismay we didn't actually go on any rides - far too expensive to justify it. We might try and go this coming weekend, when the prices drop. However, we did have a lot of other fun...

For $8 each we got these temporary airbrush tattoos. 3 days later and they're still looking good. I'm tempted to look into body spraypaints (if they exist) to have some more fun ourselves later. Of course, with winter coming, it's not like we'll have any exposed skin for 6 months anyway. :)

We also got to watch the "Toontastic" parade. It was surprisingly cool just to see all the old non-Disney comics cruising past. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough pressure to get rid of all the wrinkles in the inflatables, making them look very aged. We had to wonder: was this intentional?

Near the end of the day, we went to see the Iams Superdogs show. The Iams Superdogs are a collection of highly-trained dogs, sponsored by the Iams petfood company, that go around doing shows. I was pleasantly surprised to see the dogs really enjoying themselves. See the videos below of "Hairy Potter" getting a homerun, and another extremely well-trained dog that I forget the name of.

To end our day we went to see the Wheels of Steel motorbike stuntshow. It started at 9.30pm, and was 10 minutes of quad-bike races, 10 minutes of street-bike tricks, and then 10-minutes of dirt-bike jumps. Aside from the jumps and tricks, the best part was the pyrotechnics - it was cold out there, and every burst of flame gave us just a little bit of extra warmth! See the videos below of two of the dirt-bike tricks; Starfish Barhop and Double Grab In The Air.