Thirty or so years ago, I flew to Dallas to produce some radio commercials. It was the middle of winter, but the weather was fantastic — 75 degrees, sunny and clear.

Well, that’s what it was like when I went to bed. When I left for the airport the next morning it was ten degrees and a “blue norther” storm was coming to town. That 65 degree switcheroo occured over about ten hours. I was born and raised in mild Southern California and had never seen anything like it. Until today.

Yesterday was the hottest day of the year in South Australia. It topped out at 113 degrees so we drove into Adelaide to watch “American Hustle” in a nice, cool theater.

We climbed back into our car late in the afternoon to drive back to the Barossa and noticed that the temperature had dropped to a relatively pleasant 95 degrees. That’s when it got weird.

The bright, cloudless sky that was up there as we entered the theater had been replaced by a dark, cloudy sky and lightning was flashing all around us. Before long huge, bulbous drops of rain began pelting down and the temperature began dropping. Within twenty minutes it had dropped to 68 degrees.

That’s a drop of 27 degrees in twenty minutes. Amazing. But probably something we should get used to if we’re going to live near Dallas.

Please allow me to quote the uncaring shrew: “I’m sick and tired of seeing those same seven T-shirts every week. I’m going to burn them when we get home.”

I do not hold these harsh, unkind words against her and I urge you not to, either. She is simply a woman and, therefore, genetically unable to comprehend the close bond that develops between a man and his favorite well-worn T-shirts.

But make no mistake — these are no ordinary T-shirts. They were all carefully selected from hundreds of designs available from my radio T-shirt website, RadioLogoLand.com, before we left home. They honor the greatest Top 40 radio stations of all time, for god’s sake.

Of course, I have personal reasons for objecting to her willingness to discard things that are old and gray.

UPDATE: She has also threatened to burn the red sweatshirt I wore every day for the first five weeks of this trip.

Jamie and I often talk about how amazing it is that we should end up with five such bright, talented, hardworking and good-looking godchildren.

I did an item about Jack on his birthday in November and have another one ready for sister Stella on her birthday in a couple weeks, but our three other goddaughters don’t have birthdays until June, when we’re back in the United States and this blog is long forgotten.

So here’s a bit of bragging about the Smith girls:

Tatum  (center of the photo)- She’s a stud soccer player who got a full scholarship to play for the Division I University of Wisconsin Milwakuee team that had won its conference for 13 straight years. Tatum’s so good that she started as a freshman and we’re proud to say the team has now won its 14th straight title. They lost to Michigan in the NCAA playoffs, but she said that all the pomp and ceremony made her feel like an NFL player. All that and she gets straight A’s. (As you can tell, she’s a beautiful girl, but if you want to see something really scary, you should see her game face. Holy crap! She looks absolutely fearsome on the field.)

Avery (on the left) – Jamie and I laugh about the time little three year old Avery came to our house and baked cookies with Jamie. We never imagined that she’d grow up to be a stud athlete, but she has. Avery ran varsity cross country as a high school freshman and ran in the CIF championships in her sophomore year. Her coach called her the best athlete he’s ever coached. On top of that, she plays top level club soccer and her high school team also won its league title. Of course, she also gets straight A’s.

Kendal (on the right) – Already following in her big sisters’ footsteps as a stud soccer player and mom Lori says she may be even better than they were at the same age. Kendal’s also a darn good surfer, but her parents hope she doesn’t hang up the cleats and buy a board because there aren’t a lot of colleges that offer surfing scholarships. Needless to say, she gets straight A’s, too.

Jamie and I consider ourselves incredibly lucky to have three amazing Smith and two amazing Ginsberg god children. Obviously, they all get their talent, drive and good looks from us.

Our meager photographic skills just don’t do Angaston justice. It’s hard to imagine what a pretty little village it is.

About a block from our cottage, right across the street from the Town Hall, lies a huge bed of roses in full bloom and right behind the roses sits a purple jacaranda tree in full bloom.

In our on-going effort to become real Aussies, Jamie and I have become avid cricket fans.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Australia has been playing England for the treasured Ashes trophy. The five game series has captivated the country and we’ve been watching every game on television. It just concluded with Australia absolutely decimating England in each of the five games. The series was so one-sided and such a humiliating defeat for England that the team’s coach, captain and half the players may get sacked. In other words, it was great to watch.

We’ve became such fans that we bought tickets to see a professional game in Adelaide — the Adelaide Strikers vs the Sydney Stars — at the beautiful new Adelaide Oval.

26,000 people showed up and the game was a sell-out, but there’s not a bad seat in the house. The seating capacity will eventually be over 50,000 when they finish installing the remaining seats over there on the right side of the Oval.

The Oval has a stunning location, right across the River Torrens (make sure you say “River Torrens” and never “Torrens River”) from downtown Adelaide.

A quick tutorial on cricket rules: When a player hits a ball over the barrier, the equivalent of a home run in baseball, it’s worth six points. This is called “a six”. Of course, all the fans want every ball to be hit for a six, which explains why they pass out all these blue cards with giant sixes on one side. When a six is blasted over the barrier, the fans don’t just scream, they jump up and wave these posters. Thousands of them.

The game was sooooo much fun, but instead of the hot summer night we were expecting, it was cold and rainy. We still had a great time.

In answer to all your emails, everything’s fine. We’re just hanging out in Angaston and acting like locals, and then there’ve been all the holidays, so there hasn’t been much to blog about.

But it’s nice to know that our friends and families were worried about us.

I have some blog items stacked up and I’ll post them soon.

The Aussie vocabulary continues to amaze and amuse and confuse. Here are a few more of the words and phrases we’ve run into lately:

Ambo: Ambulance
Chokky: Chocolate
Chrissy: Christmas
Chunder: Vomit (used in the lyrics of the song “The Land Down Under” by Aussie band Men at Work)
Fossick: To hunt or search (“The prospector is fossicking for gold.”)
Lippy: Lipstick
Lolly: Sweets, candy
Make a quid: Earn a living
Petrol busker: Gas pump
Pokies: Slot machines
Postie: Mailman
Prezzies: Presents
Piece of piss: An easy job
Rellies: Relatives
Scratchie: Scratch-off lottery ticket
Shout: Turn to buy, as in beer (“I bought the last round, so it’s your shout this time.”)
Sunnies: Sunglasses
Stickybeak: Nosy person
Telly: Television
The Gabba: Brisbane’s cricket ground (where the first game of the Ashes cricket series was played last month). Short for Wooloongabba
The Waca: Perth’s cricket ground (where the current match with the Brits is being played). An acronym for Western Australia Cricket Association
Yewy: A U-turn. Making U-turns on busy streets seems to be a national pastime for Aussies.

It’s a big problem when your corporate colors are the same as those of your nation’s most bitter opponent.

Watch this commercial for KFC Australia. It’s running on TV constantly during the Ashes cricket series against England.

What a simple, brilliant idea. Whoever thought of it should get a big, big raise. And whoever had the balls to approve it should be made King of Australia.

Here’s a video of my favorite Australian athlete, sprinter Michelle Jenneke, as she warms up for her event in an Olympic qualifying race. She’s a pretty good sprinter for a white chick, but as you may have suspected, my reasons for liking her have nothing to do with her athletic ability.

Michelle Jenneke aside, I’ve always been amazed by the athletic success of Australian athletes — individuals and teams. They compete at a remarkably high level, especially when you consider the fact that the country’s population is just a little more than half of California’s. Fifty-one countries have more people than Australia. It ranks between #51 Taiwan and #53 the Ivory Coast.

Yet in the 2000 Olympics, Australia tied China for the third most medals. For god’s sake, man, China has 1.3 billion (with a “b”) people. Australia has 22 million (with an “m”). The only countries that won more medals were the United States and Russia. That, of course, means Australian athletes were more successful than those of far more populous nations such as Germany, France, Great Britain, Japan, Korea, Brazil, and Mexico.

This wasn’t a fluke. In the 2004 Olympics, Australia won the fourth most medals. In 2008, the fifth most medals. In the 2012, they faded to a still remarkable sixth most medals (which can probably be attributed to American swimmer Michael Phelps winning so damn many medals in events that are usually strong for Australians).

Last week the Aussie team won the world rugby championship. For many years they had the world’s best cricket team (and based on the way they are currently kicking the Brits’ asses around the oval, they may have the best team once again). Some of history’s greatest tennis and golf players have been Aussie.

But winning isn’t everything. And that’s why I still think Michelle Jenneke is the most remarkable Aussie athlete of them all.

There’s a very odd thing about Australia. Well, there are actually lots of very odd things about Australia, but this post refers to one of them in particular — the way that many towns stake their claims to fame by building the giant “things” that they’re best known for.

Like The Big Lobster that towers above the road in Kingston S.E., South Australia. The region is known for its lobster fishing industry, so what better way to commemorate that than with a 50-foot tall red lobster at the city limits.

There’s a long list of giant “things” standing guard along lonely highways all across this country. We’ve seen the Big Banana, the Big Galah, the Big Pineapple, the Big Koala, and a few more that have receded into the mists of my memory.

If you look closely, Jamie’s somewhere in the shadows under one of the Big Lobster’s legs.