Easter Weekend One

Steve, Stelio and Rowan on BBQ duty

Steve, me, Jen and Rowan

Rowan with some of the team...

Easter Weekend One was awesome! We didn’t celebrate Easter, but did celebrate Coach Stelio’s birthday. Instead of lamb there were burgers, instead of chocolate there was cake, and instead of a midnight mass there was a midnight dance party… it was GREAT, especially because we get to do the real Easter thing this Friday, Saturday, Sunday when Easter Weekend Two rolls around. Jennifer and Rowan, the Australian-Canadian/NZ couple, hosted the party, and I headed over to their place in the morning to help prepare the fixings. Because the ground beef here is a bit sketchy (it comes with whatever meat was in the grinder thing beforehand – pork, chicken, turkey, whatever), Jen bought a huge slab of MEAT to grind at home. AND… of all people I did the job; I cut small hunks of meat off of one giant hunk of meat and fed it into the mulchifier machine. Yes, it was gross but I somehow feel better about eating the meat hunks/burger patties after having participated in the icky cut and dice and slice prep. Anyways, we got most of the food ready in the morning, and there were a few people already into the wine as soon as the clock struck noon…. and nooo, it wasn’t me. After an afternoon of at-home lounging, Steve and I headed back to the house around four for the big BBQ-fete. Surprisingly enough, most of the team showed up, and the patio was packed with beer drinkers, wine drinkers and, well, just drinkers. There was food galore: wings, devilled eggs, pate, cold cuts, veggies and dip and chips, and then burgers and lamb for dinner (I forgot – there was lamb!). After cookies and cake for dessert came the coffee and then the after dinner drinks, which really paved the way for dancing AND the HAKA! Most of the guests had trickled out by midnight, and around 1:00 the real show began. Rowan is a huge New Zealand All-Blacks fan, and somehow Steve convinced him to show us the Haka…



... and it was AWESOME. We were all killing ourselves laughing (including Steve, which made his serious intimidation Haka show a bit less, well, intimidating), and then… well I’m not really sure how the dance party started but it suuuure did. All of us danced danced danced and didn’t end up leaving until 3:30, almost 12 hours after having arrived at the par-tay. So, Sunday was a write-off; we stayed in bed and watched Friends all day until it was GAME time… and they WON! Tammy’s team won the first two sets easily (25-13, 25-18 I think) and then somehow lost sets three and four but just CRUSHED them (stupid Dinamo Bucharest) in the fifth. So YAY! Both teams are in the finals which don’t start until the 25th. YaPOW! So awesome.

I came across three really cool websites the other day that I haven’t totally checked out yet but here they are. The first is Academic Earth, which has a pretty decent collection of lectures; I’m in the middle of Russia: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow – so far so good. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading seems like a really cool site, and I’ve read a couple of good reviews on Bonnie Bassler’s “How Bacteria communicate” talk - more food for the brain. The third site is The Do Lectures: “Let the Doers of the World Inspire the Rest of Us.” I’m feeling as though all of those hours I spent this weekend watching Friends could have been put to better use. These three sites are full of a LOT of material that just might provide more inspiration and substance than Joey and Phoebe… but whatever! I love Friends… only have five more seasons to go!