COCKROACHES!!!!!!

Well, one of them anyway. We had our first running with a cockroach in our apartment last night. He kind of showed up out of nowhere and ran under our desk. I managed to coax him out with a few puffs from our air pump. He didn't really like it too much and made a dash to the coach. Ruth Ann valiantly trapped him with the broom and I then smeared him across the floor. The good news is that this was a flawless team effort in the demise of the bug. The bad news is that it's a cockroach and where there is one, there are usually more. We haven't seen any evidence of them in our apartment before so we're hoping he's an rouge but at least we have a bunch of roach motels.

Speaking of irritating bugs, in orchestra today we found out that they tune to A 441. After getting A 440 hammered into your head for a number of years, playing a bit higher is irking-sort of like a mosquito buzzing in your ear: not enough to push you over the edge but really annoying. (Side note from Ruth Ann: Note to self! When traveling to another country, always be smart enough to figure out the tuning frequency! I noticed in sectionals that I was distressingly flat and didn't find out the real reason until tuning a tricky section with the clarinet after rehearsal. Boy, do I feel dumb.......) (But it's also characteristic of everything Australian--half way between the US and Europe!!!)

We went to the beach last night. We took a ferry to Manly up northeast of the city. Unlike the dinky beaches we've been to thus far, Manly beach is right on the ocean(as opposed to being in the harbour). The tide was coming in so we had a spectacular display of waves coming in. We got there when it was still light and had a picnic on the beach. The seagulls were a bit cuter than those at Circular Quay so we threw some grapes and crackers at them. They didn't seem to like the carrot pieces I tossed to them. After that we took our shoes off and strolled through the wet sand. A wave washed up and we thought we'd get our feet wet. It kept coming and coming until we were soaked up to our thighs. We stayed until after dusk watching the waves and being amused by the surfers being thrown off their boards.

~Mike