Monday, Nov 3 - back to Santa Barbara!

Pic: Sydney skyline

Up at 2:45 AM. Dumped the suitcases into the car and we took off, Mark driving, to the Perth airport in drizzle. The roads were empty and we got to the airport in 30 minutes and left the car at Avis, and got into line at Qantas. Bob requested a window seat for the flight over Australia to Sydney and we got to our gate, got flat whites (coffee) and got onto our 737..and Bob got to his seat only to find a blank wall instead of a window. Quite claustrophobic and irritating, although it was cloudy most of the way over. Bob could flatten his seat and catch a glimpse of view. Anyway, we got to Sydney at noon and Mark headed over to United and we continued onto the international terminal for our Qantas flight.

We managed to get rid ourselves of our remaining Oz dollars. Couldn’t find an outlet to plug my computer into and the battery was low, so blogging was impossible. Finally go onto our 747 and had the wonderful luck of having an empty seat between us for the 13+ hour flight. Qantas gave us a good lunch, lots of movies and TV, and we popped a sleeping pill and in no time were cruising into LAX. Picked up our luggage, cleared customs, got outside. I managed to find my cell phone buried deep in my suitcase and called Mark who had just gotten to Budget where we met him a

few minutes later. What luck that our flights were so well coordinated and neither was late!

We drove home, arriving at 2 pm, said goodbye to Mark who was anxious to get to his house and see, his cat, Simpson. We called the Cat House Hotel and went down to pick up Jane. They had taken great care of her and given her a lot of attention and food and she looked pretty good.

Spent the rest of the day cleaning up the mineral residue on the floors that had been flooded by the water heater, but the new heater was all installed and we had hot water. Could have been a real disaster had Phebe not noticed the leak! Thanks millions to her, Curry and Hilary!!!

Picked up Chinese food, ate and went to bed!

Tuesday, Nov 4 - recovering from jet lag, but as I type…Barack has just been elected!! Wow!!!

Bob saw 152 bird species, of which 38 were life birds (including nine new parrots!!).