Fun times here in Melbourne as for the first time in our trans-pacific history we donned our ceremonial robes, bowed our heads in silence, and welcomed our New York team underneath an overhead passageway of handheld imitation emu feathers as they stepped off the tarmac onto a plush carpet made of golden wattle.

At least that's what it felt like, as I've got to say, it's still fun meeting people you only know on the internet! It was definitely a weird one for me, as it was the first time I was meeting two of our NY producers IRL after over a year of working together.

Of course this all seems totally normal and everything now, but I still remember how insanely weird it was to meet people I met online when I was just a young person. Not only did my parents have to accompany to me to meet this random internet stranger I was chatting to on AOL, but usually their parents were there as well, and on top of all that, you ended up greeting each other by your screen names, and mine was so arcanely long and also referenced an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, and and it is actually giving me stomach cramps right now to even think about it that's how excruciatingly acute the humiliation was.

If there was one good thing to come out of it though, I did get *very* good and learning how to photograph myself from a very extreme high vantage point to make me look bizarrely skinny/angular. A skill that absolutely has no utility in real life, but I'm definitely working on a related flight attendant meme because that is truly going off right now and I am very much here for it and the window is closing as we speak.

So in short, Aubrey, Claire, and Dave - welcome to Melbourne! (Bianca, you've already been here many times, so no imitation emu feathers for you.)

In the meantime here's what else we've been up to in meatspace. See you next week!