December 13 - Australia: Cairns

So I sense that my journal entries are getting pretty boring.  We're not diving because we're still waiting for some of our paperwork to come through.  We have to get some liability insurance through DAN (Diver's Alert Network), and we need to renew our travel insurance.  Both seem to take longer than we'd planned.  So we're spending our days laying around, reading, and enjoying the peace and quiet.

We were going to take a day-trip today, but Jon woke up and said, "Do you want to lay around and do nothing today?  Then we can go tomorrow instead."  Of course, I jumped at the chance.

Good thing too.  It rained like CRAZY today!  There's nothing better than sitting in a lovely little apartment with a good book watching the rain beat down outside.  I love spending a day like this.

Later in the afternoon, Jon decided to get motivated and headed out to the car dealer to see if he could put some pressure on the dealer about a 4-Runner Jon likes.  It's just a few hundred dollars out of our price range, but Jon has the impression that it's quite a nice truck.  He was gone for a few hours, and showed up with the keys so I could take it for a test drive.  The truck is definitely good-looking, despite being an early-90s model.  And the interior is in spectacular condition.  None of which we should care about, but we DO want to re-sell it in a few months.

So we decided that we really liked it and would try to get the dealer to come down a bit.  If not, we may just buy it anyway.  Of course, it all depends on what the mechanic says.

Dinner - Beef Mussaman

For dinner, Jon had gone to the supermarket for some new Thai curry.  Then he came back and whipped up an extraordinary dish of beef mussaman - one of my favorite Thai dishes!  It was absolutely divine, and we're excited to have a new dish under our belt.  We broke down and bought a $7 wok, because we just can't seem to cook correctly in frying pans.  And believe it or not, the wok made a huge difference.  I don't know how we ever survived without it.  Pretty soon, we'll be stir-fry kings.

After dinner, I settled in to read and Jon called the office to request the movie "Driven" for the 9:00 showing.  It must not have been a good movie, because I had to wake him up from his reclining position on the couch at 10:30.  He came me his typical "I was just resting my eyes" excuse.  I just chuckled and tickled his feet until he got up.

I promise the journals will get more exciting once we get over through our lethargic stage.