Shoshe -- School's out!

I handed in my last problem set/take home exam on Thursday :) Now it's time for summer research, and actually enjoying this town (they tell me there's a town somewhere outside my office).

Yesterday we woke up early (despite the power going out and resetting the alarm clock) and went to a Local Producers brunch at the local nature center. Mmm, pancakes, homefries, and scrambled eggs with spinach and asparagus! We stayed on for the Mushroom Workshop, and spent a few hours drilling and hammering small mycelium-covered dowels into several logs, and covering the holes with cheese wax. We now have a shiitake-innoculated log sitting in our balcony's shed-thing! Then we went to the farmers' market for a late lunch (just before it closed at 3pm), then to the hardware store for planters and potting mix so I can plant herbs and lettuce when we get back from holiday, then to the supermarket, then to a store where we failed to find socks for me, then to the bookstore where we got a guidebook for our holiday, and then back home where I made applesauce (I got a bunch of apples at the SUPRA-equivalent's end-of-year free bbq) and used the bread machine to make dough for pizzas. By the end of the day we were tired! I think I also cleaned part of the kitchen in there somewhere. And I got to tell one of my students that she got the top score on the final exam :) And she and I found out that she went to my high school.

Kit ponders - Where do all the teaspoons go?

Relocated to a new work location in May 2007, and there was a new building fitout. New 2-drawer dishwashers, full set of plates, bowls, cutlery, mugs and glasses. Within six months, all barr two of the teaspoons had disappeared. Where did they go? I know I was hoarding 1 teaspoon of my own (I brought it in from home), so that I wouldn't ever be teaspoonless.

So I went round to all the vinnies stores in the local area, and managed to scrounge a couple, including a "padstow public school commerative 50th anniversary teaspoon". But on the whole - even the vinnies stores had a lack of teaspoons. Knives, forks aplenty. But spoons? Not on your life.

Where do they go? Is there a ghoul that eats them as a snack?

Becstarr : Roadtrip to the Capital

Went on a roadtrip to Canberra this weekend with Karinne and J to see the Monet-Turner exhibition. We stayed in a youth hostel in Civic with a crazy empty-nester lady who kept on waking up to eat VERY CRUNCHY chips in the middle of the night. On Sunday we went to the fantastic National Museum and I'm looking forward to a few more visits!

Two thumbs up!

Dan - the kids party down

Went to the school Disco at Dante's school, and the kids went off! All three had a fantastic time dancing; Elora doing her classic 'Duck and Wave" dance, Atty running around squealing, and Dante "breakdancing" (ie. doing a rather lyrical interpretive dance). I was actually really impressed with D's dancing skills - it was actually pretty good. The woman he seemed to be trying to woo (I think she was the girlfriend of one of the aftercare staff) commented to be afterwards that he was really talented.

YL - 5 for the price of 1.

Who could resist a good bargain anyway? *chuckle*

1. Graduation was a day of silent victory for me. I felt like I was happy/pleased but I couldnt really cheer. I knew what I had gone through to be there that day ... and I think I just wasnt sure how it all added up. Dinner with family & people who made it imminently possible for me to finish this degree was lovely. I think everyone was happy and more so, everyone got along! I celebrated but it really felt like my heart wasnt in it. Hmm.
2. Work is blargy. I really dont enjoy working at any time (especially till 11pm weeknights) when I'm the only junior person covering the whole place! That's 200 beds. And more, I dont enjoy horribly menial tasks. There are jobs that do not require someone who spent 10 years at Uni to do! Argh. I do not want more random overtime!
3. I also resent being told that I need to have "better time management" when I express that there are more jobs than 1 person can do (re above comment) without being completely exhausted and unable to stop to eat/drink.
4. I miss being paid $22/hr at the labs. I now get paid $25/hr and $27/hr next year. The difference in responsibility is incongruent to the renumeration!
5. There's a beach 5min down the road from me, but with work - I've only been there once in the 6 weeks I've been here. That was the 1st weekend. I'm determined to go there in 1 hr before work!

Dan: 9 posts for the price of one

I've been lazy about updating any of my blogs, so here's the last week's worth of updates:

1. Elora and Atticus were crook last week, with diarrhoea and a cough respectively - the thing about nappies is they make dealing with diarrhoea much easier :)
2. Preparations to travel to the US are still rather byzantine. I'm still waiting on paperwork (Department of Immigration sent me a receipt for my payment for citizenship papers, but not the papers. I've ordered my new Oz passport.
3. As of two minutes ago, I'm officially in my mid thirties.
4. Work is hella busy. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I'm sure I've got about twice as much to do as I used to.
5. Got a wireless Mighty Mouse for my early birthday present. Now I've got to upgrade to a modern version of Linux if I want to get it running (or buy a Mac).
6. Finally up to date with watching How I Met Your Mother. Funny show. They'd better keep making it. Or I'll stab them. Now I've gotta catch up with all my other TV.
7. Got myself an iPod Touch. I feel I ought to know how they work before going to WWDC, and develop something that runs nicely on one. It's a very nifty toy. I recommend them. Once the iPhone comes out I'll definitely get one of them (and Jen will get an the Touch as an iPod upgrade).
8. Elora is a very clever girl. She has been counting! To four! (for a 15 month old, that's very clever). Also, she's super cute at the moment (which I guess doesn't really need to be said. Everyone know that already).
9. Dante is a world of super itchiness. We've treated three different sources of itchiness, but he seems to have additional itch-causing ailments. At some point, I'm just gonna get a medical encyclopedia and list all possible causes of itchiness, and give the kid a super combo medical cocktail to sort them all out at once. Also, he's really enjoying his Extension classes. And we've had to have extensive (unrelated) discussions about how it's OK if other kids call you a nerd, and to not let it bother you. Peer pressure is starting to kick in, and he was quite worried for a while there when the other kids started hassling him out for being clever. I pointed out the irony of being called a nerd by a bunch of kids obsessed with Star Wars, Ben 10, and Pokemon.
   

Kit: Zilch for Greenie credits

Had a bit of brain idiocy last night. I thought: "Oh, I have a meeting in town tomorrow at 9am and 2pm-5pm. I know, I'll get a pool car and drive in. "

I awoke at 6am (having missed my 530 alarm), and thought: "What!? Why am I driving in? I should have taken the train, and then I could have slept in, *and* been able to snooze on the train, *and* not have to dance with peak hour traffic. "

1.5 hours later... I finally get into town (generally a 50min non-peak-hour journey).

Anna : Can't see straight ...

In the thick of another training project, but this time Hivers get to share my pain because some of them have to attend (hey Jen, hey Joe). Only two days of work to go!

Paul at boxing has re-defined "hard", cutting out most of the breaks we used to enjoy so much. Had a family dinner that went well, olives were a motif, figuring in almost every dish and Guy's dad Steve may have been brought around to the joys of the chickpea.

and deja vu ... just now!

Becstarr : Early, but still not early enough

Still not getting up early enough to make 7:30am yoga. Used the time instead to clean my room a bit, and found my camera which has been missing since I moved! Also picked up mi pasaporte this morning - I think that makes the turnaround 10 working days. Good work DFAT!

Jaime and Shannon’s amazing powers

J&S have been and gone. The day they arrived in Scottyland was our first real spring day in weeks. While they were here the fog made 2 attempts to return but using their combined powers J&S let the sun shine. At one point it hit 22°! That's almost a heatwave. On Thursday we climbed Arthurs seat and Jaime worked up a really good sunburn. On Friday I waved goodbye to them at Waverly and within 10 minutes the rain had returned and most of the weekend was fogged in. I guess Jaime and Shannon need to spend more time in Edinburgh :)

Jaime - Let's party like its 1699

I had my nose smashed by a sword and got to fire a pistol. This holiday is awesome!

Jaime - I got sunburt in Edinburgh

Yes, I got sunburnt in Edinburgh. I was wearing sunglasses and now I look like a stylish raccoon.

Becstarr : Academic honesty again

Attended an interesting morning as a guest at the First Year Experience WG's meeting on academic honesty. It's a frustrating topic in many ways, but an interesting question because there are so many facets, not least of which is the time factor, in questions like "how much time can we afford to / do we want to put into prevention and detection, and then into prosecution?" and "how much time do we want to spend on teaching students about this rather than on actual subject content matter?". So much more to say on this - perhaps a proper write-up elsewhere is in order.

In other matters, today I realised that a good way to develop my Spanish might be to read articles whose contents are easy to guess, such as "¿Qué debes hacer si han hackeado tu sitio web?"

Climbed to the Summit

Today we reached the top of Arthur's Seat. Yay us!

Dan is a Yankee pigdog

I won the Uni's scholarship to go to WWDC this year, which is awesome, but it's in San Francsico, and since I'm a US/Austraila dual citizen (in theory), that means I need to use my US passport to enter and leave the US, and since I haven't had a US passport in about 30 years, I've got to apply for a new one, but I need my birth certificate and Australian citizenship papers, which were lost/stolen when we moved house one time, and so I've had to send off for ID papers from New York and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, which should arrive in two weeks hopefully, so I can get a passport, and use my non-refundable, non-transferable plane tickets on the 7th of June.

But then I get to cruise around California for a week after WWDC. Should be tops.

Becstarr : Inyecciones!

Got my Hep A, Typhoid, flu, and Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccinations yesterday. My arms hurt but I feel invincible now! Except of course for rabies, which I left too late to do the course for (plus it's 3 lots of $85 - ouch!).

Fingers crossed for no mad dogs or scratchy bats.

Anna : New Job!

Again! I'm going over to Arts Digital to work as the "Senior Web Communications Officer" and will be supervising one Mr. Eugene Chan ... hope he's nice, would be a shame if we had to share our personal space for a lengthy period of time and we didn't get on ...

Ben - Luck!

I've been pretty lucky the last couple of days. Yesterday, I saw an eight year old voluntarily reading Mark Twain. This morning, the camera shop called to tell me that they've finally fixed my camera. And this afternoon, I won a raffle. Not a bad couple of days.

Kit is Music Spree

Went on a CD impulse spending spree. New jjj hottest 100 album (volume 15?), kate nash, and the Big Day Out Compiliations 2005-2006 (latter two from redeyerecords in town).
BDO2005 is not to my taste, or at least not-suitable-for-work moods.

Evelyn, Tancred, Jaime, Shannon - Off to Glasgow

Off to see arty type stuff, cathedrally type stuff and high-tea at the Macintosh tearooms.