Triple J and My American Friends

Blog, my go-to friend and nearly constant companion Kerin, is leaving for Australia on Friday. Well, I guess technically she'll be flying to LA on Friday night, but from there on Saturday she'll be hopping on a plane across the Pacific to the land where "it all started" (as she likes to put it). What started there? Why her relationship with her now husband of course. Though Kerin is from Boston, she lives here in Minneapolis because he is from here. And because she met him on a study abroad trip in Australia in 2004, she took a giant leap of faith to be with him in a land that, to her, is almost as strange as where "it all started". Since she's taken the plunge of becoming an east coast girl who resides in the Midwest, we've become incredibly close friends who finish each others' sentences and eat lunch together every day. That guy I'm dating might also be her husband's distant relative, but who's really keeping track of just how much our lives are intertwined at this point...

Not me.

Anyway, one bit of knowledge that Kerin has taught me about the land down under is the existence of Triple J, Australia's version of England's Radio 1. What's Radio 1? Well, it's England's radio station of course. Imagine if the States had a radio station that expanded across our purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain and this radio station played magical music that was more than just Rihanna's We Found Love every ten minutes and bad jewelery commercials. Imagine that you could call into this radio station no matter if you were in Seattle, or San Antonio, or Tallahassee and when you call in, you talk about silly things like what makes a good name for an uncle or the giant hamburger you ate at McDonalds. And you can share that with the rest of your country all while fun and exciting music plays in between the little conversations you have with the Dj's. And everyone is friends. Everyone is radio friends who listen to fun music and talk about hamburgers. Why America? Why don't you have the Triple J of the New World? I know I just wrote about how I love you and how it makes me happy to be here, but your approach to radio needs an improvement.

At least there's MPR...

I digress. This Triple J has become somewhat of an addiction for me. Especially in the morning at work since I like to mindlessly listen to music and radio Dj's can be distracting what with their talk of uncles and such. But remember Blog, this is Australia. When it is morning time for me, it is the middle of the night for them, so they don't really have a lot of Dj babble. They just have fun Australian (and UK and US and European) music with the occasional Dj being all "it's 4 am, WTF are you doing up at this hour?"!

And next week when I'm listening to the "Mid Dawns" on the "J" (as I've nicknamed it), I'll be thinking of Kerin and Nick on their honeymoon, revisiting their old Aussie haunts that brought them together so many years ago. Only they won't be reminiscing as I listen in the morning time. They'll hopefully be sleeping and getting rest for the bright and sunny summer day that lies ahead of them. I'll miss them both, especially since Kerin is such an installment in my life, but I think it's such a lovely bookend for them at this point to revisit the place where they met in the form of a honeymoon. And by "bookend" I mean one of those decorative ones that you'd put in the middle of a line of books on a shelf. I don't want this to be the last time they visit the weirdest continent on the planet.

OMG! Drinking wine and blogging about my friends is totally making me tear up. I love you guys!