Joe is. And with 5 days of no baby and no wife, you'd think he'd have gotten some work done.

Maybe he's testing it?

I get the first one. By virtue of being an oppressed minority with no driver's license. But his astral body and yours were in my dream the other night so that might have fouled up research just a bit.

Oooh!

Is my astral body better than this one?

I don't know...I read in a book once that if you dream about somebody, their astral body visited you. But you looked good, though.

I suppose the place that ought to be my hometown is where I lived from ages 5 to 18. But, aside from the actual house where I grew up, it doesn't feel like "home." The city that feels most like "home" is, in fact, where I was born, but I've never really lived there -- lived 5-20 miles away from birth until age 18.

And with 5 days of no baby and no wife, you'd think he'd have gotten some work done.

I don't know, I'm seeing more of a Risky-Business sort of week.

Empress, did the box arrive?

t /doesn't trust USPS

My hometown is Canberra, which does indeed make me happy. The latest happy-making was showing the Wallybee around and her getting it. (In June, which is a real achievement.)

Canberra is the place that feels most comfortable to me. The first sight of the Black Mountain Tower. Cresting a rise on Hindmarsh Drive to look over Woden Valley. When Captain Cook Fountain is sending spray over the COmmonwealth Bridge. And, of course, visiting the Canberra Aviary and the Australian Reptile Centre. These are a few of my favourite things. So yeah, I'm comfortable there, and I get the place, and I also love it and will defend it fiercely.

None of this detracts from Melbourne, of course. Melbourne rocks, it's one of the easiest places in the world to pursue a real quality of life. So it's all good.

Dublin is so very much my hometown, and my home, and the place I'll always go back to. I travelled a lot when I was a kid, and lived abroad, but even that hasn't made Dublin any less 'it' for me. I wouldn't even know where to start describing what it is about it that I love so much.

The fact that you're never more than twenty minutes from the sea, or from the countryside, I suppose; the way everyone has a story and doesn't mind telling it; the way it's small enough that you can know every venue, but big enough that there's always something you want to see; the way it's been steeped in culture so that it sometimes seems as though every building has a plaque; the way someone's always going for a pint if you're bored; that even though it's a capital city people take their time; that we all take the piss at the surveys that say we have the highest quality of life in the world; the Georgian architecture and the Viking archaeology; the throngs of tourists fascinated by things I take for granted. It has its problems - God, does it have its problems, but I love it all the more for it, because God knows Dubliners like to complain, and we'd just get pissed off if there was nothing to complain about.

Anyway, yes, Dublin.