Wow, so since I've turned off commenting to the general public, I haven't got any feedback at all. This makes me feel strangely alone on the internet, and may get me into some trouble. I do know, however, that some people (namely, family) are still reading this here website. I don't normally get all paranoid about the things I write, but with the way things have been going...
Onto the news at hand, Ben and I got back from a last-minute-very-short trip to Australia just yestermorning. After thinking I had bitten that jetlag bug, I fell into bed exhausted at 10pm last night, only to sleep (very deeply) until 2pm today. Part of the problem were the neat dreams I was having, some of which featured long-lost friends, horseback riding, and places where it isn't winter.
Sydney was fantastic. Having been there now in both (southern-hemispheric) winter and summer, I can say that the weather there is great in either situation - far better than here in Boise, Idaho, at least. Though for the first 2 days, I sweat like there was no tomorrow (jumping nearly 50 degrees in temperature is a bit much for one's body), but the time I left, running about in 27C with 80% humidity was doing me well. Then I had to get on a plane to come back here.
Why did we go to Sydney? You may remember a little something about me purchasing tickets to see Robbie Williams in concert in Amsterdam. Tickets I purchased while awake, freezing my arse off, just over a year ago, at 3 o'clock in the morning on a school night. The very same tickets I later attempted to sell on eBay due to the lack of funds with which to purchase $1500 plane tickets to Amsterdam from Boise. The tickets sold to a person who ended up not paying for them (for a price far less than what I had paid, mind you), and I ended up writing a sob-story to the Robbie Williams people asking for my money back, sending them the tickets, and later receiving an email from them expressing their regret at not refunding the money.
Bygones being bygones, I figured that we would just have to wait until his next tour, plan things more properly, and actually get ourselves to the venue properly. Things changed when Ben's mom called us directly after Shabbat on the 2nd while we were at CompUSA to say that she'd just read in the Qantas magazine that Robbie wasn't planning on doing any more tours after this one. 
She told us to get some tickets to the show, and she would get the airline and hotel. We won an auction for the tickets that night (the tickets to be delivered to our hotel in Sydney), and bought the plane tickets on Sunday. We were off on Wednesday.
We arrived at our hotel on Friday morning to find the tickets weren't there. We checked again later in the day, and they still hadn't been delivered. I emailed the seller to no avail. I freaked out - the tickets had already been paid for, and the post doesn't run in Sydney on the weekends, including Saturday. We were at a loss as to what to do. On Saturday night, down by the harbour, I found that we had won another auction for tickets, but the seller had emailed me to let me know that they weren't Oval A (ground general admission, front of stage), as the auction had said. 
We had to start over again. We bid on another auction for Oval A tickets, putting in a ridiculous cap to make sure we would get them. And get them we did - the seller met us at our hotel to do the exchange, and we left immediately afterwards to go to Aussie Stadium.
Though we got to the venue only 2 hours before the doors opened, the queue wasn't as long as I expected. The sun was hot on our backs and heads as we waited, and vendors selling water, soda, popsicles (ice blocks?), and crisps were about to make some money. We got some merch, and walked in excitedly when the gates opened. The stage setup was amazing. We had seen the stage and some of the songs, as we had purchased "And Through It All" when it came out, but seeing the setup in person just blew me away. The Aussies were a pleasant bunch with whom to attend a concert - we sat until the DJ came out, there was no pushing and shoving, and everyone seemed to have a fantastic time.
The opening band, Sneaky Sound System, 
was fantastic (we ended up purchasing their album from iTunes the day afterward). Miss Connie has a beautiful voice, and is cute enough to live in a pocket. They played most of the tracks off of their self-named album, and left right before the sun set and Robbie was to be on the stage.
Anyone that is a Robbie Williams fan (with exception to those without internet access, i.e. Sara K, who brought Robbie to me from across the sea) should know how the show starts off; there is a light show done up on the stage itself and the claws designed as a proscenium. The music from "Encounters of the 3rd Kind" plays, and Robbie magically pops up in the middle stage (the one we were nearest to - only 6 people between us and the security guards), and starts out the concert with "Radio". Since, for some reason, Robbie is not at all popular with the general public here, I'm not going to go into details of this concert. 
I must say, however, that I have like 300% more interest and respect in him, and that it was the best concert I've been to in my entire life. And if I had to do it all over again - the 29 hours of flight in "economy class", the frenzied search for tickets, the sleeping in a 5-star hotel bed, the days of knee pain afterwards - I would do it in a second.
And I cried during the encore for the joy of it all.
We went back to Featherdale on Sunday to visit the koalas and birds I'd never noticed before - birds so freaky they gave me chills. We had awesome Japanese food down in The Rocks for dinner, and left on Tuesday morning. The security people at Sydney Int'l took away my knitting needles and a v. v. small pair of scissors.
I want to go back.
