cough cough cough

My cold continues on schedule. I have a standard order of
1. sore throat (if I have betadeine I can nip it in the bud here - I didn't have any on Sunday night :( )
2. slight cough and slight runny nose, plus fever & fatigue
3. Heavier runny nose and sneezing, fever is fading
4. heavy runny nose, blocked sinuses, coughing again but chesty this time
5. sinuses clear, runny nose mainly dries up, cough turns dry and hacking
6. recovery

I'm usually feeling at my worst at 2 and 3.
I'm now at 4...should be right for getting online tonight - but I'll sound awful

Shooting myself in the foot

I've said for some time now, that there's no point in me doing longer days and working weekends. All that happens is my brain switches off and I make mistakes or I get sick. If I try to do the longer hours, I pay for it in just as many hours lost later to inefficiency, mistakes and illness. So, I have these really short deadlines for papers/grants/lecture writing & end up spending all weekend working on the paper. Sunday night I get a sore throat and I've lost 2 days of work with brain capacity falling to about 5% of normal, a desperate desire to sleep and feeling generally like crap. I actually feel a bit better today and the woman in the office across from me says I look terrible and wan. My eyes are very bleary. I really should learn and stop paying attention to people who say I should work the weekend/after hours if something has to be done.

spam spam spam spam

I was thinking monty python while I wrote that. I just got my first spam comment. All about power levelling in RPGs. I must remember to write more boring things that don't attract them.

Gah again

So there I was, using my creative time (till 1pm) sorting through data in papers for the purposes of writing a streamlined introduction that supports me doing the work I've already done and am writing the paper for. Suddenly, an email pops up telling em I have until 4:30 to mark the supplementary exams and and have them at examinations. These are the papers I was given 2 days ago, for a subject I didn't teach last year but am going to take over next semester, without a deadline given to me. So of course I put them aside because I knew they'd require much thought to figure out what was actually taught & what should be included in a complete answer. I have now used up the last of my creative energy for today for exam marking. So much for getting my paper written. I need a nap.

GAH!!!!!

Hate writing papers, hate writing papers, hate, hate, hate writing papers.

I feel the more I have to work at them, the more they churn unto mud....and the less the point I was tryign to make gets put across.

Cold up here

The fan is off, I'm considering jumpers for the office (several have already given in). I haven't seen the sun in...hmm when did I last see the sun? Still enjoying the rain though, for two reasons. Firstly, if the sun was out it would be stinky and humid and probably as hot as it is down south, you poor shmucks. Secondly, when it stops raining I have to start thinking about mowing the calf length grass again.

hmm, timing is everything

I'm currently figuring out if I can add anthrax to a vet lecture, as well as public health food poisoning issues without blowing the top off my hour to discuss tetanus and botulism. 18 slides so far without having either in there. Both of these are requests from other lecturers who think my lecture would be a good place to put this in so that its covered.

back to the grind

I did a total of two things today at work...and I finished neither of them. I do not expect to improve tomorrow.

On an up note, I did level Bindy to 50 before my holiday was up :)

On a weird note,
I took my car in to be rustproofed this morning & they rang me before lunch time to say it was ready. I went in & picked it up at lunch because the guy said I was his last customer of the day. When I got there, he was asleep with his feet up. The music was on louder than I could speak and I couldn't find the volume dial. I even poked him and he didn't wake up. His feet were twitching, so I assume he was dreaming. Since my keys were beside him and I'd already paid, I left a note telling him I couldn't wake him, I'd taken my car & to ring me if he needed to tell me anything or I needed to do anything more. He hasn't rung. Everyone at work asked whether I'd checked if he was still breathing.

Blech

I started work yesterday at 8:30am and finished at 8:30pm - all food lab sample processing. Now I'm back at work at 8:30am again. Todays stuff shouldn't take as long in the lab, so for the rest of the day I'm doing all the admin crap I haven't got to. My office is a pigsty and I have a bunch of ordering and number crunching that needs to be done. Biosafety forms updated, new students forms examined, course redesigned to run next month, filing, rubbish to throw...I'm not even going to look at the papers and lectures I need to write :( 14 lectures in 2 weeks at the start of semester, ick!
Edit : also set up old computer and try to rescue data before chucking....I'm stopping now to have a percolated coffee (Red Back Mareeba Arabica coffee)

I love writing lectures

I get carried away, I spend far too much time on it. I wrote my first lecture for this year yesterday. It took 8 hours of work....Given I have 7 lectures and 14 hours of pracs in week one, I might have to pick up my pace a little

woops missed a few

well, so much for holiday resolutions. after the 1st of January, I forgot to comment.

Hmm, what did I do for these three days...grind welds, paint welds, a little bit of LOTRO (none at all yesterday, though Andrea has tempted me with Moria superior crafting benches), read novels (one Pern novel and two Tamora Pierce novels. I'd given her novels a rest when they seemed to get a bit samey, but obviously I've been away from them for long enough that I could enjoy them again). Thats about it really, oh and I bought some cleaning stuff for my new car - now I have to find some time to use it. I go back to work tomorrow :( I think I work too hard doing too many non-satisfying things, since I don't look forward to going back. Even though I have a lot of fun things I could be doing, I don't get round to most of them because of other peoples priorities. Now, off to play some LOTRO before going over to Dot's for afternoon tea.

more grinding

Spent some of the morning and some of the afternoon grinding. Had nephews over in the middle of the day, watched stardust on DVD. Played LOTRO this evening and got Bindy 1/2 way through lvl46. One level a day wont get me to 50 before I go back to work...thats assuming i could get a level a day...oh, and they got my hopes up with a superior workbench in suri-kyla, but it only works if I get to ally status...I only managed that with the mathom society because bindy is a cook & they have cook quests etc.

It was an angle grinding sort of day

Got up, ate breakfast, fed birds, used the angle grinder to grind off the extra concrete lumps on the new aviary base, changes angle grinder head to metal grinding and spent the rest of daylight!!! grinding down welds after dad had welded bits. It really doesn't look like we did much, just extended the entry portal to the aviary - theres sooo much more to do & I go back to work next week. I didn't even drive my new car today :( I did however play LOTRO at lunch time and after dinner - Bindy is now 3/4 of the way through lvl45. My holiday resolution of getting him to lvl50 seems a long way off.

almost forgot

Woops, almost turned off and went to bed without blogging - my resolution almost crached and burned in three days.
today I finished shifting the budgies, did a little shopping and a lot of LOTRO. I also sorted through my old car files - I found the original receipt for the car I bought in 1995, I also shredded a lot of the paperwork. Thats it really. Perhaps there's a reason I forgot.

new car

Dad is impressed because the back seats can recline to several angles and they have an arm rest with cup holder. I'm impressed with the power of the airconditioner. That and I'm now up there with all the 4WD wagons looking down on everyone else. I also shifted a bunch of budgies and leveled Bindy to 45....oh, and I did some filing.

both day and night

...church, coffee with mum, 2 skirts and a new pillow bought at the 50% off sales, nanna nap in the afternoon on my new pillow, finished the mowing and played LOTRO. I also started cleaning up all the misc. paperwork in my back room and planning what to do tomorrow, apart from picking up my NEW CAR!!!!

and so it continued

Today I went shopping. I bought a book, some shorts and got a watch battery replaced. Then I got some photos printed - plus some screenshots from LOTRO. They turn out nice as photos. I ate sushi for lunch. After doing some reading, I scrubbed the bath and mowed the lawn...fun so far yes? I'm watching howls moving castle tonight between getting bindy to forochel to look for the behemoth again. More exciting fun planned tomorrow.

The week off adventure

I've decided to note what I do each day on my week off. This way you can see how dull my breaks are if I don't go away. Let's see how long this pre-new years resolution lasts.
Since I'm starting on the 26th and technically I started my break on the 25th, I'll briefly note what happened yesterday...
Up at 6:30am, church, opened presents (opened Andreas first in the privacy of my room in case she'd sent something highly inappropriate). She hadn't. Read my new Robin McKinley book till 11:30am. Went to Brother and Sister-in-laws place for cold Christmas lunch in air-conditioned comfort, opened more presents, ate King prawns, ham, gingerbread house and ice cream cake, spent the rest of my time putting together a 3D puzzle robot for my 6yr old nephew. All went well, both kids were happy, everyone was relaxed...I didn't expect it but am putting it down to aircon. Came home, read the rest of the book in a long soaking bath full of coconut bathfizzer from the Fellowses.
Today: Got up, watched the Seeker on DVD, finished concreting the base of the aviary & moved two budgies, took my mum post christmas shopping and spent $130 on miscellaneous stuff, came home, put away stuff (including budgie breeding boxes - I'm not letting them breed over summer, it gets too hot), installed my new zippy, glowy gamers mouse...so fast! Decided not to install Crysis until I do some more of the housework I need to do, avoided housework and surfed the web then typed this up...may do more cleaning and putting away now....or go try more bath stuff and reread The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper in the only cool spot around - the bathtub.

Previously on....

I've just had a week off to buy a new car. I bought (though I haven't had the finance go through yet so its not in my hot little hands) a Hyundai Tucson City. Not 4WD sadly. I like everything else about it. The 4WD version only comes in automatic v6 - boo hiss - neither of which I need or want & they cause the interest rate on the loan to go up. I also shovelled sand till I blistered and poured concrete till I threw up. Its really hot up here right now and it took longer than expected. Once you start concreting, you have to finish so we worked till 1pm, through the hottest part of a stinky hot day....in the sun. I really didn't get all that much else done...except the gingerbread houses, made from scratch, finished last night.

Ptang!

This is the sound my heart rate datalogger made after it fell off my belt at the same time I pulled the mower backwards. The Ptang noise was the sound of a logger shooting off in pieces from under the mower :(

I wasn't using this because I have a heart problem - its purely exercise. I have discovered that mowing my 1/4 acre property with a push mower actually burns more calories and keeps my heart in the cardio zone better than walking up and down Castle Hill. Now I can mow instead of going for a walk :) Of course, I also need a new datalogger. My heart rate monitor watch only gives me totals, not minute by minute logging :(

day off

I had a day off yesterday and had a massage and lots of naps...plus some supreme farming and cooking on LOTRO. I feel rather floaty and relaxed today. I'm wondering if this is how I should feel normally and I've just forgotten due to long periods of stress and overwork. Sad really. Did I used to be floaty and relaxed?

blah

headache, stiff neck, queezy, tired. Doesn't bode well for seeing Australia tonight

rain rain and more rain

I took possession of some more birds yesterday. Five peach faces and four budgerigars. Maybe the timing could have been better. I put their cages under trees and so it rained last night. At 3am I went downstairs with a torch and checked on them. They were still pretty dry but I put some marine ply on the top of the cages anyway & then I went back to bed. At 5 am I got up again and pulled out the powerplugs since the rain was gushing down and the thunder was very, very loud. I was glad I'd done the covering earlier. Then the power went out...woke at 7:15am to the news our street was flooded and I wasn't going anywhere. This gave me some time to wander round in the rain making more thorough covers for the quite damp birds and taking out all their food, which was an inch deep in rain water. By that time the road had cleared..so now I'm at work...Its very black out west, so this might be a short day.
There were hour long delays on the highway north of Townsville this morning for the people coming in to work. My office mate decided she just wouldn't bother. There was also a truck jackknifed on the university round-about, but it had been cleared away before I got there. I only saw one car up on a median strip this morning. So it can't have been too bad, but several cars that were parked on the road in our street have several inches of water in them.

new software

4th times the charm.
I finally got round to installing Dragon. I was testing the tutorial and it took me 4 tries to get the test question right. Even so, overall its better than my typing skills or lack thereof.

Harry I heard that you were starting a new job in San Francisco, Wenders's new jobs start? I would love to have lunch with you before you leave.

Harriet I heard that you were starting a new job in San Francisco, Wenders in the new job start? I would love to have lunch with you before you leave

Harriet I heard he was starting a new job in San Francisco. When does the new job start? I would love to have lunch with you before you leave

Harriet I heard that you are starting a new job in San Francisco. When does the new job start? I would love to have lunch with you before you leave

marking exams

must..stop..procrastinating

must..stop..blogging

I wos robd!

Someone stole money from my top drawer at work....in an envelope at the back of the drawer. It was most likely after hours through a locked door since my purse was not taken from my open handbag that would have been in view during the day. I also keep my door locked when I'm not there during the day, so it probably wasn't someone just walking in. Someone across the corridor had the same thing happen (probably same night). She too had her handbag in view during the day. We both had stuff like digital cameras and new mobile phones etc etc (also computers) and none of this was taken.
I now lock my drawers as well as the door. There are very few keys floating around that will open my door, so I thought I'd be OK with just the door locked. The other woman who shares my office suggested we get a guard snake...she has a python we could keep in the office, but its a bit cold for it.

roll on wet season

It rained last night. I hope its the start of a lot more. I stayed up waaaay too late reading, so I got to fall asleep to the sound.

Science note: the smell of rain that you get after its been dry is caused by Actinomycetes . I'm not 100% sure of whether the spores have their own smell, or whether the geosmin they produce is fully responsible. Theres also a few other causes, such as petrichor, but the smell I like is Actinomycetes related.

Basically, when the soil dries, actinomyetes bacteria form spores. The new rain aerosolises these spores and they enter the atmosphere where we breathe them in.

I haven't read it...but I have

This time I got a book called "The declaration" by Gemma Malley
I start reading it and something rings a bell....I've read this before too - argh - but I know I read it many years ago and I thought this one was newly published.

I check the publication date...it is new. This makes no sense. So I start stretching my mind back. The other book was darker, less young-adulty, and had a different basis for the "unwanted children locked in institution" theme. The other book had an overpopulated earth being run by an AI that was trying to drop the population. This book has a resource poor earth with an immortality drug that means you can't have children because they won't replace you, they'll just add to the demand on resources. The other book also had more complex twists and a male protagonist. But its interesting how many of the little events at the start of the book are similar or identical.
If I remembered the name of the other book I could compare them.

some people go grey

I'm going silver. I seem to be shedding the occasional hair that is not so much grey as glowing whiter than white. I'd assumed I was going grey (I have Elvira streaks at the temples), but I think I'm going to go straight from brown to silver. I shouldn't be surprised. All my mums siblings are silver haired. If only it would hurry up, I could have that expensive Norwegian blonde look without any effort.

When you can't remember what books you've already read, you're doing too much

I already have "Dark Alchemy" edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (with stories by Garth Nix, Eoin Colfer and Neil Gaiman), I'd be happy to pass on the second copy I bought the other week.

The internet has some truly weird sites

16

Created by OnePlusYou

masques and other social events

Today I nipped out at lunch and bought a mask and trimmings to make up a fancy doohicky for the Melbourne cup. We're having competitions for the best dress, hat or mask. I'll put pictures up when I've made it.

I also slipped into dymocks and bought a book of short stories. Now that I've had a flick through, I recognise at least some of the stories. I've either bought it before or read some of them in another collection. I will check my database. Stay tuned. If it turns out I already have "Dark Alchemy" edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (with stories by Garth Nix, Eoin Colfer and Neil Gaiman), I'd be happy to pass it on.

After lunch I went to a biosciences trade display and spent 2 hours just going round the tables...I think the bags of freebies and catalogues weighs about 15kilos. The Biorad guys took advantage of both my hands being full to drape about 6 lanyards around my neck. There was also cake :) Then there were draws from all the trade displays where you had left your details to get them to send you information. I missed out on the bubbly, chocolate and giant teddy bear, but I did win a roche bag with a hat, pen, scribble pad and a book of lab FAQ's - really handy for new students.

are zombies a good model of infectious disease?

The other night I dreamt about zombies. In this dream the previous zombie outbreak had been contained and a large wall built to stop any future infestation. But there was a break in the wall and one small zombie rose from under the ground and shambled in my direction. I realized we could stop this quickly if we could contain it, destroy it & reseal the wall. As is usually the case in dreams, no-one else seemed as concerned to act quickly. By the time I got people moving, the numbers had increased. They continued to increase logarithmically and we were too slow to enact the required responses at each stage. The responses changed based on the numbers you had to oppose. Before I was rudely awakened by a phone call, I was at the stage of locking up the non-zombified in a fortress to keep them alive and worrying that one of them would have been bit before getting in, thus infecting the others.
During the dream I was thinking how interesting it was that zombie numbers were increasing on a standard logarithmic curve...afterwards it occured to me that it looked just like a disease outbreak where no-one had immunity or recovered even down to quarantines and other outbreak control techniques.

high tech..er

I'm now running off two monitors at work. I got a new computer to replace the loud, DVD drive is dodgy, USB drives don't work, blue screen of death computer I've had for 5 or 6 years. The new computer came with a new monitor. I kept the old still working monitor and can now have files I need to look at open in one window and files I'm typing into on the other. I feel very techy. Its brain-numbingly simple to set up. I've even got them at different resolutions as they are different shapes.

:D

High school? Really?

Movie Reviews

I was sorta expecting primary school given the usual level of brain-dead free association typing that goes on when I write this.

Two new budgies, two new brake pads

Completely unrelated but at the same time.

One is a latino (pure yellow with white cheeks). The other is white and grey.

The brake pads are a greyish colour too.

I found out that the squealing of brakes when they wear out is intentional, and if you buy cheap brake pads they won't do it. Its to warn you that your brake pads need replacing soonish...or now.

The squeal is caused by a folded strip of metal (P shaped) that vibrates if the brake pads are worn to the point where the stem of the metal strip rubs on the disk. Clever, no? This P shaped piece of metal serves no other purpose but to warn you so you don't crash through a barrier going 100km/hr down a windy hill when the brakes finally fail.

my second chuckle of the afternoon

was a link to this comic

Fellowshipping is fun :)

Good game of LOTRO last night. We got through some stuff that took Bindy ages to do on his own...plus some things I had overlooked, so Bindy is going to trot off and have another go at them - hopefully tonight. I am reenergised to play. So I must Level Bindy up to 40+ so that he can go off adventuring in the frozen north with Aspy.

In other news, my electrical whizz brother fixed my networking problems. He brought his gear around and tested stuff. Apparently, when we got the house cabled for networking (you just plug in via the wall sockets now) they left the underhouse cabling a little loose. The network cables, if you cut the wire, can untwist a bit and the wires inside start to electrically interfere with each other and mess up the signals. Since it was loose, it untwisted a bit before they wired it to the wall. He trimmed it, twisted it, wired it back up and tested it. All is now groovy. I've been blaming my computers for being incompatible. Good thing I didn't return anything to the store :D

misc bits...while we're all waiting on confirmation

...which could be some time, since they don't commit on things round here..

I spontaneously bought a new laptop/notebook on the weekend. I had been thinking about it for a while...but as a long term thought...then there was a sale and a nifty computer.

I have a white Eee PC (1000H version) Its almost as powerful (and has more RAM) than the toshiba laptop I bought 2-3 years ago for over $2300. The new one cost me $560

Also, see below for bird pics - I've updated finally

Things change

My job just changed..probably. I will not be doing next year what I expected to do..probably.

Watch this space & I'll let you know when it becomes official....or not

mysterious enough? :D

nine, count em, nine

I now have 9 baby budgies out of their nests and flying round...well, the last one is still hanging on the wall, clutching a crossbeam for grim death, looking like it very much wants to go back inside. 5 of the babies look like clones. Yellow heads, blue green bodies, turquoise butts and iridescent blue tails. Photos will follow when they sit still long enough.


And here they are...Some of them anyway. They're just getting faster. The first shot is a bit blurry but shows the colours up well.
the blue and green here are siblings
The bird at the front is the baby (sibling to the bright greeny blue clones) and unrelated to the other one. This is preening, the open beak isn't due to the baby screaming "Agh! she's eating my brain!" but rather "ah, that feels good"

Sleepy again

Semester has just started and I'm sleepy again. This time I'm blaming the fact that I'm housesitting and getting fresh sea air. Once I get used to it I should be right. The getting up 1/2 an hour earlier to get into uni at the same time probably doesn't help. zzzzzz

no time to read my email

When people say "I've had no time to read my email and its the afternoon", I generally assume they are either exaggerating or have poor time management as I can scan through a list in 5 minutes and reply in, at most, 10minutes to any reply needed stuff....then today happened. My email got looked at at 3pm. And now, back to work again.

its only a matter of time

I had yet another almost accident on the way to uni this morning. There is a roundabout (see below & ignore lane closed bits) that has had the same set of rules since it was built. Some of the locals who live in the suburb that comes out at Yolanda drive still have problems with it however. The problem is that the left lane coming out of Yolanda can turn left, go straight or turn right. The round about is designed so that if you are coming from Nathan street and want to turn right into discovery drive, you go straight ahead and when you get to the turn, you go in the left lane. You aren't allowed to cut across the solid line and go into the right lane unless you are doing a U-turn. This is set up because if you were exiting from the right lane into discovery drive and someone was turning right from the left lane from Yolanda, they'd crash into you.

If you are on the Nathan street approach and turning right and you are on the roundabout itself, everyone from Yolanda has to give way, not just the right lane (the same as if you were going straight ahead from that lane) - see below - yellow has right of way if they are on the roundabout first
The problem is that the "red" people often think that they are fine to drive into the left lane. Hence me almost hitting the car that I was assuming was turning left from Yolanda until it kept coming forward as I was turning right - he was assuming I would turn in the right lane and is still probably swearing about the driver who doesn't know the road rules (which I looked up very carefully when the roundabout first went in - the council put maps up with arrows and notes about who gave way).
The left lane at Yolanda needs to be left turn only. It might slow up exiting traffic but it will stop the idiots who don't bother to check the road rules or take note of solid line marking.

Dr Horrible

I found this on the web this weekend. Its a supervillian musical done by some american actors you may recognise - Check out Captain Hammer. You need to let it download or its very jumpy.

not writing...reading

I have been looking at blogs that people have not been updating & thinking "how lazy are they?" Then I realised I am in that number. So I'm going to write. I was making the excuse of nothing to say, but once I actually start typing I remember things

1. Birthday last week - popcorn cake was brain explodingly sweet
2. I bought myself a new digital camera Lumix TZ-15. It even has a smart photo setting for taking photos of food. I got it for $150 less then RRP. It also has a setting for 6x4 shots, so i don't have to crop when I take the jpgs to the camera place to print.
3. I have almost finished a draft for a methods paper. I will submit before the end of July I hope
4. One of the three fans in my computer is getting noisy so i'm taking it into the shop...after getting online tonight.
5. I'm turning into a grumpy old woman - small children related activities are irritating me more and more - not with my nephews and the kids of friends, but with strangers kids. I see this as the first sign of becoming one of those old cat ladies who come out of the house to yell at the neighbourhood kids. Apologies to the perfectly sane and compassionate cat people out there. I think I'm getting arthritis in a finger too.
6. My cockatiels have abandoned their eggs and are looking for a new nesting box. Obviously this lot didn't work - they would have hatched by now if so.
6. I've discovered a bunch of webcomics that I will, at some point, make links to on the side bar. PS238 is pretty fine.

Dr Who

I wonder if our local fanboy has seen this bit of unedited footage, where the Dr has to be seen talking but doesn't actually have lines. Heh.

Filing Time!

I've been writing a paper all day and have got to the point where I just can't make a rational decision about it any more. I've actually caught up with all the "must get this done stuff" - at least the stuff that doesn't require other people who aren't here - hence actually working on a paper. Its too early to go home, what to do?
Aha, I have filing that I haven't got to in the last 18 months - ie since I moved to this office! Actually its probably older than that.
Anyhoo...filing time! Spit could write a song about it.

a new record for me

I got to work this morning knowing that a meeting was scheduled for 9am...last minute thing booked yesterday. I got out of it at 5:30pm. It was still going but I just wasn't functional anymore.
It was fine tuning exam questions - they were all written but needed to be polished for grammar, intent and whether the question was really asking what we wanted the students to answer. It was commented on at one point that answering the questions was easier than writing them. The students won't appreciate it. It was alos only for one exam...there are three more :(

The birds...

I've put nesting boxes in my aviary. I've been having endless fun watching the aerial combat over the best box. The male cockatiel is making keep away noises at the budgies...who are ignoring him & disturbing his lady love. The male budgies are all sitting on top of nesting boxes looking down on the girls. There was one female budgie who chased one of the males around till he agreed to mate with her. Now he's gone off with her mother....the philanderer.

Yesterday there was a loud thump and we saw a great Goshawk on the top of the cage. It (probably she because its rather large) kept coming back to try get the birds. They were dead quiet. Apparently, Goshawks are bird eaters and can grab budgies through the cage wire and eat them by nibbling through the wire. My cage is large and solid, but I could still lose a few. It's a magnificent bird though. The Bird of Prey carer here said if I want to get it back, I should put chicken meat on the top of the cage....but I don't think I'll give it any encouragement.

warm..bah

I love winter. The curling up under blankets, the lack of sweating.
Last night I went to bed, threw the blankets over myself and felt that something was wrong. I was hot. I threw the blankets off, thinking "this is a bad idea, I'll be too cold. Its winter and all that". But I wasn't. In fact, as I lay there I thought "I'm still hot". I checked the thermometer on my clock to determine whether it was the temperature or me with a fever. The former apparently. It was 25oC at 10:45pm!
I swept with the fan on last night...in winter! Last year we had the lowest top temperature in June ever on record. This year we probably won't. I'm hoping it was just because it has been so overcast that the heat hasn't escaped. It's still warm today. I miss my winter :(

This was fun...and quicker than I though it would be

I found this on someone elses blog and copied it

What we have here are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you read for school, underline the ones you started but didn't finish (or are on the shelf waiting for a free week). I'm assuming they don't mean underline those ones you've always meant to go out and get a copy of...

Also of course, I could bold more if they let you do it for watching the movie :)


Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales - maybe, i went through a classics stage and this might have been read all the way through
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon (reviewed, new,for Baltimore Sun!)
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed

sleepy, cold-ridden, sore knees and needles

I have a cold...I got it thursday. It didn't stop me climbing Castle hill on Saturday (hence the sore knees that make me clutch the stair rail for grim death while going up). Nor did it stop me shopping for cool t-shirts and sale priced dresses $40 down from $160 also on saturday. Of course with all that I'm now tired. Oh, the needle is due to the flu-vax i got today. Apparently having a cold doesn't stop you from having the needle (you need a fever to stop you...or the first stages of pregnancy, neither of which I have).
Tomorrow I will be supervising an exam from 8am and then toddling off to get some blood sucked for serology -stage two to confirm I have an atypical infection of the lungs - possibly not related to the cold. After that I go on antibiotics

Hmm, its almost like this is my old lady outlet for telling people whats wrong with me. Never ask me how I am to my face. You'll never get away.

champagne tastes

I have discovered the china I would collect if I collected china. I even looked it up online to find out how much it cost..
Since I could buy a new computer for less than the price of a single piece, maybe I won't be doing any collecting...However, if any of my long time fans out there are looking for a gifty for me, my favourite pieces from the 2008 collection are ADORNMENT and FLEUR-DE-LUCE

who has time to blog?

Not me.

day 10 -britain again

This was a relatively short day. I realised I'd been pounding pavements and cobblestones for at least 8 hours a day each day. My feet were starting to hurt. I visited the Jorvik centre (which had a sit down train like tour, Barley hall - which was a hands on museum - I put my butt on seats to read up on the rooms and went to the train museum to stroll around and eat dinner. They have an inside picnic area.
For lunch I had pork and crackling sandwich & viennese truffles from Thorntons chocolates for dessert. This is my most favourite chocolate of all time - or almost - they don't make the dark chocolate one anymore :(
There were some heavy downpours that i missed by being indoors during all of them. I did walk home in drizzle though (5:30pm)

one of the royal carriages - through a window

Jorvik centre. apparently they found fossilized human faeces while digging for viking archeology

these passageways are normal - not just a "didn't join the buildings" they are designed for foot passage

Barley hall...seats mmm

The river had risen somewhat - no sitting for me

The ruins of one of the church/monastery's that had been sacked. Probably by Henry the eighth - though I don't quite recall

I'm not the only one!

It's nice to see someone else had the same response to seeing the Mona Lisa as I did. I'd also like to complain about the 50 other tourists gathered round desperately trying to take photos in spite of the conditions & spoiling my already terrible view.

LOTRO is cheaper

I just installed a piece of equipment that cost the school over $18000. Its a spectrophotometer about half the size of a slimline computer. While browsing through the functions I found a section entitled "games" I then played tetris on this machine for 5 minutes. I resisted sudoku.

I would say that this was the most expensive computer game I've ever played, but I remember playing patience on an atomic absorbtion spectrophotometer that cost the company I worked for over $20000 at least ten years ago. At least that machine had the excuse of being attached to a windows based computer. The new one is a little unit with it's own screen and numeric keyboard.

a real academic

On Monday my business cards arrived. This morning I got a rejection letter for the first paper that I wrote myself. I am now a real academic.
It's one of those "deal with the critiques and you're welcome to resubmit" rejections. Since the critiques were mainly about things I thought were weaknesses in the paper, I'm happy to work on them - but it may take some time :P
I'm choosing to see it as a sign that my instincts about what makes an acceptable paper may actually be right. I submitted because the lab time I had to do this work was over, so I worked with what I had found. Must find more lab time (I do have some funds to do it in).

havent blogged in a while

I've been designing new curriculum (ok, sitting in the room and asking questions while other people design curriculum), writing lectures and pracs - new subject...I'm writing bird lectures and bee lectures and designing a project for a student to do. So lots of things I've never done before. I just came back from holidays and got sick enough to stay in bed for 4 days, then I came back to work, while still convalescing and so I'm quite tired. Things are only going to get busier, so i really should get back on anyway. But those are all my excuses.

I still have to finish the Britain holiday stuff on my blog and I've since been on another holiday. Even my recreation is getting on top of me.

BTW, while looking for a journal article to use as a statistics example for vet students, I came across a paper on measuring dog flatulence on different soy based diets....soooo tempted to use this one.

Shades of British travel

I was on Holidays in Kentucky and Sydney for a week and got home today. My flight from Sydney was delayed due to technical difficulties, resulting in a new plane, a missed connection in Brisbane and my luggage has not arrived with me. They may get it to me tonight some time...I hope.
Anyone want to fly with me ?

so cold

I am training for a trip to the coldest part of NSW in a couple of weeks by doing a walk in Freezer clean up. I'm spending about 2 hours a day in there. My nose goes numb, my fingers go numb, the cold seems through my shoes. And boy, is there a lot of old rubbish in there. I'll probably end up with a cold from the rapid fluctuations in temperature.

back to the Britain trip - day 9

Yup, frightened of spiral staircases. After doing some sales shopping at The Edinburgh Woolen Mill, I went for a hike around Clifford Castle. I felt terrified and dizzy on the spiral staircases. It didn't help that Clifford Castle was built on a large mound of earth that couldn't support the weight of the walls properly. This meant that one wall slumped sideways (big crack in wall) and the spiral staircases, as well as being spiral, are on an angle. The mound of dirt had been put there for an earlier fort and the stone castle walls were an upgrade if I remember rightly. Clifford Castle was also the site of a massacre of Jews during a dark period in York History. There is a memorial to it at the front of the castle. This was one of the periods that the castle burned down (only the stone walls remain).
After this i went to the merchant adventurers hall. This is an impressive example of how the earth build to bury stuff. the hall which was used at one point as a hospice, is much lower than the gardens outside - they have flooding issues and have had for hundreds of years. But I think it used to be much higher up. The gardens just got higher over time. I also had coffee in the oldest Coffee house in York (very tall skinny cafe restaurant now, about 3 or 4 floors and the staircase was not quite spiral)
Next on my quest to do everything was, in order; Visit to the treasurers house, the railway museum and high tea at Betty's - very posh & I have photos (i am such a tourist). After that I did a 2 hour walking tour. I got home at 9pm and planned the next day for maximum efficiency. My feet were very sore, but the skies had been lovely and blue so I took advantage of it.

Clifford Castle spiral staircase

Merchant Adventurers Guild

High tea

Roman fort tower wall (with more recent wall - medieval - on top)

christmas presents

This morning when I got in, I had an email from GenBank informing me my sequence would be released to the public on the 25th of December. How's that for a christmas present, my first sequence data. :)
Then after I had coffee, I had another email informing me I now had access to an account code for discretionary spending (read research and conferences and business cards etc).
Of course, this is money I should have had access to in August, and the statement online says it is 2007 money (I get more next year & this should roll over) and since it arrived today, on the last day of work, after all the supply businesses, ordering system and printery has closed, I can't spend any of it till next year anyway.
However, I was expecting to still be fighting for access to the money in six months.
I wonder if I can get business cards printed before I get to Sydney in January?

here tis...or at least the close up

I haven't found a full shot I like yet...I may go with the official one on the stage recieving the certificate. I look insufferably smug in it though.

three days and counting

I got my PhD gown yesterday. I've tried it on - its very heavy and the sleeves drop to mid-calf level. Now I have to buy an outfit to go under it

floppy hats away!

I will definitely be going to the graduation ceremony on the 15th December 2007. I will definitely be wearing a blue floppy hat :)
I was talking to someone yesterday who will be graduating at the next graduation in april 2008. She also wants to wear the blue floppy hat & claims a large part of doing the PhD was to wear the hat. It's not just me who did my PhD so I could play dress-ups. Anyone else do the time to wear the gown?

my head hurts

I finally had time to do some admin stuff, sent it away and both lots came back with: please update/change certain things. None of these fixes are easy, I'm not sure if they are relevant or correct either, so I'll have to think about it, ascertain the validity of the change and then either spend much time doing the changes or penning a coherent reply explaining why I think I shouldn't do changes. I also have an eyestrain headache from all the reading I've been doing, without glasses, bad jenny.

Anyone else have issues wearing glasses while lying down to read? I don't like the way they squish and move when I roll onto my side. Maybe I need contacts.

not playing, reading

My temporary surge of energy has gone...once again i have no enthusiasm for anything that requires thought. There sits LOTRO, all paid up and all I want to do is reread some of my old favourite novels. I have decided this is because I know I will enjoy them without having to invest any mental energy in them. Aha! I'm brain tired. Maybe its the post PhD brain shut-down. My brain has said "you don't need me any more" and gone for a walk...it may be some time.

Day 8

BTW my parents came home today from their Scotland trip. Their flights home were apparently quite lovely. A combination of flying Qantas and much prayer.

On the 8th day of my Scotland trip,
I went to castle Howard;
1.5hr bus trip from york
8 pound 80p return
long walks on the grounds
tame peacocks everywhere!
a really cool fountain
roman statues and mosaics
Gainsborough's on the wall
and some weslydale cheese

I know it doesn't scan...but I would have had to make something up for it to fit.
BTW they were also filming the new version of brideshead revisited there (same place the first one was filmed).

The banks of the river Ouze were overflowing on this day too...I couldn't walk the paths.

wearing a floppy hat

I am 99% sure I will be "presenting" at the graduation ceremony in December. This is what you do if the PhD has already been conferred but you want to attend the ceremony in full gear and shake somebody's hand. I've always said I did the PhD so I could wear a blue velvet floppy hat...so I'm not missing out on it. I've sent in my paperwork. Now to keep a finger on the pulse so it doesn't get lost.

quicker than NaNoWriMo

This is more my style of writing...and it takes less time

Miss Cranky Pants

I'm tired, so tired. Every time someone says something I disagree with, I get snappy. Partly because I'm too tired to think rationally about my arguments. Today at lunch we had a discussion about Dawkins "the god delusion" and "is there any proof of god". I tried to point them just in the direction of Marco's blog and Dr Clams' blog directly, but no-one seemed that interested in actually reading something someone else had written that I found interesting and relevant. They just wanted my opinion...and I'm tired, cranky and not able to string two thoughts together.
I also get cranky when my argument for not reading something (which is as follows) "I've read for and against reviews that indicate I won't enjoy it and I have limited time and very limited energy for things I know I won't enjoy, so i choose not to read them" is answered by "you can't make a judgement without reading the book".

Yes actually, I can. And its something we all do every day when making choices about what we believe or decisions we are going to make. In an information age, it is not possible to examine every piece of information about every factor in our lives before making choices. Our time is not infinite. Even in science we usually start with reviews to get a big picture before deciding on how much detail to examine. And as Marco said "I'm not Dawkins target audience"

Ooh, that vent felt gooood.

the rest of the day seven pics

York Baptist Church


The view from the wheel


me on the wall - the slightly pained look is me trying to smile while figuring out whether I have the camera far enough away and pointed in the right direction


a view of the wall


remains of a roman tower from the original roman fort as viewed from the wall

heh

Middle ages tech support

Some day people may look at computer training videos and find them just as rediculous

Day seven: sunday

I went to church this morning at York Baptist. Good service and the light streamed in through coloured glass windows. Afterwards I rode the Yorkshire wheel and then walked the walls. There was a brief sunshower so I pulled out my umbrella. A gust of wind promptly broke it. Then the sun came out again. After the walls I went to Bettys, hoping for a late lunch, but it was very, very full. So I went to Marks and spencers and shopped for a while. when I came out, the roads weren't packed and were very wet so there was either a rainstorm or a flash flood to clear the streets while I'd been in Marks & sparks. Still trying to find a meal, I was caught in another rainstorm and took shelter in the roman museum. I finally had coffee and a giant cookie at Starbucks. I do believe it was the first starbucks coffee of my life. Nice but no better than Gloria Jeans.
After this, I climbed the minster tower (276 steps). I also found out I have developed a fear of spiral staircases. Going up was scary as I was thinking the whole way that I'd have to come down again and there was no hand rail at some points. There were times going down that I sat on the stairs and used hands, feet and butt to work my way down. I never used to be afraid of spiral staircases. perhaps I'm developing a sense of my own mortality (or morality as one of my students wrote).
Dinner was a leek and cheese pasty with an apple and rasberry pasty for dessert. I walked home in rain so heavy that in spite of a roughly fixed umbrella, my shoes squelched and my jeans were wet to the knee. Thunder and lightning even!
Much walking today. There'll be pics once blogger fixes the glitch.

climbing the minster - in sheer terror

The view from the top of the minster

marking pracs

is a tedious job, but every now and then someone brightens up your day.

Person 1
When writing about the result of a disease: morbidity and morality (mortality)
person 2
when writing about insect cell lines: Incest cell line

all in one afternoon

broadband

I have broadband at home...finally. I had it about 5 days before being sucked into playing LOTRO.
Its also handy for looking things up quickly on the net. before it was quicker to pull out a reference book and flip though it (or go out to Uni). I have calculated my download speed is now 50x what it was before.

Day 6: saturday the 30th of June

Back to the trip - its been so long now, I'm glad i kept a diary.
Saturday was drizzly on and off and I did a lot of walking.
Went to King Richard III museum at Monk gate and then got a quick personal tour of St Marys hospital Ruins (by a tour guide who was waiting for his tour group to turn up). The hospital has roman sarcophagi just sitting around - they were dug up when the railway station was upgraded and they were moved to the ruins since there was space there. Anyone could just wander in and take one...assuming they had superhero strength and could disguise the 6 foot sarcophagus under their coat.
Then I went on a 2 1/2 hour walking tour of the city walk which was entertaining and informative. I ate lunch and took a river cruise (freezing and drizzling but the next day the river cruises were shut down because the river rose so much, so its good i went when I did). I went to the Yorkshire museum to get out of the cold and then to the model train museum. Then I had coffee at the train station and walked to betty's where i had carrot and coriander soup, rasberry lemonade and a marzipan cake in the shape of a cabbage. Thoroughly fed and damp, i went back to my B&B, had a hot shower and washed all my dirty clothes by stomping on them in the shower and squeezing them out. They dried remarkably quickly when hung in the cupboard.

while writing the last book..

Robert Jordan has apparently died while still writing book 12 (the final book) of the wheel of time series. I gave up at book 8 when the dangling plot threads and no end in sight got too much for me.

at some point you just go out the other side

and all the stress goes away. You develop the mindset that there are just some things that aren't going to get done before you die and you readjust your world view. Or I could have just had that nervous breakdown.

I'm waiting for my computer to number crunch through two lots of data so I have time to write this.

I'm going to buy some hardware for broadband and then wire it up so i know I have what i need, then I'm signing up. I'd hate to sign up and then waste the first month 'cause my phone lines won't permit a line filter to plug in (current status) and I didn't have time to replace them.

To do at work today;
seminar at 2pm
update a contig based on work i did on it at the weekend
finish about 1/2 of the stuff on my things to do for Wednesday - the rest will have to wait for tomorrow, along with the things to do for today.

oops, one job done - I can take the USB stick and do something on another computer now...

and now for the middle

Since burning the candle at both ends just isn't getting me there.
I am soo sleepy. Amanda and Chris are up, so I've been taking what opportunities I can to spend some time with them. I'm also spending my Saturdays number crunching sequencing data into the right format for submission to BLAST (the online DNA database). Saturday because i'm not getting it done through the week due to huge workloads.
Saturday night A&C&kids&me went to the pictures & for dessert to Lukabean. Sunday was my nephews birthday, so I had to make an appearance. On Monday I rejoined the Gem club and spent the night there as I have some rings to make for my sister-in-law before my parents leave to visit in 2 weeks. On Tuesday I did computer stuff for my parents for when they leave. On Wednesday I went out to mini-golf to have a game with some friends (one of whom is leaving for thailand) - we'll miss you Kirryn. Tonight I'm going to the strand for a barbeque with A&C&kids. Tomorrow I'm getting a quote on floor sanding for when the parents are away. Saturday I'll be number crunching again, followed by a bbq birthday party for the other nephew.
I still need to organise broadband (bought the modem and card, chose the company -maybe). Also need to write a game for next weekend.

At some point I'll have a nervous breakdown and it will all stop.

back to the good stuff: aka day 5

I slept in on Friday the 29th (since breakfast wasn't till 8:30am) and when I woke, the niggling headache I've had for months was gone. This came back during the travel stress. My back still ached from the luggage carrying, but not too badly. I bought a Yorkpass and caught the sightseeing bus to look at the town. I went to York castle museum - can take hours to get through, The york dungeon - very commercial, could have been anywhere, the micklegate museum, the regimental museum, the York Minster undercroft & then to evensong - good acoustics + mitres, incense and robes. I had a wild boar burger and fat rascal for lunch, and went to the golden fleese (oldest pub in york) for dinner. It was built before 1503 and all the floors and walls slope.
Then I went back to my B7B...exhausted. Did I mention the B&B had carpet in the bathroom?

Just the bad stuff part 2

So there I was, in Germany, with no euros, no phone card (by the way I tried about 5 methods to phone out from the airport and the only one that worked ended up costing me Au$70..twice! and I could only do this because I had visa), only a grade eight understanding of the language...and the english translation of things in writing was limited, though most people spoke english. Fortunately while I was at the hotel, I'd managed to find out that if I could get a piece of paper from Flybe which stated the reason that I missed my flight was technical - eg plane not flyable, my insurance would pay for me to buy another ticket, on another airline. Just in an aside - Flybe still hasn't sent me this information. So while at the airport, waiting for China airlines to open their ticket gate, I found an agent to see if there was any other way back to Australia. I'd also got my parents to contact my travel agent - she cancelled my domestic connection so I wouldn't lose the money and could get her to rebook once I got back in Australia, but she couldn't find a seat for me.

Yes! If I wanted to pay Au$5000 and fly to Korea on Korean airlines and then to Australia on some airline I'd never heard of. Given the cost I thought I'd give it a miss unless the Flybe paperwork came through.

As it happened, as the gate opened, I rocked up to the ticketing desk and got an immediate seat...the problem was apparently the next leg which was overbooked by 4 people. The flight after that was overbooked by so many people I had not a hope of ever getting on it. They did give me a waitlist boarding pass for the next leg - normal boarding pass with no seat allocated (this came in handy later on).

Ah well, there's me, stressed, stomach churning, trying to make a phone call to let my also worried family know I was at least getting closer to Australia, tired but unable to sleep and getting on a 15 hour flight to Taipei in a plane which was full, cramped and too dry to sleep. I kept waking up coughing and thinking I didn't have enough air. I had very little appetite either, though I ate a bit of my meal.

When I went through security they took me to one side and made me pull out all my camera gear. They swabbed this for explosives. I really didn't care at this point.

At Taipei I went to the China Airlines transit counter. I have to say they were very, very professional, calm and tried all sorts of things. I did feel looked after. They made sure my luggage was identified and held in their hold until they knew I would be getting on a plane, they got me a room in a hotel at the airport, told me how to get there, assured me my waitlist boarding pass would get me through the multiple security checks and told me where and when to come back to the desk. They also assured me they would make sure the next shift knew exactly what was going on.

I had a nap in my room - day rates in the airport hotel were really cheap and the room was large and clean. The whole thing however got me so stressed by this time that I was gagging with nausea. I really, really, really do not like being totally dependant on other people when I travel. I like to at least be in a position where i can decide when to go to the airport, what I will do, choose my own options, etc etc.
The hotel also sold phone cards where you could talk to Britain for 5 mintes for about Au$4. cf Au$70 from Frankfurt!

I ended up buying a vege-subway and eating a few bites. It was the mildest thing I could find & I thought some of my nausea might be because I hadn't eaten. I had huge plans of eating Shibu-Shibu in Taipei, trying all the local foods in the airport and strolling all the shops. Unlike Frankfurt, Taipei has an interesting airport. It even has a museum. I felt too depressed and sick to do any of it.

I went back to the transit desk at about 7pm and checked in. The new shift were just as professional but told me that couldn't tell me whether I'd have a seat till the check-in closed at 8:30pm. They made sure that the check-in supervisor knew about me when check-in opened. Then they told me that the lines at check-in were so long, it might take longer before check-in could close....great, just what you want to hear at this point. I even suggested that if it was possible to bump me up to business class, I'd be willing to pay the hundreds of dollars more...the guy took my ticket & I think he was going to find out. While I was waiting, I slowly ate the rest of my sub - it took me over an hour.

At 8:55pm he handed me a boarding pass (economy - I assume that he was waiting to see if I could get on without paying extra before he offered me the option) and told me he'd ensured my luggage was put on the plane. Then I ran from terminal 1 to the skyrail, through terminal 2 and lined up for security, then ran through terminal 2 to the gate. I got there as they were saying "any further passengers for flight XYZ should now board the plane."

The flight to Australia was just as painful as the others and I still couldn't eat. When I got to Australia and though customs and quarantine, I rang my agent, told her I was now in Sydney instead of Brisbane (did I mention the plane went to different parts of Australia on alternate days?) and asked her to get me a ticket home and to charge any excess to visa...lovely, lovely plastic.

I caught the bus to the domestic terminal, picked up my boarding pass from the ticketing desk (at least I didn't have to queue this time) and went through security to the main area.

I still wasn't hungry - even the chocolates and Krispy Creme donuts left me cold. I did buy Freakonomics to distract me and I had a couple of naps in quiet corners while waiting for my....wait for it....delayed flight.

Yes, there was fog in Melbourne that morning that had caused rolling delays. My flight left 2 and a 1/2 hours later than it should have. Fortunately my connection in Brisbane had a gap of 3 and 1/2 hours so i still had an hour to kill when I got there. I killed it by staring, shell shocked, at the wall.

I must say, both my domestic quantas flights had about 15cm more leg room than any of the international flights...in each case i was asleep before the plane had levelled off. The first flight I woke as my ears popped painfully, the second flight I woke just after dinner had been served...which I finally had an appetite for.

I have travelled to Britain 3 times. The first two times I had one day of jetlag when I got home...this time I had a week of jetlag and was still shaking it off when I got back to work. I blame extended flights, anxiety and an inability to eat or sleep sensibly on the way.

Next time, Qantas all the way!

just the bad stuff

For those who can't wait for me to go through all the good parts of my holiday before they find out the bad stuff;
here it is

There were floods in Yorkshire, so I went to York. The only bad part here was that every day started wet and ended dry or vice versa. Oh, that and the river rose and flooded the walking path along side it so I couldn't stroll along it.

When I got back to Scotland everything was hunky dory. Actually the only bad part in Scotland was when I went to Fort William with the intend of going on a seal cruise when I got there. The tourist place gave me a map and when I said, "so I go to the pier to get on the cruise?" they said yes....the only pier on the map was a commercial one at the other end of town, across the busy road, with big "no access" signs on it...and was the wrong one. By the time I'd figured this out, found a local to point out where I should go and got back there...100m in the other direction from the tourist centre...it was too late. I watched the boat set off as I stood at the ticket gate.

Things started to get curly when I got to my hotel at the airport...or rather, got off the train, failed miserably to find a courtesy coach and walked with all my luggage in the increasing drizzle to the hotel i could see in the distance.

The hotel had a sign up saying get to the airport terminal 30 minutes earlier than you planned. Also, there was no courtesy coach to my terminal anymore as the police had road blocks up after the bombing attempt. This meant I got up at 3am and walked with all my luggage, the 400m to the terminal. And then they didn't open check-in till 1/2 an hour after i got there.

All was going well and the call to go to the gate was fine...then just as we were about to go through, they stopped us as the plane had been found to be un-flyable. It took them 45 minutes to find another plane, decamp all oour luggage and the in-flight service stuff and reload. Then they put us on board and told us that it would be another 45 minutes till they could take off. At this point I realised i would miss my connection....and I did...by about 15 minutes.

They gave me a handwritten note to go to transit services in Frankfurt & my luggage was supposed to keep going without me. I don't know what I would have done if you need a visa to go through passport control as this was my only option. If I'd arrived in time I could have nipped up the stairs and gone straight to the next gate.

With my shiny entry stamp in my passport, I found that my luggage hadn't gone through and if I hadn't checked, I would have left it behind in Frankfurt. I then went to the info desk and said "please do any of you speak english". One guy popped up "yes , goodmorning, goodevening, goodbye" Then he asked "how can I help you?" Apparently the directions the plane had given me were wrong, but he put me straight and I circled a desk twice before deciding that I would just talk to the person near the FlyBe sign...who was the right person.

Result:
China Air won't let you fly another airline at their expense to catch up to your next connection, so i lost that too
They only fly one plane a day and all the future flights were fully booked so I had to waitlist.
the lady said I could be there for a week
Flybe put me up in a hotel in the middle of nowhere (which if I'd had to pay for it would have cost me over Au$300). - I had no assurances that they would continue to look after me if I couldn't catch the next plane.

This meant there was nothing to do - though by this time I was so stressed I just wanted to curl up in a ball. I had three meals at the hotel, the first two weren't anything to sneeze at and by the third (breakfast) I was so wired I couldn't swallow solid food...and it was really nice too.

I went back to the airport and hung around waiting for the check-in to open....stay tuned for more.

the boy stood on the burning deck

We went out to sizzlers last night and celebrated my mothers 69th birthday. She'd previously had a surprise morning tea where all the ladies said "Happy 70th birthday" Apparently it was hysterically funny that they'd got it wrong. Much saying of "70" instead of "cheese" for the photos.

There were 8 of us at Sizzlers and we got to quoting the poetry we remembered learning at school. No-one could remember the whole poem until one of my uncles started quoting a pre shakespearian poem about the death of caesar (I think). 'The boy stood on the burning deck' shone out as the only poem anyone had learnt where only the first line was remembered. I blame all the variations that generations of students have made.

Infectious ties

http://www.5clickstore.com/iawareables/

how cool is that!

Aaaaarrrggghhh!!!!

I need to have a primal scream. I was pottering along thinking "only got one small job done today. I'm so far behind -mild angst, mild angst" when something associated flared up that I got all upset about & then when I was upset, was told "its not a big issue"...well it is to me, it has consequences that affect me. Then I was told "don't attack me, its easy to fix" What, now I'm not allowed to say something isn't working, in an upset tone, when I'm upset...note I don't recall saying "you're not working" I was upset about a system, not an individual. Way to get me even more uptight, the whole inference of "You're unreasonable because you're doing a personal attack"...which I wasn't.
Sigh. It was probably all communication breakdown & misunderstanding each others approaches to a conversation. I'm still all adrenalined up though.

day 4

After days of the airline saying that the courier had the luggage and the courier saying that It was on their paperwork as not confirmed yet, I rang the airline and they were alarmed and actually tracked down the luggage. Apparently the courier hadn't got to the luggage pick up on time and the luggage was swooped on by customs (who put it in their lockup - after taking off all my tamper-tags I think). They promised it would arrive tomorrow. This was a problem as I was heading off to York an hour after my conversation but I didn't want to change addresses as I'd had enough trouble getting it to Falkirk, let alone heading it back south again. So I headed to York for a week with no luggage and decided to buy what I needed there and just have my luggage arrive at Ruths house whenever it did.
I got on a train at Falkirk, got off at edinburgh and found that my connection south was an hour late due to a problem on the line. Roamed around the station and got another train South which was actually quicker :) Arrived at York and walked to my accomodation. At this point I was glad I didn't have all my luggage with me. The room was small but well appointed and I went out to do a night tour (in the daylight - dark at 11pm) before having a well deserved sleep.

day 3

I spent day 3 running around after my luggage. I decided I needed some clothes, like underwear, something to sleep in and something to wear during the day. The luggage didn't arrive and I sent an email to complain. My brother Doug cooked salmon for dinner and took me off clothes shopping in the evening. Apparently you don't wear thongs on your feet in Britain, so saying "I need a pair of thongs" while standing in the underwear department beside your brother, will embarrass him greatly.

Day 2

I spent today mainly at Ruths place waiting for the luggage that they said would arrive...and didn't. I also did some phoning up and trying to check out insurance...no response. I wasn't really all that concerned as I was promised that it would arrive by tomorrow at the latest and the jetlag dulled any anxiety. I was just happy to be where I was supposed to be. Scotland is lovely by the way.

day 1

This started out with all the angst of...will qantas book my luggage all the way through to Manchester (given its a domestic flight and I'm not flying internationally with them)?...apparently they will. This was followed by - I'm going to be later to check-in than I should be because the train was a little late - and then; Where is check in? I'm wandering round the international check-in terminal looking for china airlines. Oh, yes, there it is, hidden round the side, facing the wall, where the hundreds of chinese are lining up - something of a giveaway really. I lined up for an hour and a half. By the time I got my boarding passes, the plane was supposed to have left and I still hadn't gone through emigration.

This however, went smoothly. I had a quick look for the duty free reclaim centre to reclaim the GST on my new camera and it wasn't where it was on the map. I had given up and then found it right next to the gate I was leaving through.

The first flight was cramped. my knees touched the seat in front for over eight hours. It was also cold and very dry and the air felt thin. Then I waited in Taipei for over six hours. The money change offices were closed and there was only one place to eat. Fortunately I had visa. Two people I met on the plane weren't so fortunate so they gave me aussie cash and I bought them dinner.


my dinner

The next plane was not so cramped and I landed in Frankfurt ok. Frankfurt has virtually nothing there to keep you entertained. I also couldn't find out what gate to go to to get my boarding pass for the next leg until an hour before the plane left. This was also when I found out that I wasn't going to fly british airways as my ticket said, but rather Flybe (a budget version with a different flight number). There was also very little assistance in Frankfurt to find this out. It took me 1/2 an hour just to get to the gate to get a boarding pass. Theres masses of security at the international airports now. I got on, got to manchester, and found out that my luggage didn't.

So with no luggage, I got on my first train to Falkirk. At my first changeover, I found that my next train was delayed by 1.5hrs due to flooding in Yorkshire and thus had to catch my third connection quite late. I finally got into Shieldhill (the village I was staying in near Falkirk) at about 9pm...sans any changes of clothes. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment.

Home on a wing and a prayer...more prayer than wing

My transport did everything but crash. I will write more when I get over the shock. Lets just say I spent most of my 4 days of travel home praying and not eating in spite of the plethora of interesting food available. It made the 5 days with no luggage at the beginning of my trip seem trivial. To those planning on travelling - always fly qantas...the whole way! And yes Dave, I did get out before the Gloustershire floods (though the Yorkshire ones did cause me travel delays). Apart from the drizzling weather and flooding of the River Ousse covering the walking path alongside it, the Yorkshire floods didn't affect York where I spent the week just after the flood peak.

The trip itself was great. The travel could be causing me post traumatic stress.

Tv to go

Just before I head overseas, it looks like a bunch of TV things I'm going to want to watch will be on. Torchwood, Dr Who, other interesting new shows I can't remember the names of, all the things I currently want to watch. I've decided I won't program my VCR because I'll run out of tape (even on long play) by week 2.5, plus some of these shows change start times from week to week. Instead, I'll show my mum how to record on my VCR and leave a list of times, channels and programs. Hopefully she'll remember most of the time.

Things I have eaten covered in chocolate

Why? Because I can.

licorice
red licorice
cherries
strawberries
melon (of various kinds)
cheese
all your usual chocolate bar fillings
coffee beans
red claw (Cherax quadricarinatus)
hmm, I know theres more, but I can't think of them at the moment

Things I am yet to try
ants
carrots
...you know, this list could go on for some time.

pouring with rain

Hmm. I think that some of you might think I'm in the UK already. Not so much - thats next week, I leave here on the 24th June and come back on the 20th July. However, it is pouring like I'm in the UK and I have a runny nose and sore throat. I'm aiming to get rid of that just in time to get somebody elses germs on the plane.