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some new planets After giving it some more thought, I doubt that my relatives were too upset with me yesterday. I think that it was fairly obvious that I was tired when I left my aunt's house and me not showing up wasn't that much of a surprise for them. They probably understood. Now if I don't make an appearance at my grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary in September, then I might be on the shit list. It isn't that I don't like my father's side of the family, it's just that I have a tendency to only see them on major holidays and my work schedule doesn't give me that many other opportunities for visiting. This holiday season should be a little better than last year though. Instead of having to work like I did last year, I have Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve off. ... By now I imagine that my neighbors probably think that I am insane, if they hadn't already. At around three-thirty this morning, I decided to fire up my grill. I was hungry and I had bought a few pounds of ground chuck on Saturday that I needed to use. Now starting up a fire to grill in daylight isn't a problem. People don't think twice about it and it blends in fairly easily during the day. In the middle of the night, a fire on a porch is a little more noticeable. When it first caught, I felt like I was lighting a beacon for the whole neighborhood to see. Standing in the glare of the flames, I kept hoping that no one would call the fire department thinking that the house had caught on fire. In fact I was so worried that I put the lid on the grill a little prematurely when I heard my downstairs neighbor come outside. I thought that maybe he was coming outside to see what was happening. I was wrong. Thankfully my downstairs neighbors keep just as odd of a schedule as I do. It seems that he was going to work and not checking up on the fire. He made things even better by setting off the motion detector on the garage light. Suddenly my fire didn't seem as bright. ... I watched my copy of Amadeus again today, because I had heard that parts of it had been filmed in Prague and I wanted to see how much of it I recognized. It took some effort, but there was a passageway that I know that I walked under while I was there that appeared in the film. From what I remember it was near the castle and was where some of the embassies were housed. It wasn't until I scanned the credits that I learned that they filmed inside the National Theater, which I also walked by numerous times when I was in Prague. ... In the news, I heard something that I found to be mildly amusing. It seems that some prankster briefly stole the Olympic torch from the person carrying it in Sydney. Within seconds the authorities quickly handed it back to the correct person, but I still think that it is funny. As for the Olympics themselves, I might watch a small amount, but not that much. ... Ever so slowly my understanding of Australian geography is getting better and better. My friends from Wagga Wagga had drawn me a map of where they lived when we were drinking in Prague, but it wasn't the best of maps. Now with the help of some great guidebooks and other online sources, I know the correct placement of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. As to how much I'll be able to see in three weeks has yet to be determined. ... Compared to last weekend this Sunday and Monday were so much more relaxing. I didn't have to worry about paying any bills and I could slowly sift through the backlog of magazines that I had gotten while I was away. Four weeks of The New Yorker with some guidebook page turning here and there made for some great reading.
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