A Shot in the Dark

At the conference we were at in San José at the beginning of last month, a colleague of MacTroll's from Sydney mentioned that one of the fruit's key brainiacs on that continent was going to be on leave for a year working on becoming a colonel in the Australian army... and perhaps some of the U.S. brainiacs might be interested in helping out.

At the idea of crossing the Pacific again, MacTroll's eyes widened, his ears perked, and a bit of drool slipped out of the side of his mouth. We looked at the calendar and indeed, we have eight to ten weeks this summer where we could, supposedly, skip town for a couple months -- during the Australian winter -- and spend some time in Sydney before X-man starts kindergarten in the fall.

MacTroll doubts that he'll be able to go. He has enough work on his plate. But he also spent 5 years in Europe when his Dad worked abroad from almost his birth until age 5. And although he remembers no French from his time in Geneva, and really only has memories based an a few images left over in his brain and the stories his parents and brothers have told him, he has always thought it would be fun to work somewhere else for a while.

And if he wouldn't have had to pay taxes twice by working in the U.S. when I wanted to reside in Montreal before X-man was born... he would have gone for that move in a flash, too.

Outside of the crazy long plane ride from here to Sydney with a child, I think it would actually be awesome, too.

I guess we'll wait and see.