Shoshe: Backlog + swamped

More-or-less finished reading the 60 page paper on elasticity in the Earth's interior by the time of the seminar this past Wednesday. Still haven't finished the problem set that was due two weeks ago yesterday, but about half the class is with me on that. Finished the mineralogy lab from 2 weeks ago; still have to finish last week's and this week's (tomorrow arvo after Ratatouille?). 28 papers to grade this weekend, plus I'll have to assign letter grades for the 30 papers my graders are grading so I can give the essays back to the students on Wednesday. And I'm giving my third lecture (this one's on the International Space Station and Ares/Orion) on Wednesday...hopefully I'll be given slides for that one. And we're going to an Arlo Guthrie concert on Tuesday night.

Becstarr : Digging through braindumps

Spending hours digging through braindumps. Everything feels like it takes a very very very long time because it's not just a case of doing it, it's remembering how to do it.

Pub: Talked with G&A about the wiki conference in Egypt in 2008. Let's go!!!

falsedan - sorry, you're not my type

Got my first job rejection today—it's a step up from sending out heaps of CVs and never ever getting any reply.

Grr London job culture… "If you have not heard anything by the 21st of December then you have been unsuccessful on this occasion."

Dan - day off

Took a day of work to recover and de-stress. Mostly sat around. Tried to nap, but Atticus decided it'd be more fun to jump up and down on top of me. Looks like Good Fruit season is starting again - strawberries and cherries and apricots are starting to get cheaper.

Not much happening..

Bored at work, suffering prospective Cabin Fever for the weekend. I know we need the rain, but I'm sick of being indoors!

Shoshe: Righty-o then

So apparently the reason that my geomorphology prof is so into plate tectonics is that he invented it (pdf).

It's an awesome class, by the way. I've missed it a few times 'cause it's at 9am and I'm not taking it for credit, but the lectures are great. He make excellent use of PowerPoint, which I find really impressive, especially for a guy who's about to retire!

Anna : Desk, Sweet Desk

Taken a few more steps this week to make my temporary desk my actual desk. Printed out a copy of this to stare at and brought in my Andy Warhol / Marilyn Monroe cup to hold my pencils. Oooh and a fork, ICT seems to have lost all of its forks.

Becstarr : Hula hula dreams dreams

Big event of the day was the opening for Hula Dreams II out at Clovelly, which J has two works in (Sheik Uke Al-Hilaly and Martin Uke, which sold on the night). The opening went well and my mum met J's mum and Jess met Zoe- not that anyone really got a chance to talk; too much ukelele playing going on!

Had a small family dinner with Jess, Mum and Dad after. 4 is actually a very civilised number for a dinner - everyone can be in on the same conversation easily. :)

YL - red hair at last!

Lousy week until I settled into what turned into a long hair appointment at Bedrock, Newtown. 1-6pm. Yikes. Trimmed, cut, bleached and coloured. There's nothing like 5hrs of sitting still, drinking tea and doing nothing to lift one's moods.

I now have deep cherry red/brown hair with streaks of bright engine red & 1 gorgeous bit of deep fushia pink. All cleverly able to be hidden when swept into a neat bun/pony tail. Hah! The hairdresser Katerina was listening when I tried to explain I had to look professional/conservative while really not being that tight laced! (except when talking about corsets - Fashion has moved on. Time to get new ones from Gallery Serpentine & House of Fetish in the near future.)

Evolution baby yeah. It's a steep learning curve.

Now to see the look on my parents & grandma's face when I pick them up later tonight. lol.

Shoshe: It's snowing!

It's just a flurry, and you have to go outside to see it (you can't really see it through the window), but it's snowing!

It's 38 degrees out, and tonight it's going down to 25. Fahrenheit. I think we're just not going to translate that into real units 'cause it'd be too scary.

Now you can see it out the window! It's not sticking to the ground yet though.

We need to buy snowboots.

falsedan - mo' money mo' problems

Successful budgeting has left me with lots of food I didn't eat, so this week's food budget is now a £15 fun fund. I am resisting blowing it all at the chippie.

YL - rain, blood and babies

Today started out poorly with me venturing out into the sudden outpouring of rain with no umbrella. Realising I had no mobile phone (which I needed in case my real estate agent called me), I got off the bus at Fisher Library and proceeded to get even more wet while trying to get back home.

Needless to say, no action on the apt sale front that I know of. Sigh. Auction is on Sat though.

After feeling out of place on the labour ward, we did end up delivering 2 babies by caesarean between 4-10pm. That was kind of sweet in a sad broken way. In those few moments, women who had loving partners and who were having babies. Captured moment of bliss. Sure there may be many other problems beyond that moment. But I suddenly felt like it was a moment I'd never experience - loving partners & having babies. Deeper sigh. Now that makes me cry.

Anna : Getting better at getting off the floor

New gym program with "Extra Pushup Action" is totally working. First set of pushups no longer feels like death. Just don't ask me about the following sets.

EC - The blood - oh my god, the blood

So was walking home through Vic park late last night because I figured I'd have less distractions to finish essays in the office and I get approached by two kids waving a Coke bottle around telling me to give them my laptop. I obviously told them to go to to hell - especially when one of them didn't look older than 12. Anyway they told me to look behind me twice with nothing there before two more came around trying to intimidate me with numbers - again age no older than 15 in the four of them.

I try scaring them off myself with a few empty kicks since I really didn't see these guys as a threat and they were just kids beforeI find myself grounded from a Coke bottle thrown to my head. I was obviously bleeding but I got up and told them to bring it on. I have to wonder what I looked like getting up from what must have been a nastily split lip and a bleeding nose and still telling them to come again. Anyway they threw the bottle again and missed. I went to pick it up and walked away. Shouting was done and I went home.

I was bleeding something savage but figured - well a split lip - nothing to worry about. Come home and Kim freaks and I look in the mirror and see yeah, I should probably get that seen to. A taxi later am in the RPA waiting room... waiting. 5 hours later I'm stitched up and home again.

And the worse thing? The 5 hours in the waiting room I was forced to watch old sitcom after old sitcom interspersed with the Shopping Channel trying to convince me Air Supply was good.

falsedan - boom bang bang bang bang crack bang

Everyone is letting off fireworks as soon as it gets dark and it gets dark pretty early around here. It sounds like a war zone (except for the magnesium sprays *pppffzztssstzszssssscchchchchchch*)

Becstarr : Belatedly houseproud

First day of LMS not as bad as I thought it would be!
Walked home to Newtown to clean the place up prior to its first inspection as it goes back on the market (Wed pm if you're interested). Once it was clean, I belatedly fell in love with it again. It's been a wonderful little place.... I'm sure I'm going to miss the privilege of having such privacy and independence. No ties has its pluses.

inner city urbanite

Busy day. Had a nice dinner at newtown thai 2, before heading to the australian surf movie festival at manning. Haven't been to manning for donkey's years! The films were a bit of a letdown, with shaky home footage of 80s surf comps. The footage of surfing near port arthur was more interesting, with the guy being towed out by jetski, and taking a bit of a tumble at one point falling down the wave.

Becstarr : Nuh-uh!

Spent a large part of the day trying to finish project work and hitting stupid obstacles (Audacity losing LameLib, etc). Resolved once again not to let a project get to the "I should definitely work on this on Sunday" stage. I thought that ended once I finished uni and essays!

Dan: battling hordes of midgets

We had all the nieces and nephews around today, so there was running and squealing and playstation. Battled the ants that have decided that it's nicer inside than outside in the rain. Changed the TV input arrangement for the first time in years, promoting the computer to AV1 in recognition of its sterling service (everything else shares AV2).

falsedan - witness protection program

Went to Michael's & Megan's on the 1st; drank all their expensive champagne, missed the last train so spent the night on the couch they found on the street the other day. It's a very comfortable couch. Also I was asked (and accepted) to be the witness at their wedding next month.

By the time we woke up on Friday there was an O.C. marathon showing—Latvia doesn't get The O.C. so we stuck around all afternoon while I revealed that you could tell which season an episode was from by the presentation of Peter Gallagher's eyebrows.

Woke up on Saturday to cook teriyaki tofu and watch Thunderball. Went to the dodgiest cleanest bar on Goldhawk Road and drank Amaretto.

Yesterday was the 50 year anniversary of Laika's last day on Earth :sad face:

Becstarr : Endings and newthings

Last day of projects. Brain MIA. J off to sign papers with Cath at lunchtime. Yen Li brought a friend to the D&S. Went to see the lovely Clare Bowditch and the Feeding Set at the Seymour in the evening. Big day.

David - Halloween Shenanigans R Us

Took some time out of the political bunfight that I am in the midst of right now and wandered around NY on Halloween night. There is a massive parade through the Village with a bunch of people dressed up to the nines. Kinda like a straight version of the Mardi Gras. Seeing thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers wearing their freak on the outside is a hell of an experience. Some highlights;
- chap in a flasher costume - what is a flasher costume you say? A man wearing a full body stocking with an enormous fake nob! (titter)
- a six foot two black man with a beard wearing a Wonder Woman outfit (double take and then some)
- more Darth Vader and Stormtoopers than you can poke a lightsaber at
- and a personal highlight - enough sailors to swab the deck of an aircraft carrier