USA and Canadia

Yes - its really called Canadia - the way that Aussies call Aluminum Aluminium. But not really, except that people always believe us and its hella fun.

So - I flew to San Francisco - fabulous city, and after a good sleep hired a car and drove 6 hours to Tuolumne Meadows to climb with some great friends our mine I was over the moon were in the area at the same time as me. Long slabs in the sun, high altitude, got a wee bit sunburnt, but had fun.







Got back into San Fran in time for the 4th of July, and after an evening of fireworks I spent some time at the University of California, Berkeley, where I had just as much fun meeting a research group and got drunk at the bar with them before chasing racoons on my way back to the uni accommodation, which was also great.



I had one last day in SF - where I went on a missing to see the Golden Gate bridge (as sooo many others have before me) only to be stopped by the famous fog. I even caught a ferry to Sausalito and went right by the bridge:




Which of course, I couldn't see. Then, I went back to the SF side and walked from the Bay bridge, which was gorgeously clear:



to the Golden Gate bridge (BIG walk - forced to buy expensive shoes on the way) to get the following stunning view:




Then I flew to Monteal - another fabulous city, where I was lucky enough to have some playmates join me...


There was LOTS of eating:



touristy observation:





Lots of partying too -
At the Jazz festival:



at the 80's club (where my bum got us free drinks):


Of course, I attended a really great conference during all of this, meeting up with some collaborators and launching a whole batch of new projects. I took Clare along to the conference dinner, where we (shock, horror!) drank:



and continued the drinking with my collaborator out to a bar and drank some more and played Clue, which I love:



There was shopping, and we found some interesting stores where miles away Mikl watched nervously as our joint account finances plummeted



We went to great circus act for the bargain price of $6 and Karin and I saw an Aussie band that I couldn't get tickets to in Australia:



Karin and I spent our last day at La Rhonde, the rollercoaster capital of Montreal

Which also included the famous "Vampire" rollercoaster:



Yay!

Yates

Our favourite cat in the world belongs to a friend of ours, who's new girlfriend is hideously allergic to him. The cat, not our friend. Yates, a 14 year old fabulously wonderful Burmese has been living in our friends backyard as a result of this new girlfriend. I should point out that both the new girlfriend (well, she's not so new) and Yates are wonderful, so it was a tough choice. But we now are the proud owners of Yates, who is a total lap-slut, and knows how to present himself of a cusion when necessary:



It turns out that Yates is highly allergenic, and soon after he arrived a friend came around for dinner and promtly had one eye swollen almost shut. So, the new girlfiend, not so much lying.

It has been really cold in Sydney, particularly in our house, so we took a picture of Yates with the thermal imaging camera we borrowed from work to see if he was still alive:



In fact, this is pretty much how I spent my whole weekend. And baking, and doing home renovating projects. And knitting. Ahhh - the life!





Although, secretly - we did go bouldering for an hour, where we saw a flying fox (they sort of look like bats but aren't) wide awake wayyy to early for itself in a nearby tree. We think its a baby. Look carefully....