Last night I dragged Marjorie out on a chilly June night (a work night, no less) to watch Australia play Japan in a World Cup (soccer) qualifying match. Both teams have already qualified, but I of course didn't know that's what the situation would be when I bought the tickets back in February or something.

The game was at the MCG, which is Australia's biggest stadium, and actually can hold more than 100,000 people(!). There were just under 70,000 there last night, which is just about the biggest event I've ever been to. After Japan scored in the first half, we were treated to a great comeback win as our superstar Tim Cahill scored two in the second half. Here's a video of the second goal from a fan's cell phone - we were in the level just above this.

My final exam in Graph Theory was this morning, in Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building. I showed up to find an absolute throng of people waiting to get in. It turns out that they do group exams here - there must've been a thousand students, each of us assigned a desk among the rows and rows spread across the gigantic floor. The ceiling, too, is pretty pretty impressive.

So how would you heat such a large space? The answer is, you can't. Is was cold enough to see your breath. I took the exam wearing a thermal shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, and a leather jacket. And leather gloves, that I put on occasionally to warm up. I had to get up to pee three times in three hours.

I may have aced the exam - eight questions, and I only had to tapdance around half of one of them. We'll see.

Tonight my work had a social function where we hired the special viewing room at a local theater and watched "Terminator Salvation". Marjorie came along. We came up with the proper summation of it on the way home: the main point of the movie was how it is our humanity that sets us apart from the machine - so why was it so lacking in humanity? This one could've been filmed by Skynet.

We went to a cool new pub on Friday called the Lambsgo Bar with our friends Viv and Maurice. When I first saw the name I didn't realize it was a play on words - but only if you have an Australian accent. "Lambs Go Baa", you see?

Reminds me of an incident at Marjorie's workplace that she told me about. The name "Nora Bone" came up in some context, and one of her coworkers started laughing. Marjorie asked, "What's so funny?" "Oh, Nora Bone. Like a dog." Marjorie: "Huh?" "You know, like a dog nors on a bone." Marjorie: "Oooh, you mean gnaws."

A typical homework problem from my Graph Theory course:

There are 12 people applying to a company which has 15 different jobs available. Each person is qualified for at least 6 of the jobs. No two people are qualified for the same three jobs. Also, every job has at least two people qualified for it. Prove that it is possible to assign all twelve people to twelve different jobs such that each is qualified for the job assigned.

Three months ago I would have no idea how to solve it. In fact, I still don't, but I have to figure it out by Monday. I love problems where I can sit and ponder them at random moments during the day, and in fact, that's when I usually figure them out.

Yes yes, no updates in a long time. [Insert standard apology here.] Not a lot to report.

Soccer season has started again. I feel pretty good so far, though am having some issues with my heels. So far we've tied two games 0-0, then lost the last one, but we're still missing some key players.

The weather is getting colder, but we're being better about being social these days. We're still pretty much only dating other couples though :-)

Work is going well - we've just won a HUGE contract which pretty much guarantees me work for a couple of years, should we decide to stay. My coworkers are still at an intelligence level such that I still feel pretty stupid and unproductive much of the time, but I have nothing to really complain about.

Got some good news at my university math(s) course today, where we found out that our usual (boring, slow) professor is leaving the country and being replaced by someone much better.

We've still got our big trip to Africa coming up next month, which I'm sure you'll hear lots about here. In the meanwhile I've been getting big kicks reading the blogs of my sister-in-law and niece, who are visiting Europe for the first time right now.

Last Sunday I had an awesome experience kayaking with my boss and three other guys from work down the Yarra River. I'd never really been kayaking before, but I've been canoeing a fair bit, so I fared pretty well. This was definitely my first time being skirted into the kayak, and dealing with rapids. There were a few close calls, but I managed to stay upright for the whole trip. Once while nearly tipping I put my hand down - a mistake - and scraped my wrist on a rock. At one point I managed to hit a stove that someone had abandoned in the river (beyond that, it was fairly pristine, though the water is murky from farm runoff). I also had a seriously dopey fall, just after finishing, climbing the rocks up to the carpark, where lost my balance, pirhouetted dramatically in my thongs, fell and scraped my knee and arm.

The wildlife consisted most of ducks, but a few cockatoos and kookaburras as well. My boss said he's seen platypi there, but we were a noisy bunch so no surprise we didn't see one.

He said to expect it to take about five hours; I didn't really believe him - but we were indeed on the river for five hours and five minutes (with two ten minute breaks), covering 19.16 km; here's the route.

Laika's leg lumps weren't getting any smaller, so we took her in yesterday to have them removed and biopsied. We picked her up in the evening. She was happy to see us but still wound up whimpering for six hours straight when we got her home. She kept wanting to go out back, we thought to go pee, but then would get there, whimper a bit, and want to come straight back in. She would sleep a few hours but then wake us up, whimpering. It was heartbreaking. I don't know how parents put up with colicky babies who cry for months.

She had been leaving the bandage alone for the most part, so we didn't put her in her Elizabethan collar overnight, but then she snuck off at some point and chewed half of it off. So we took her back to the vet this morning, and now she gets to have the bandage off but definitely needs to wear her collar. For good or ill, though, her demeanor is back to normal, meaning she's full of beans and not wanting to take it easy like she needs to. Stupid pea-brain dog.