In today’s Courier-Mail under Opinions & Letters, Clare Hansson of Brisbane makes a wish for 2006:

During a row with her boyfriend about a mobile phone, a woman swallowed it (C-M, Dec 26). Wouldn’t it be a wonderful gesture of peace leading up to 2006 if more people swallowed their mobile phones?

Weather:
Fine, hot, 33° (and that’s Celsius!).

After 36 hours of traveling (four flights and not counting the van ride to St. Louis) I am sitting on a balcony on the Queensland coast overlooking the Coral Sea. There’s no better way to spend Christmas and New Year and to forget the cold of Mid-Missouri.

I thought I would never say this, but I think our house is too big. I was searching for a missing camera lens today and came across two closets with cobwebs – and stuff I didn’t even remember. In one of them I found a suitcase which we all were sure my daughter had left in Thailand last summer.