23 Jan: Melbourne (VIC).

Jill picking out the "best looking" Moreton Bay Bugs because she has so much experience with them - errrr.... not really

[NOTE: +Marc and I know we are slightly behind on our entries. It is going to take us a couple of days to recover from "Booze-A-Palooza" with Chris and Shelly in order to catch up. :-)]

Yeah for IPsec and Windows Vista/WS2008

When you travel for a bit, technology can help out a ton but it can't do everything and some things require manual intervention. Hair cut for Marc, shipping souvenirs back to Sydney, paying bills, reviewing the next set of things on our itinerary to see if any tweaks are necessary, and food shopping. It was a gorgeous day and fortunately the Blacks' live in an awesome neighborhood to get all of that done. But food shopping was more involved because of what was on tap for the evening.

Chris and Shelly were part of the original "Open That Bottle Night" crew in Seattle. When they moved to Australia, Marc and I were sad because they were people we really enjoyed hanging out with. As the trip got closer, the 4 of us knew we needed to resurrect OTBN on one of our nights in Melbourne. But things were complicated by the fact that we (Becks) didn't have our usual arsenal of wines at our disposal for the celebrations, and the Blacks had their stuff in storage in Brisbane (a long ways away).

Jill recognized her "chicken scratch" immediately on the 2002 RWT and went into shock

Chris took over sommelier duties and we contributed a dessert wine that we had the other night at Vue de Monde that we all loved and found earlier in the week in our sojourn to Rutherglen. 

Chris did awesome with his picks and why they were picked. In an absolute shocker (no sarcasm!), Chris had a bottle signed by me and a styrofoam cup entitled "Vista Wine Glass" from when we shipped Vista. He found a later vintage of the same wine in the local wine shop. Well played, Mr. Black, well played.

Shelly did a fab job on the 'roo! Marc LOVED it!

Shelly cooked up a great salad and some "roo". Yes, that is kangaroo. Our 1st try at eating it. It didn't taste like chicken. , but more of a cross between lamb and beef. We expected it to be more gamey like lamb. But we enjoyed it. I also made "bugs", a local seafood specialty here. They are called "Moreton Bay Bugs" and I can best describe them as mini-lobsters. Marc made a great dessert and took care of cooking the duck once I marinated the breasts. I think I also got Shelly over the hump of the virtues of using dried beans instead of canned the next time she wants to serve cannelinis. 

Booz-a-palooza & OTBN merge

We had a great men's quarterfinal match going on in the background with some 80s music on a warm, but windy night. It was so much fun. We toasted to many things over the course of the evening and laughed a lot. Told them about our last OTBN in Seattle where the term 'spatchcocked' was used in many different contexts. What's funny is that you see that term on many menus here in Australia. Go figure. 

Let's just say that Marc and I were happy that we didn't have to work the next day....