I suppose I should mention: I’m home now. Got back about two weeks ago for Thanksgiving.
There are still loads of entries that I’m slowly putting up. Some of them have videos I want to include and those take me days to edit. Like this one.
I will inevitably fail to document the whole Oceania trip. Stuff comes up. I get distracted. I get lazy. Aside from the above encounter, Christmas Island will probably end up in the pile of never-writtens along with Yap, Myanmar, Mongolia, Russia, Uganda, China, Borneo, Dubai, Namibia, Jordan, Zanzibar, Madagascar, South Africa, Sweden, Czech Republic, Israel, and New Orleans.
So in case I never get to it, after the Solomon Islands I went to Papua New Guinea and danced with the Huli Wigmen. Got a clip that is probably in my top 5 of all time.
Flew down to Brisbane, stayed with my friends, Andy and Christie, and collapsed in a heap on their guest bed for several days.
Zipped down to Sydney, off to Auckland, then on to Melbourne and did three more dancing events all within 72 hours. Collapsed again with my friends, Adam and Tracy.
Flew out to Perth. Couldn’t find a hotel so I slept in a rental car. Drove into the outback and nearly ran over a 2 meter long snake.
Went to Christmas Island, which had my nieces very excited. Alas, no Santa. Just lots and lots of crabs. Danced with about a thousand of them. Well, I was dancing. They were trying to avoid my feet.
Flew from Christmas Island to Seattle in an endurance-straining marathon of five consecutive flights over the course of 46 hours. But it really wasn’t all that bad. Just a whole lot of sitting.
Grew a beard. Shaved it off. Lost a few pounds. Gained them back. Bought some gifts. Had them confiscated. So, very little net change. But I got a bunch more dancing clips and pretty much ticked off the "remote places" category for the next video.
I am doing very little these days aside from waiting for my copy of Rock Band to get here (don’t get me started on Amazon’s pre-order system). Guitar Hero 3 provides mediocre solace, but Portal is brilliant.
I’ve barely left the house in three days.
I did catch The Mist, though. It’s the movie you see when the other movie you meant to see is sold out. You don’t really know what to expect, but you wander into the theater and it proceeds to beat the crap out of you.
Remember The Shawshank Redemption and how good it made you feel? Its triumph of courage and humanity? This is by the same guy, but it has the exact opposite effect. It’s an expertly crafted, breathlessly thrilling, boot heel in your face. If you’re like me, that’s a good thing.
It snowed today.