The Queen and the President

Australia has hosted both the Queen and the President of the USA within the last 3 weeks which is kind of exciting I guess. The Queen even came to my neglected little state as part of CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting which includes 54 other countries most of whom stemmed from the British Empire including Canada, India, South Africa).

To be fair most Americans wouldn't know what to do with it either

I almost went to the big, public aussie barbeque that was held for the Queen on our foreshore on her last day in the country, but I went shopping in the city instead. If I actually think about it, I guess I would vote for Australia to become a republic and have nothing much more to do with the UK, but on the other hand I just thought it would be cool to see the Queen in public. Also the idea of the barbeque was pretty PR savvy. Getting old Prince Phillip to have a go turning some sausages on an outdoor barbeque was interesting.

While the President did not visit my part of the world (with only 27 hours time spent in Australia, who can blame him?), he was the first President to visit the Northern Territory which is the top end of Australia, which is hot and home to a lot of big crocodiles.
Now I will readily agree that my American politics knowledge is pretty minimal. Apart from some memories of Cold War info stuck in my head from an old history lesson, I don't keep up with much - though I probably should. Like most, I was glad when Obama became president if only purely so George Bush was out but after listening to the speech he gave parliament I gotta say that guy has a lot of charisma. How nice it would be to listen to a leader of my own country talk with passion...but then again maybe it's just the accent.

That 'special' relationship

A reunion and 2 puppies

So my ten year high school reunion was the other night, and you know what they say: the more things change the more they stay the same.
I'd say for about half the night we all reverted back to our old cliques and social circles. But instead of my group standing near the lockers in the rose garden, and the popular groups in the main quadrangle we were upstairs at a bar with a tiny area for buying drinks and a server who couldn't serve the drinks quick enough.
It was such a surreal feeling walking up the stairs. I just remember thinking to myself that I needed to latch on to someone I recognized and remembered as being friendly and then I needed to get a drink stat. Within about half a hour I had told some guy that I had a crush on him in year 9 but he just laughed it off, which thinking about it now, is a bit embarrassing.
We did start to mix and I didn't get horribly drunk and embarrass myself (previous crush revelation excluded), but a lot of people didn't show. I think only about half from our graduating class turned up, I'm guessing more will be attending the 20 year reunion and perhaps think enough time hasn't gone past?
Sadly the music was not late 90s/early 2000s specific, and we didn't get any spectacular dancing a la Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.

Now to the puppy portion of this post. The fosters have been far and few between due to having Mylo and Herbie who have extra attention since February of this year, but with Mylo on trial at my mum and dads place and we having officially adopted Herbie I figured I would dip my toes into the puppy foster world again. Napoleon is the white puppy and Tiger obviously the stripey one. They are apparently wolfhound x staffy x kelpie but to me the breed they mostly look like is staffy, short stocky fellows that they are. They are currently about 8 weeks old. I have forgotten how much mess and time they take up, OMG I am exhausted. Luckily they're pretty cute.