From Across the World

We just had a pleasant surprise -- a call from my sister and brother-in-law in Australia! (It's actually Monday afternoon there. We asked them to tell us the future, but they said nothing too exciting happens on Monday. Oh well! They also claimed they wouldn't be able to bring us back a kangaroo. Spoilsports.) They're having a wonderful trip there, visiting Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. It was a relatively spur-of-the-moment trip. Some of their colleagues were running a two-week study abroad trip, and a couple of the students dropped out at the last minute, after the lodgings, tours, and so on had already been paid for. So, they invited my sister and brother-in-law to come along--all they had to pay for was their plane tickets. Hard to pass up an opportunity like that!

I've just returned from the almost-equally-exotic locale of Memphis, Tennessee. More on that later. (But before you get all excited, no, I didn't go to Graceland this time. Once might be enough, at least until Mike is there to come along.)