Tickets are bought: We're going DownUnder

Yay, finally bought our tickets. We'll be in oz between September 24 & October 20. Will likely be spending the first week in Canberra, but the next three weeks in Sydney.

Get ready to meet Holly-boo!!!

YL - holiday

It's good warm summer weather here in Columbus, OH. If you told me about the many many turns, steps and decisions it'd take to get to be at this point in time in my life .... I'd have never believed you.

Sometimes I think about starting over some place else. Where the road doesn't know my name and everything is different.

Kit - modern woes

Accidently wrenching the wireless LAN antenna off its connections in the modem can't be good. I have been reduced to using a public library computer for non-work emails and "oh look, a neighbour has left their network insecure"-type raids, whilst the toy is soldered back together... and hopefully works.

Ben - Well that's done

Just finished my DET interview. Think it went well.

YL - Statistic!

I was going to say I would finally become a statistic .... but I realised I'm already a statistic. lol =)

What I do also realise is I should have bought shares in Roche (company that makes Tamiflu) YEARS ago.

Hindsight is awesome.

Becstarr : Tax Pack Rat

I am just back form the post office, having sent in my tax returns for 2004, 5, 6, 7, and 8. It feels absolutely fantastic and when I sat down to it, it only actually took me one weekend. I can't believe everyone was right when they told me just to start it and it wouldn't be that hard. Why is it so hard to take advice sometimes? I guess I just need to be open to trying things.

Anyway, thankyou to everyone who has, over the last few years, encouraged me to get on top of this. And a special thanks to Mr McCulloch, whose scoffing on Sunday morning (when I "just" had to find my group certificates in order to lodge) spurred me on to the final burst of paper-chasing. :)

I may even get the stimulus bonus. The milky bars are on me!

Anna : Just when I thought I was out ...

They drag me back in ... bugger.

Dan - In the navy!

We hopped in the car yesterday and drove down to Jervis Bay to see Evil graduate today. Was very cool to see her in her fancy uniform, and the kids had a great time - mostly due to the novelty of the long distance travelling and sleeping in a motel.

Anna : Why do vampires suck?

After months of Twilight, True Blood (the show and the books) and then flash backs to Lost Boys I am left wondering, how can vampire stories have so much appeal while at the same time sucking SO MUCH??!?

Guess I'm off to watch Near Dark again ... cry little sister ...

Kit the commuter gets cultured

Went to see Reuben Guthrie at Belvoir last night with Anna, Guy and Lachlan. Funny in parts, but also depressing comments about the isolation of modern humans. During the post theatre discussion, Anna said that she wanted to have a notebook in which she would ask a person to draw their impression of a map of Sydney. For her, the north shore would be marked "here be dragons". I am embarrassed to say that the first thing that popped into my mind was: motorways. The second was: public transport routes. What would yours be?

YL - contemplations

On a day off where I don't have to be anywhere at any one time, I relish the simple pleasure of a full day of sunlight to myself. Granted, I'm going to go to a bookshop (sans sunlight) but then I'll have the pleasure of books!

Also, getting compliments at work from patients/their family is nice. Never been much good at processing compliments .... just a nod, smile and thank you seems to be a sufficient response. Apparently I'm kind. Who woulda thunk? Me? Pfft!

Shoshe - Amateur Robot Astronomy

Spirit has more power than she's had in about 2 Mars years, so the engineers have requested that we do more nighttime observations to use up power (when we don't use up enough power, we shunt it by waking up in the middle of the night and turning on our heaters for an hour or two). I thought it would be nifty to take a picture of Earth, and it turns out that Earth and Venus are in conjunction in the martian sky! They're about 1.5 degrees apart tonight, and will be close to each other a bit after sunset for the next several nights. I've spent the past few days working closely with the Pancam operators and an awesome researcher who's been studying twilight at Gusev. On 21 June at 19:07:28 UTC (19:40:05 local time), Spirit will start taking some pictures for me! If these go well, we might take images every day or two for several days and make a little movie.

Ben - Eye of the Storm

Finally, all my semester 1 assignments are in the box and I don't have any semester 2 assignments due until... let's see... two weeks from tomorrow.

D'oh! Lousy forth year.

On the plus side, I've lost enough weight this year that I can fit into my old suit. This will save me either buying a new one, or holding my gut in for the entire hour long DET interview.

Aching!

Did my second tabata class yesterday. How can 30 mins be so painful?

Kit doesn't want No. 3

The hot water heater broke down over the long weekend (whilst we were away), so a weekend's worth of camping grime had to make do with a cold shower and hot water from the kettle (the former won).
Then I had another toaster emergency.
I don't want No. 3.

Ben - 12 500

This thing's going to cost me a fortune in printing.

Ben - 10, 000

The assignment that I'm doing just passed the 10000 word count, and I still have a section and a half to do.

Join the teachers, they said. See the world, they said...

Also, my fridge broke down last week. For a few days I was eating like a king as I chowed my way through everything in the freezer before it went off. But since then I've been living on food made from supplies from my cupboard. It's surprising how quickly you tire of lentils, polenta, plain spaghetti and pea soup without any bacon.

If only I had a cask of fruity lexia and a bad haircut, I'd be a true student cliche.

Shoshe - Retro

Last Saturday night we went to the local roller derby, and then to a Pong tournament at a friend's house.

Kit needs a holiday

How hard can it be, when submitting something for review, to check back through all of the client's comments in previous correspondence to confirm that all issues have been addressed?

I'm an Aunt!

Christine had her baby!