Kim vs. The World!

After a long flight, where she was a nice Canadian and volunteered to switch seats with a girl who was separated from her friend... only to find out she traded a window for a middle seat!... Afton arrived at our pimp apartment for a week of fun in Noosa . Mars and Afton took advantage of the nice sunshine we are having and walked the entire National Park (I think Afton may still have blisters!) where they saw more old naked men on the nude beach! They spent some time soaking up the rays on Main Beach as well... the weather has been great here lately. The three of us also went to check out the Eumundi markets, where there are over 700 vendors... on a Wednesday! Afton bought a boomerang :) In the middle of the week, when Mars was at work, I took Afton out for her first surf lesson! Despite being a bit hesitant of the big ocean waves, she did an awesome job and stood up! If she'd had a few more weeks, we could have made her a pro for sure :) All the while in between these activities...

Nothing beats walking into the ladies room at your work to find a very well built man with football player shoulders dressed in a champagne ball gown touching up his lipstick. Last night at Rococco (the restaurant I work at) local pseudo-celeb and female impersonator Mimi hosted her black tie birthday party.... and what a party it was! Complete with drag queens, tuxedos, sparklers, and more than a few unfortunate wig choices. Mimi, who refused to tell us her age because "a 'lady' never tells", had such a great time at the restaurant that she invited the staff to attend her after party. Dion (bar staff), Brett (bar manager), Kobe (Brett's girlfriend), Mars and I all headed over to the soiree dressed to impress. It was mix and mingle at its best, with all sorts of interesting attendees, (and some not-so-interesting ones, like the restaurant owner's son Richard, who was blind drunk and rude, as usual... he's the one in the background not dressed up in a grey ...

... at 11 Katharina St., Unit 5. Apparently, a family of possums now live here too! Tonight we saw a mom and 2 babies in the tree that hangs over our balcony. So cute!! We have decided we are only going to name them if they come back another night. Update: We are still sick with colds. We likely infected a large number of people today while serving them food... yum! Also, on a side note, the cold medications here SUCK. I could operate heavy machinery while on the extra strength night time crap they have at the pharmacies! Somebody send me the good sh*t from home!

Brief post today to inform everyone at home of the following: 1. We are bad Canadians. We have totally acclimatized to the weather here. Thus, when it gets down to, say, 14 degrees at night, we join the locals in puttin g on long sleeves and pants and saying "it's chilly tonight!". Allie - you were right when you warned me this would happen! Not sure how we are ever going to survive a real winter again!! 2. We are sick Canadians. Marissa and I currently both have very bad "winter" colds!! We have been holed up in our apartment for the better part of 2 days now going through boxes of Kleenex and a plethora of weekly video rentals. Fingers crossed it's not the Swine Flu! It probably isn't, since we can trace the source of the cold to Glen, who was visiting us last weekend! Dodgy Aussies! Thankfully we both had yesterday and today off work so that we don't have to serve people food in this condition. In other news, we are underway in our planning of ...

The restaurant I work at has a baby grand piano. It must be moved into the centre of the restaurant at the end of each shift and locked up. I was closing by myself, and like all those in management, my boss tried to be helpful. Result: Baby grand piano lands on my big toe. Lots of blood. Toenail looks like it might not make it. I left a message for Dave. It is currently 11pm. No stores are open. My only options for disinfectant are hand sanitizer, salt water, vodka, or brandy. Lets hope it works out.... (in the interim, Mars and I are drinking wine to dull the pain. Seems to be working.)

Ah, the joys of working for yourself! Tom liked Noosa so much, he decided to stay an extra week! With the weather getting better and some surf coming back, we made the best use of that time. Noosa has a large National Park that starts just off the main street. We did a fantastic 2 hour hike around the coast line of the park, and got to see surfers off all of the points, a pod of about 8 dolphins off of the Hells Gate lookout, some beautiful forest and beaches.... including the one tiny stretch of beach in Alexandria Bay that was a nude beach! That beach is really long and only at the very end, where you have to cross to continue on the coastal path, is the nude section. We strolled past with our feet in the water and out of nowhere this fat old dude walked in front of us stark naked, then bent down to take off his sandals! EW !! haha ... I thought Tom was going to die! The National Park walk finished at Sunshine Beach, where we went for a swim in some massive waves that threw us a...

A big Happy Mother's Day shout out to Gale and Glo!! Sorry we can't be there to take you out to lunch and tell you how great you are :) All that effort of giving birth and raising us, and what do you get??... we take off around the world for a year! Although, it really is your fault for raising us to be travelers!! Although I can't imagine that Ry or Daniel are going to any great lenghts to compensate for our absence, we hope that you have had a great day! Love Marissa and Kim. P.S. If you are missing us this Mother's Day, maybe you can get a cheap flight to NYC and meet up with those firemen you found on the street a few years back...