Toowoomba

I had a lovely weekend at one of my favorite places to be on the planet: Peter and Janice's home in Toowoomba. Peter was the dean of engineering at USQ (later to be Vice Chancellor = President) who hired me to teach there, and I consider them to be my surrogate family in Australia. As expected, there was plenty of good food and wine and coffee. Also got to visit with some of my former colleagues in engineering. Twelve years later their kids are grown up and people have retired, and I went from grad student to tenured. It made us all feel a little old, But it was great to see everyone.

PS the big revelation of the trip was that Toowoomba is an anagram of wombat plus three extra o's. I can't explain why this is so delightful to me, it just is. In case you are wondering how that came up, Peter and Janice had it in a clue to a London Times cryptic crossword: "Three ducks and a wombat wandering in Queensland." If you are, like me, a novice cryptic crossworder or don't know the first thing about cricket, you won't get that easily. But just know that it is way cool.