Rain

Rain
Originally uploaded by bartlebee

It's stormy in Melbourne today. It started with a staccato of big, loud drops around 4:30am. Since about noon, we've had squalls of thunder with rain that bounces knee high and dark threatening skies. I'm in heaven, as are all the birds and trees and gardens.

I'm working from home today and honestly not getting much of anything done. Last week I helped install some artificial reefs that a couple of my lab-mates are using. They are composed of milk crates filled with bricks and concrete pavers, and each one weighs 40kg (that's 88lb for the metrically challenged, and damned heavy for the rest of you). Two days of lifting those between loading dock and trailer, trailer and dolly, dolly and boat, and then moving them around on the sea floor understandably knocked me out. On Sunday I helped to facilitate a fish count for a local community group and it was the first time I'd been snorkelling in about six months. It was also the first time I'd ever ducked under breaking waves (albeit not on purpose) with a mask on. Watching the froth curve above and over me was beautiful. The snorkelling site was two hours from our house and the driving in excessive heat without a working a/c probably contributed to the not-so-lovely evening migraine I developed. It was hot last night, too, which meant that I didn't sleep all that well. All of this adds up to me "working" from home today.

Last week, Z and I took Monday off to visit the town of Daylesford, about a couple of hours north of the city. It's main claim to fame is natural mineral springs, which we managed to find despite the shoddiness of my ten-year-old memories. It's really bizarre to drink fizzy water out of a tap out of the ground. After lunching at an awesome bakery (best bread ever) we wandered around the convent gallery, admiring Dalis and Chagalls and laughing at Goddess-mandala thingies. The best part of the day, however, was lying on a patch of grass in the sun overlooking the lake, listening to kookaburras and repeating, "It's Monday and I'm not at work!"

In other news I had a whole afternoon of optimism about my project after a particularly good meeting with my supervisor. Now that's over and I'm back to lightly worried. This weather, while great for garden and wildlife, turns the ocean at my study sites into a frothing mess.

Speaking of frothing mess (or lack thereof) Hed and Eather sent us cans of pumpkin for Thanksgiving. Hooray! This year it won't take three days to make pumpkin pie! Hooray!

pumpkin
Originally uploaded by bartlebee

Pics

I've posted photos from my trip to Pt. Campbell to Flickr. I'm also constantly expanding my collection of Melbourne photos. Enjoy!

Day-tah!

I just got back from my second trip of the week to Pt Campbell, a small town on the coast about 3.5 hours SW of Melbourne. This week isn't over for me and I've already driven 1000km. Wheee! Pt Campbell is famous for the Twelve Apostles, of which Z and I saw about three on our trip to Apollo Bay earlier this year. The first visit of the week was to meet some local contacts to talk about my project. Meeting the contacts lead to today's trip out on a boat to get the first honest-to-god data point of my project. Hooray! Not only did I get to drop off my camera (and find it again) but I also got a free tour of the 12 Apostles with a group of American tourists who, as best I can gather, were on a National Geographic photography outing of some sort. They all appeared to be retirees except for one guy from South Carolina who looked like he was in his 20's. Which one of these things is not like the others? You're correct! It's the young guy who chose the wrong holiday.

Allow me to repeat the brilliant news de jour: I have data (or day-tah! depending on how sleep deprived you/I am). Turning the corner into data collection is a huge relief; I'm over the anticipatory hump of dread in which I was mired last month. (This is what sleep deprivation does to my metaphors: I've got corners and humps and now swamps! Hee!) Today felt a little bit like cheating; it was just so easy. It's the part where I have to organize divers and gear and get into the water myself that's most of the headache. Even the getting up at 4am was - well, let me be honest: that part sucked. But hey, I get to go to bed at 8:30 with dignity - whatever dignity I have left anyway. I'll post pictures later this weekend.

Prom

I am back from the Prom, but instead returning with a droopy corsage and hickies, I have aching legs and some good photos. There were echidnas and kookaburras and rosellas and wildflowers and swamp wallabies and emus galore.

On Wednesday night, my lab-mate Mal unfortunately hit a wombat, and by the time he had pulled a U-ey to check its status, its pouch young was running around the road in a panic. He wrapped it in a towel and together we took it to the ranger on duty. As sad as the situation was, it was pretty awesome to hold a 20cm long wombat, even if she was hissing furiously at us.

On Thursday, Mal and I took a three-hour hike around (read: up, down, up, down, up, down) a couple of rocky promontories looking for intertidal sites for his research. To get to the headland required crossing a crotch-deep river that, on our return, had dropped to ankle deep (poor tidal timing on our part). On Friday morning, we did a shore dive and I remembered how much I love boats. Again, we were looking for a site for Mal to anchor some equipment, but the bay we were diving in was really shallow so it took us half our tanks to get below 10m. After looking at some fish (which I'm getting better at IDing), I was too close to empty to continue on and so popped up to the surface only to discover that the beach had become a far off distant suggestion of sand. It was a very long swim back in. And on Friday afternoon, we were back at the headland boulder scramble but this time with steep scrubby hillsides to clamber over too. I would feel fit and strong if only my legs didn't ache so much.

It's pretty great to be home, sleeping with a warm husband in a comfy bed. I even got to sleep in this morning, all the way to 7:30am, which is a lot if you consider that I've been waking up at 5.

On

It has begun. It started on Monday the 8^th of October, a date to be remembered. That was the week I got home every night after 7:00pm and spent every day too busy to eat or check e-mail or make a phone call. Last week was the same and it culminated in some seriously hard core field work and the chance to trial my BRUV frame for the first time. The frame itself worked brilliantly, though I had some technical difficulties with the camera. It looks a bit like a small tank complete with gun turret, earning itself the obvious name The Tank, though the nickname I like best is the Dalek. I’ve been home for a couple of days and head out again tomorrow to do more fieldwork down at Wilsons Promontory. I think I will be around the week after, hopefully doing day trips though there may be an overnight or two in there somewhere. The following week, I’m off down the coast in the other direction to Pt Campbell for a few days. And this is what it will be like until May 2008. I was feeling really warn out until about Friday afternoon when we loaded up to the boat, wriggled into still-damp wet suits and headed out to catch a slack tide. The conditions were some of the best I have ever seen – on the surface, that is. There were ripples instead of waves and it was sunny and warm. As we motored out I got a glimpse of how enviable this life I lead is – how wonderful it is to be on a boat instead of in front of a desk in a cube in an office in a tall building full of desks and cubes and offices. It has recharged me and has me almost looking forward to this field season. Sure, I’ll be tired. Sure, there will be all sorts of technical difficulties and mechanical troubles and tired arms and legs and backs. But I’ll be out in the sun, swimming with the fishes. It sure doesn’t suck.

Hazzah!

My BRUV* frame is done! Done! Done! Done! After weeks of planning and two full weeks in the workshop, I can report success. This week I've felt like a kid who failed shop class and was assigned to a summer intensive; I've been in with the tools from 9:30am to 7:00pm for four days and haven't turned on my computer in three. My back aches, my hands ache, my feet ache, my legs ache. But it's done! And now, it's the weekend and I can relax. Coz the frame is built!

As you can probably guess, I've been pretty wiped out this week, as the following anecdote will cleverly illustrate. On my way into Uni this morning, I started digging through my bag for my keys. They weren't in the usual pocket, or in any of the other places they could be. Damn, I thought, I've left them at home. So I dug out my phone to call Z to make sure that I hadn't dropped them on the tram. As I was dialling I looked down at my hands and discovered my keys sitting there. That's right: I'd been holding them the whole time. I almost wet my pants I was laughing so hard!

And then I went and wielded power tools. Probably not a brilliant move as my scratched and beaten hands will attest.

Did I mention it's done??? I'll take pictures at some point so you have a better idea of what the hell I'm talking about. Then you can Ooh and Aah appropriately in the comments.

But until then, I think I'll have another glass of wine, thank you very much.


(*BRUV: Baited Remote Underwater Video.)

Chicken Little with a Sting

I spent all weekend gardening. Out the back, we now have tomatoes and strawberries growing, and a herb garden that includes mint, rosemary, thyme, basil, coriander (cilantro), and parsley. Our front yard is no longer a dirt box that the neighbour's cat can use for her bidness; it's planted with all sorts of flowers: clumping flowers and creeping flowers and scented flowers and bushy flowers. It took me about three hours at the nursery to choose what to buy. I find it really difficult to imagine how things will grow and what they will look like in a month when faced with something small and green in a pot. It was exciting to work in the front garden because there's a flowering gum that arches over our yard. As I worked, drunk bees fell from the sky with alarming frequency. When I first saw a bee stumbling around on the ground I thought it was injured. Then I saw another one, which I thought was the first one in a different place. After the fifth one I figured out what was going on, and then had to forcefully resist the urge to look up.

Some of the less pleasant side effects of gardening (thankfully not including bee stings) are an aching back, arms and hamstrings. Last night I went to Pilates, which I've decided is just a fancy word for sit-ups, which is a polite way of saying abdominal torture. Usually I enjoy at least part of the class - or perhaps I just enjoy thinking about the day that I could maybe perhaps do one of those more advanced exercises. But yesterday, it was pure torture; y'know, one of those gym classes where you spend the entire time thinking, I paid for this???

Speaking of paying, we have copies of our new lease to sign, which list our rent at the old price - as in, without the 10% increase. We think it's a mistake, but aren't going to say anything just in case no-one else notices.

Beech Forest

Today Geelong schooled Port Adelaide in the AFL Grand Finals. If it's any consolation (and I'm sure it's not), Port Adelaide set a new record for losing margin in a grand final - something like 120 points. I think the problem is that their mascot isn't; they're called The Power. It's hard to say "Go the Power!" and easy to say "Go Cats!"

Last weekend we took a second anniversary trip down the Great Ocean Road, which Z thinks isn't so great or so ocean-filled. I did, however, manage to find him his first wild koala sighting. While driving. In the rain. I'm talented like that.

While driving the long way home on Sunday, we passed a sign that said "Beech Forest". I remembered mum telling us something about a great hike she and Ken took in Beech Forest. So, off the paved road we turned, winding our way up and down a bumpy road through various types of forest, none of it particularly beechy. After about 40 minutes we popped out onto a paved road where we found a sign next to a house that read, Welcome to Beech Forest, population 106. This is, of course, when we pulled out the map only to discover what was now quite obvious: Beech Forest is not a forest; it's a town. We decided to one day start our own town called Scenic Waterfall or perhaps Koala Viewing Platform. It will be an industrial strip mining centre a long way off the main highway. But it will be well signed.

We did all of this driving in our newer car. It has four working windows, a radio and CD player, and it starts without needing a choke or a prayer. You'll find a picture of it as well as pictures of koalas (say, awwww) and various other things in my Flickr account. Link is to the right.

Galvanic potential

I have bought and used countless nails and bolts and nuts and washers in my lifetime. Whenever it comes time to buy such hardware, I find myself in that aisle of the hardware store (you know the one: it's lined with small drawers and tubs filled with fasteners), glossing over terms like "galvanized" and "cadmium plated" to make a purchase based on size and price. Oh, how things have changed. For the past week, I've been designing a frame to hold an underwater camera. The camera and frame will form a BRUV, or baited remote underwater video station. It's like its name says: it gets dropped into the ocean with bait and left to film all the creatures that are attracted to the mushed pilchards (mmm, mushed pilchards). The frame will be made out of aluminium (note the extra "i" and pronounce accordingly when speaking to men at the hardware shop) and bolted together with, um, well.... er. What was that about galvanized screws?

So, I've been learning about galvanic potential and oxidation and corrosion and which metals can be in contact with eachother given area ratios and the presence of salty water. It's all quite, uh, illuminating. I've also had to buy a protractor and graph paper; I'm amazed that anyone sells that stuff any more, but thank god they do. I've been using trigonometry (SOHCAHTOA anyone?), which I barely remember since it's been about 15 years since I last thought about it. And I've been trying to think and draw in 3D.

And what have I learned? I have learned that I am not an engineer. And I've had a helluva good time learning that. It's been a nice to pull out the pencils rather than the journals; to draw rather than to type; to think about aluminium fitting together rather than communities of fish species interacting. But at the end of the day, it's very clear that I'm an ecologist.

All in a name

Last Friday, we went downtown for dinner, drinks and a movie. While walking up Bourke street, a shop sign caught my eye. It read surfdivenski. I assumed that Divenski was the name of a famous Australian surfer of Polish descent until I noticed that a second sign in the window read Surf Dive & Ski. I like my version of the shop name much better.

Further down the road, I saw a billboard advertising a gentleman's club called the Spearmint Rhino. Z thinks it makes for a great euphemism, as in: He gave her the spearmint rhino (wink wink). I have no idea what that means and I don't want to think about it too hard.

In other entirely unrelated news, spring arrived on Friday. Suddenly it's warm and sunny. We haven't used the heater in six days, we were able to dry two loads of laundry on the line outside, and we spent the weekend gardening and sitting in the back yard playing Carcasonne with my neighbour/lab-mate. He has the extended game which is so much more complicated and interesting than the simple version we've been playing.

It's really nice to not be cold all the time, though I do worry that we're in for another rip roarin' roastin' toastin' never ending summer. That should make Z nice and happy and me lethargic and sweaty.

Bed

We are settling into Melbourne in all sorts of ways. One of our recent and rather large investments in this city has been a new mattress, a king-size doona (comforter) and cover. Buh-bye mid-night blanket thievery. Hello bright red and orange Indian-style bedroom!


This may not seem like a big deal to you, and you probably don't care, but for us it marks a turning point. We're no longer buying any old cheap crap to sleep on and live with. We have a bit more money and we're spending it to be a bit more (OK, a lot more) comfortable. This is also the first big joint purchase of our marriage, which is funny considering all our friends who are buying houses right now. We're transitioning from everything-we-need-is-in-a-backpack to choosing a country and city to live in, to renting a house, to having jobs, and now a real bed. And soon, we might even have a real car.

Aussification

Three things that indicate that I'm feeling more at home Down Undah:

1. I drive on the left hand side of the road in my dreams;

2. When I type an URL into my browser, I automatically add a .au to the end, whether or not it's needed;

3. I can drink three beers and not feel a thing.

Not so far up/down

I've been in a lot of airplanes lately, what with the trip around Australia and the visit to SF - oh, and don't forget the side-trip to Boston and Maine. You'd think at this point that I would have enough frequent flyer miles to earn a free one-way business class ticket to the moon. But alas, the different airlines make for no miles worth a hoot. Z flew all the way to NY and back and around Australia on one airline and now has almost but not quite enough miles for a one way trip to Sydney (a 1.5 hour flight). This further supports my theory that frequent flyer programs are a bunch of baloney.

On the charter flights to and from Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, I got to sit up front with a splendid view of the cockpit (on one flight, I actually sat in the co-pilots seat, where I had to refrain from making jokes like, "Hey Mr. Pilot, what happens if I grab this lever and pull like this?"). These premier seats gave me a splendid view of the altimeter, which is when I had a big realization: 300ft above sea level isn't that far up. In fact, it makes the water look close enough to touch. So what, you ask? Well, the maximum workable depth for most scientific research projects is about 70ft, which is literally just skimming the surface albeit in an upside down kind of way. Floating in a small plane 300ft above the ocean and miles below the upper reaches of the atmosphere underscores just how not-deep (uh, the word I'm looking for is shallow) most of us will ever go. And the kicker? When you're down at 70ft, the surface feels a very long way away, especially when the water's murky. It was quite a powerful experience to realize just how shallow I am. When I'm diving, that is.

Living the single life

I always thought that I would live alone at some point in my life, certainly before I got married. Living in SF killed that idea off right smart - it was just too expensive. And then Z and I started dating, moved in together, got married, and I realized that I would never have the chance to live alone, to see what that was like. Until this week, that is. First impressions? I didn't like coming home to a cold, empty house. There was no-one to hear about my day. Then I discovered that if I cooked dinner, I also had to do the dishes. No fair! Late on Tuesday night, I crawled into bed, a bed that was missing a heater. I had been reading for about five minutes when I realized that I was lying all the way on my side, with the blankets neatly shared between both halves of the bed. With a giggle and a grin, I moved into the middle of the bed and gathered all the blankets into a bundle around me. Now, I thought, This is something I could get used to!

A long way to go

Allow me to share exactly how far it is from Melbourne to New York with the following, riveting story:

Yesterday morning, I woke a little before 7am, had a quick shower and a cup of tea, and drove Z to the airport. On the horizon, the rising sun lit the edge of a big cloud turning it brilliantly gold. I left Z at the terminal, battled rush hour traffic on the way back home, and had some breakfast. Then I rode to school, had a two hour meeting with the high school student I'm mentoring, spent a scintillating three hours editing an Excel spreadsheet, and another three slightly more scintillating hours watching lab-mates practice their presentations. The ride home was through crisp winter air, underneath bare-limbed trees silhouetted against a dusky sky. I made myself some dinner, did the dishes and headed down to the pub for trivia night. The pub was packed and, thanks to a new smoking ban, full of breathable air. After a few too many beers, I walked back home, thankful to not smell and feel like an old ashtray, and crawled into bed to read for a couple of hours. Eight hours later, I woke up, checked my email and headed back to Uni. I spent two hours working on a manuscript, another hour editing that damn Excel file, and caught up with the people who share my office. I was sitting at my desk eating lunch when I an email arrived from Z saying that he had reached his Manhattan hotel.

And that, my friends, is how far it is from Melbourne to New York.

Brain is mush

A lot has happened since I last posted. I've been to three places that have been on my Must Visit list for a looong time: Kata Tjuta, Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef. I spent two weeks with Z's parent and god-parents, making up information about Australia and laughing more than I've laughed in a while. I found my new favourite annual sporting event where I watched some of the crappiest footy I've ever seen. My weekly pub trivia group miraculously placed first in one of the three rounds, though we came in third overall -- again. And I learned that I've had part of my master's thesis provisionally accepted for publication in a scientific journal. I got the reviewers' comments back upon return to Melbourne and discovered that I had about a week to respond. I've spent this entire week working on the document, making changes to figures, tables and text, and then changing the changes, and changing the changes to the changes, ad nauseum. The biggest struggle has been keeping the damn thing under 6000 words. As of about noon, I was down to 6024, and spent the next couple of hours identifying 24 words to cut. It's now at a respectable 5,986. The unfortunate side effect of this process is everything I write turns dry and scientific, no matter how hard I try to make it witty and lighthearted. I swear, science is killing my creativity. Soon enough it will be printed an on its way back to the editors. Maybe then I'll be able to post something decent...

Making News

This may be my favourite headline of all time:

Orlando Bloom Hoping to Grow Out of Elf and Pirate Roles, Perhaps Play Dancing Cat on London Stage

From here.

Missing You

From a description of Bay to Breakers:

Some participants were motivated to run fast and others were motivated to drink beer in imaginative ways -- such as while doing a handstand over a keg in a shopping cart on the corner of Howard and Fifth streets.

Oh, how I miss you San Francisco. I miss your crazy residents (except for the certifiable wackos whose curses fill your rather squalid public buses), your sanctioned public looniness, your familiar steep and winding streets, and your abundant taquerias. I miss the friends who are similarly attracted to your aforementioned qualities and who choose to live in and near you. Hopefully, we will all see each other again soon.

Stoopidhead vs. the braggart

One of the issues I've been struggling with lately is feeling stupid. Like most PhD students, I find that the more I learn, the less I know. However, feeling stupid is, well, stupid considering that all the evidence points to me not being stupid. Yes, I feel stupid for feeling stupid. I'm smart like that.

Z has been "gently" encouraging me to get over this by saying things like, "Get over it already!" I've been doing my best to heed his advice but it's a challenge. Whenever I start feeling clever, I either immediately do or say something really dumb or, more insidiously, start to feel like a proud braggart. This leads me to my question de mois:

How does one act smart and clever without coming across as a know-it-all jerk?

Got any answers? I sure don't.

For me, this goes back a long way. I remember winning the maths prize in year 8 and dying on the inside as what little social standing I had evaporated. There was nothing cute about a smart girl in middle school. Being smart incurred much ribbing and I quickly learned to down-play my grades when I couldn't hide them. I really only stopped doing this during the final years of my masters, though I rarely volunteered to share my marks.

This all came to a head last week when I attended a reception for recipients of the University's prestigious scholarships. There are about 1,000 post-grads at the University, 350 of which have been granted federal scholarships. I'm one of the 350. Of the 1,000, 11 were awarded a prestigious scholarship; I'm one of those 11. Hearing these statistics out loud made me realize that someone, somewhere thinks I'm smart (I can hear you groaning at that sentence, Z). I need to remember this when I find myself unable to articulate a complex scientific thought.

One of the difficulties is that I'm me and so am completely unqualified to assess how well (or not) I present myself and my thoughts. I don't know if I come across as a bumbling idiot or a brilliant scientist, though can guess that it's somewhere in between and highly reliant upon my caffeine intake. Yes, it's true: caffeine does make you smarter.

I've recently realized that this only matters so much, is so important, because science is what I want to do with my life. This is what I enjoy doing. If I'm not good at this - or am only mediocre, I'll feel like I'm wasting my time. I want to accomplish things and feel like I contribute; if I'm only ever fair to middlin', I won't feel like I'm doing the best thing with my life.

Fortunately, someone somewhere thinks this is a good thing for me to do. Perhaps one day I'll realize that they're right.

Commitment? What commitment?

From Day in Pictures.

This could start a war somewhere else

I finally dropped the boat off for repairs today. It's taken this long (this being about four weeks!) to get the approval from the department to not file an insurance claim. It has been an incredibly frustrating process.

On my drive down to Williamstown, I saw a billboard advertisement for a web-site that lists homes for sale and lease. The caption read something like, "It's so easy, anyone can find a new home." The photo was of a man in a nicely tailored grey suit sitting on a chair. The model's head had been replaced with that of Dubya. I'm glad to see that Australia is not above publicly mocking his stupidity. Now if we would all just get around to recognizing Howard's stupidity in the upcoming election...

Plastic crap

We have been trying unsuccessfully for the past few months to get a credit card. My credit rating in the States is good enough to get me a card with a $28,000 limit, but here no-one will even consider my applications. So, we got a debit card instead. Yes that's right: our bank account came with an ATM card only; the debit card is extra. Do you remember the last time you saw an ATM card without a credit card logo on it? Me neither. When the cards arrived, Z called up and activated them. Yay! We can now do things like make on-line purchases and order concert tickets. Today I used my card for the first time to make a reservation at a house down near Wilson's Prom. Like all my credit card applications, my little debit card was rejected. A little panicky, I checked our account and found it adequately stocked with moola. So I called the bank to find out what was going on. I was informed that I hadn't linked the card to my account.

Say what???

Yes folks, it's true. The bank sent me a card, allowed me to activate the card, but never connected the card to any money thereby making the card a completely useless piece of plastic taking up space in my wallet.

Media Cottons On to Scientists' Predictions

The press is full of bad news about global climate change (I'm not calling it "global warning" any more because every time there's a cold snap, people say, "See? There's no such thing as global warming."). When we got back to the land of newspapers after our trip around the world, I noticed that there seemed to be a lot more news coverage of environmental problems. 'Suddenly' the mainstream papers were talking about fisheries collapse and carbon emissions. That sort of coverage has only increased; it seems almost weekly that an article discusses the seriousness and severity of global warming. I guess the media has finally caught up to what scientists have been saying for a couple of decades now.

A couple of months ago, I came across this article that talks about the larger-than-predicted spike in greenhouse gas emissions in 2006. That has me worried because there are all sorts of positive feedback loops that could kick into action, speeding up climate change suddenly. OK, not as suddenly as "The Day After Tomorrow" but more quickly than current models predict. For a great discussion of these (and a really great scary novel), read "The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery.

In January, an article in the NY Times quotes Dr. Rees, a cosmologist at Cambridge, as giving civilization no more than a 50 percent chance of surviving until the year 2100. Meanwhile Brisbane is on stage 5 water restrictions - stage 5 of 5. I don't know what happens next. There are very real concerns that hydropower plants supplying Sydney will have to close down if there isn't rain in the 18 months. A couple of months ago, the cover of our local paper The Age proclaimed that the Great Barrier Reef is facing extinction. But don't worry, according to Howard climate change is not a major issue and Australians aren't the biggest emitters of carbon - we're behind the US and China. What he fails to mention is that our total population is around 20 million so it's no surprise that we're emitting less carbon than two vastly more populous nations. Unfortunately, on a per capita rate, we're number two.

There's only one piece of good news I can glean from all of this: I chose the right field. If I'd chosen to study coral reef fish ecology, I'd be seriously worried about job stability. All those days spent diving in cold murky waters may reap a pay-off yet.

File this post under the category: glass one eighth full.

Enculturation

We've been in Melbourne for six and a half months, though it feels like so much longer. I'm pleased to say that I no longer look the wrong way when I cross the street - though I haven't done that for quite some time. I've recently being to perceive cars in American movies as driving on the wrong side of the road. These steps towards being comfortable in Australia are balanced by my inability to hear American accents - they still sound "normal". And every now and then I'm surprised to hear someone near me sound Australian. Last week I called a pub to make a dinner reservation and nearly laughed out loud at the guy on the other end of the phone - he was so Australian. Real okka, if you know what I mean - which you probably don't. In addition to excellent 'roo steak, the same pub offers a bogan burger, a bogan being the Aus equivalent of American white trash. The burger includes a grilled beef patty, breaded and fried chicken, fried bacon, fried potato pancake, and canned beetroot all in a bun with a cocktail umbrella on top. Everything about it screams class. Just thinking about it may be bad for your cholesterol. I had this pub recommended to me by one of my lab-mates. The German post-grad in my office overheard us discussing this and we then had fun trying to define the word "bogan" to someone who had also never heard the terms "white trash" or "trailer trash". I think we got the idea across with some swearing and pantomimes. I'm glad to be a cultural ambassador when I can.

The curse of the clothes horse

As I have mentioned before, I lost all my clothes in the mold incident of '06. I have, however, managed to beef up the wardrobe in the past few months, in part on my own, and in major part thanks to various parental figures. One person in particular took me on a wonderfully exorbitant shopping trip where I was bought an absolutely fabulous tank top costing at least three times what I would ever pay for a tank top. It makes my boobs look great and is interesting while not being overwhelming, thereby wearable with pretty much everything: jeans, skirts, work, play. Because it was expensive and because the tag says to, I always wash it by hand. Yes me, washing things by hand. Shocking. I wore it out to the pub last night and so it smelt like an ashtray this morning. Playing at being a dutifully responsible adult, I decided to do some hand laundry this afternoon in an effort to avoid the cigarette smells becoming a permanent part of the fabric. In addition to the tank, I washed my new favourite long-sleeved top from Anthropologie (a birthday present), some French lingerie and a couple of other things. When I do hand laundry, I'm exceedingly careful to keep the colours way the hell away from the lights, which is what I did today. So, I washed and rinsed and washed and rinsed, careful not to rub too hard or wring too much. And then I carried the items out to dry and discovered that my two favourite shirts and my expensive lingerie are covered in big, ugly, brown stains.

Swearing furiously, I returned to the laundry room to soak them again. And that's where Z found me, crying and banging my head against the window. He stood looking at me like you look at something that's about to explode in a big bad terribly no good way. Which is pretty much what I felt like doing, so his concern was justified.

At first I didn't understand what had happened. Then it came to me: the culprit is the fucking laundry basket we use to carry clothes out to hang on the line. It has left brown stains over all our clothes, stains we thought were caused by the oil seal failing on the washing machines we bought from the cheapo dirtbag salesman on Syndey Rd. You know, the three washing machines we went through before finally stomping into the shop and demanding our money back for them and the fridge which was also, at that point, not working. We couldn't at the time understand how three - three! - washing machines in a row could fail on us. Now we do...

Truth be told, I don't feel so bad for giving cheapo dirtbag salesman such a hard time. I mean the fridge really was befucked. And, as Z pointed out, even the repairman thought all of the washing machines were blown.

But my clothes! I feel cursed. What Egyptian goddess of the outfit did I piss off while we were at Karnak? Or is it a Congolese esprit de costume upset that we bought that wooden statue? What the fuck???

Perhaps it's time to have an exorcism. I think I'll begin by feeding that laundry basket to the goats.

Field games

There are certain phrases, casually bantered around any science facility, that make no sense at all if you stop and think about them. Take, for example, one I use frequently: in the field. As in, "I won't be able to catch up over lunch tomorrow because I'll be in the field." Field? What field? When have I ever done research in a field? And what does it mean to be in the field anyway? Wouldn't it be more correct to say on the field?

This really has nothing much to do with anything at all - it's just one of those things I've been thinking about when I'm not thinking about the massive ginormousness of the project that I've signed up to do. I had a three hour meeting on Friday with my supervisor at the guy in charge of running Victoria's marine parks. I left feeling under qualified and overwhelmed, not the best of combinations. It did however, shift the way I think about this project. I no longer think of it as a university course; it's become a research project that I've been hired to execute. Because they are paying me so poorly, they've sweetened the deal by agreeing to give me a nice piece of paper and a title change when I'm done. Perhaps surprisingly, this little change in perspective actually makes the whole thing easier. I like doing research projects - figuring out which questions to ask, how to ask them and then how to figure out the answers - but I'm not sure at all that I like getting a PhD; that sounds far more difficult. So, I play little mind games with myself (and the other self who so pleasantly agrees) and think about the foolishness of language in an effort to make it all feel better.

one of us ... one of us ...

In one of my favourite Raymond Chandler passages, he describes a drunk dame setting a glass down on a coffee table saying, "She was eight inches wrong".

I managed to do the same thing today, but with a boat. As in, I launched it but was five metres wrong. Which is to say that the boat came off the trailer and onto the ramp rather suddenly and rather not in the water. No damage to the prop. No crack in the hull. "Just" some big old scrapes down to the lightly shredded fiberglass.

What happened? As I've always done, I disconnected the boat from the tailer before we backed down the ramp. But this is a different boat, a lighter boat, one that's back heavy and, evidently, overly anxious to get in the water. So, it parted with the trailer prematurely. Reuniting boat and trailer would not have been possible without the stranger who stopped to help out. As we began the muscle-aching task of winching the boat back into position, it looked like we might actually be winching the truck down the ramp instead. Fortunately, truck did not share boat's desire to get wet.

My lab-mates, all of whom have been involved in similar "minor" mishaps, say that I'm now christened; I'm officially one of the crew. There wasn't so much grinning or joking from my supervisor when I told him - more standing around the boat and saying, "That's bad."

As bad as the damage is, the timing is even worse. This comes on the heels of an incident last week in which our other boat got swamped. This means that the lab is out of boats at a time when they are needed for field work and when the ocean conditions are actually good.

The day wasn't a total loss as we still managed to go diving - we did a shore dive with an entry that involved dropping over a 5'5" wall and scrambling over several metres of large boulders. The entry wasn't really the problem; it was the getting out that was difficult. My graceless clambering had an audience of 15 Japanese tourists, a Scottish family and a small group of young boys. After spending an hour and a half floating weightlessly, it's difficult to find one's land legs.

I spoke to Lumpkin on the phone when I got home. He cheered me up by sharing one his dad's quotes with me:

There are two kinds of boaters: those who have run aground, and those who haven't yet.

Is it still called running aground if you weren't in the water in the first place?

Before you buy a house...

Use this map to check out the effect of different sea level increases around the world - including in your own back yard. In particular, look and see what happens to the Netherlands with a sea level rise of 1m. Ouch.

(More details about the map here.)

Uphill both ways

I have a pretty easy ride to Uni: it’s a fairly flat route that takes me through parkland via quiet back streets. It takes me a little over 15 minutes to get to school – on a normal day. Then there are things like this:

(Image from here.)

Note the hurricane to the south of Australia. That would be the first hurricane to ever effect southern Australia. The edge of this storm has been buffeting Melbourne with seriously strong winds, causing the sections of my ride that I usually coast down to feel like a steep uphill slog. And they blow my light road bike all over the road. Not fun. About a third of my way to Uni today, my quads were insisting that I’d just climbed Twin Peaks.

And that's just what's happening on land. Western Victoria is supposedly getting pounded by 20ft waves. A buoy near the entrance to Port Philip Bay (close to Melbourne) recorded a 7m (~21ft) wave this morning. And the experts on diving in Victoria say that March and April are the best months to dive!

Endings

I've been thinking a lot about Nina this week, since Lumpkin told me she was killed in a mountaineering accident last Friday. She was such a sugar-loving, vivacious person who not only made us welcome in Wellington, but pretty much convinced us to move there in the first place. I loved walking through the city with her, learning about all the things that could be done to make a city more pedestrian-friendly. Like those pavers that we teased her about when we were out with Jason and Paul.

There was another death last week, though not as tragic I suppose. My good friend Alicia's Granny Annie died. I spent a fair amount of time with her when I was young, playing cards and learning Mah Jong. I don't know any of my other friends' grandparents like I knew Granny Annie. She was 89 and had suffered from Alzheimers for years. In fact, Alicia told me that one day while she was visiting, Granny Annie told her, "You look a lot like Alicia", to which she replied, "I am Alicia!". In some ways she had been gone for a while.

At Granny Annie's memorial service, Alicia's mum shared the story of Granny Annie's life. What struck me most was how hard she and her husband worked. Annie's husband would open their shop every morning until it was time for him to go to work, which is when Annie would take over for the day. When Allen got home from work, he would take over from Annie, working in the shop while Annie prepared dinner and took care of the kids.

Hearing that made me realize how luxurious our lives are. We have choice like perhaps no other generation has had choice. This choice comes with the pressure to figure out what we want to Do With Our Lives. This makes it so much harder. There's room to waffle and room to change our minds and room to worry about what we're doing. Back then, you had to work - and hard - every day. No room for lengthy sabbaticals to ponder your life's direction.

I see this in my grandmother too. She's in her late 80's and definitely losing her mind, but still she weeds her enormous garden and takes care of Vince and Sam (the alpacas). I know that she also spends the occasional day in bed, which she entirely deserves but would never, ever, ever have happened even 10 years ago. She has a work ethic that puts mine to shame - so much so that it makes me question whether I even have one!

And this is balanced by hearing about Nina's death, which makes me want to live to the best of my ability Right Now. You never know when the end will be. How to balance these two lessons? How to find the medium between working hard and working toward something you love? Perhaps that's called a PhD.

So, this is some of what I've been thinking about: death and change and the different forms of loss. Saying, "I'm sorry" at Granny Annie's funeral wasn't right - she had a good long life and a good death. And then there's Nina, just turned 30. Saying "I'm sorry" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Questions

Science is all about asking questions. There's an art to devising a brilliant question with far-reaching repercussions that can be answered through a simple experiment. Failing that, there's a process to taking a big question and simplifying it into testable components. The trick is to make sure that each of those components is still interesting, otherwise you're likely to find yourself in the middle of an experiment bored to tears and wondering how on earth you're going to convince anyone that this is ground-breaking research. It's all about making a little part of a little experiment tie in with the big picture.

Honing this ability to ask good research questions is a necessary part of the PhD process and what I've been working on for the last five weeks. Today my big picture just got a whole lot bigger. In a meeting, I was asked by one of the department's more senior professors what I want to do at the end of the PhD. Perhaps foolishly, I answered honestly - I believe my exact words were, "I have no idea." If only I had given my internal editor a chance to disagree! Fortunately, the other grad student in the room also had no idea. We were both then scolded and told that this was unacceptable. Everything we do during this PhD, all the choices we make, are supposed to further us along our career path. Do we choose to TA in order to gain valuable teaching experience in preparation for a job as an academic lecturer? Do we work with government agencies to lay the groundwork for a position as a researcher? Or do we network like crazy with industry so as to get in the door there?

All I can say is, Uh...what? It's time for me to really start thinking about this stuff? I thought I had another few years!

This question of "career" feels so antithetical to who I am. Or perhaps it's merely that the word "career" instantly brings to mind a desk-job at some large firm where I spend a good part of my time weasling my way up the ladder of promotions and raises. In other words, it sounds bloody awful.

I do know that there are other options out there and, in fact, that's why I'm subjecting myself to this three (and a half) year research program. I guess my attitude towards the What Comes Next has been very much a wait-and-see. Today as I was mulling this over in my over-worked neural circuitry, I realized that the wait-and-see attitude is devoid of hopes and aspirations. Instead of going for my dream job, I have been planning to see what's available when I get out (saying get out like that sounds way too much like this is a prison term). How passive! I'd much rather live striving for something than waiting for whatever shows up. That isn't antithetical to me at all.

But there's a catch: I have to decide on something, and I'm notoriously hopeless at making decisions (just ask my husband). I really don't want to be strapped down to some career path, which is part of my resistance to making a decision - it just seems so final. And yet, if I don't start thinking about this I may realize what I want too late to get there. There aren't so many positions open each year for marine ecologists.

Once again, this PhD is showing me how little I know. Thanks a lot.

Competition

As you may know, Z is trying to make it as a freelance writer here in Melbourne. The competition is really tough. For example, check out this guy.

I agree

Confession time: I talk to myself. You're probably not surprised because you most likely talk to yourself, too. Recently, however, I've caught myself agreeing with myself. As in:

- I think I should have sushi for lunch today.
- I agree.

I miss the days of simple internal monologues. This feels a few steps closer to clinical. And what happens if I start disagreeing with myself? That could get ugly.

I've also recently had to come to terms with the fact that I have very little intuitive sense of left and right. At 31 years of age, I still need (and I do mean need) to look at my palms and spell out the "L" for left. This is difficult to do while driving, which is why I need my directions to be littered with large gestures.

And I'm getting a PhD?

- Who's idea was that?
- Well, it wasn't mine.

Martian invasion

I went diving yesterday to help a colleague out with his research. While he counted fish along a transect, I explored. I saw my first wild sea horses - saying it like that makes me imagine them galloping past in a storm of turbulence, leaving a trail of silted water in their wake. As cool as they are with the whole "pregnant" male thing, they couldn't compare with seeing one of these:


It's a giant cuttle, Sepia apama (photo from here). When I first came across hovering just above the bottom, I had no idea what I was looking at. Its coloration and the raised skin flaps on its back made it look like part of the reef,though the fin along the bottom of its mantle rippled continuously. Its tentacles and arms were curled up into its face, and it sat starting at us with its strange eyes. At one point, my dive buddy and I moved to one side, and it moved so as to remain facing us. Was it an animal? Responsiveness suggested yes. Was it a fish? Completely the wrong shape. A vertebrate? Sure didn't look like any vertebrate I'd ever seen. An alien from Mars? Maybe. A Cephalopod? Distinct head region suggests probably - but far less interesting than the alien from Mars hypothesis. An octopus? Nope. A squid? Also nope. We surfaced and I asked my partner what it was. Fortunately, he recognized the creature. Unfortunately, he's from France and doesn't know the English word for it. Neither did the other guy on the boat who's from Germany. When I suggested cuttlefish, there was general consensus, backed up by the guidebook when we got back to the truck.

This may be one of the coolest things I've seen underwater in quite some time. It can't get over how otherworldly and alien it looked. Perhaps Martians have invaded Earth and have been classified as Cephalopods. It sure would explain their intelligence and looks. Come to think of it, Martian invasion would explain the intelligence and looks of a lot of people too. For example, Tom Cruise. No, wait - hasn't he expelled his aliens?

Summer? Winter? Who can tell?

It is still summer here in the southern hemisphere - unless you live in Canberra, apparently. A few weeks ago, a similarly ferocious storm a couple of hours north of Melbourne cracked the windshield of my aunt's car. While I certainly wish it would cool the hell down, I hope it doesn't happen quite so violently. Though, of course, there would be something amazing about experiencing the downpour of that much ice. In fact, the more I think about it, the better it sounds. I take it back: can we please have a massive hail storm here in Melbourne?

The good kind of stormy

I fear that I am becoming one of those people who gushes about how much they love their yoga class at every opportunity they get. But I do love it, even when just sitting there hurts in places I didn't know existed. I've tried to get into yoga at other times but it's never stuck. This time, it feels positively gluey. Perhaps it's the teachers, though one is so soft spoken and flexible that I can't quite hear her and when I try to imitate her moves, discover that my body does not do that. Perhaps it's the type of yoga - this is my first time with Iyengar yoga, having tried mainly Hatha in the past. Or perhaps it's that I let my body get into such a state of un-fit that anything feels restorative.

I rode home after class into a menacing grey sky with a fresh wind from the south at my back. I am now trying to coax said breeze into the house to cool everything down. Meteorologists are predicting that the drought will break this autumn - a colleague told me that one meteorologist is even giving a date for the break: 23rd of February. While I don't believe anyone can give a date for the end of a drought, I do believe that climatologists can look at the weaking El Nino conditions in the Pacific and correlate this to an increased chance of rainfall in southeastern Australia. This is great for the birds and the bees, but not so good for those of us who commute by bike.

On Sunday, Z and I drove across the city to watch The House of Flying Daggers in the botanic gardens. About halfway between home and park, an intense gusty wind rocketed the car. The temperature quickly dropped 14C (~25F) and it began to rain. Sure enough, the screening was canceled, though we did get to have a wonderful walk in the drizzle through the gardens. There's nothing like a cool breeze and rain after a weekend that spent most of the time over 100F. I am so very ready for winter.

The rapid change reminded me of watching a storm roll in across the ocean toward us while Z, Lumpkin and I were in the Perhentians, Malaysia. I've never seen anything like the clearly defined wall of cloud that approached us, massive and towering, like something out of The Day After Tomorrow. As we watched it approach, Z said that he didn't think it would rain on us. Ha! After the usual burst of wind heralding its arrival, the front let loose with such a downpour as to grey out the boats moored about 20m offshore.

While perhaps not quite so picturesque as a tropical island, Melbourne certainly has the stormy weather covered. How I love the thunder and lightening and aliveness to the air as the atmosphere roils. Now if it would just cool the fuck down.

Body meet Mind; Mind, this is Body

For the first time in an embarrassingly long time, I have taken up regular exercise. (Hooray me!) In addition to riding my bike to Uni, I've been taking a couple of classes (like yoga, pilates) a week. I also hope to start swimming regularly. The side effects that I've noticed include an increase in consumption of hydrating fluids, crepuscular muscular fatigue, and an augmentation of available diurnal energy. However, contrary to what previous studies have found, I have not enjoyed more restful nocturnal episodes. The other night I kept Z up with my tossing and turning; little did he know that I was fighting off dream-sharks. Last night he woke me up and said that I was doing that sit-up-while-rolling-over thing - repeatedly. Let's hope this researcher notices a temporal attenuation of this mildly deleterious side-effect.

As you can probably tell, I'm getting into the swing of this whole research thing. This morning, I went to a post-grad orientation. I find orientations to be such hit-or-miss events. Often, 99% of the information will be useless, but that 1% will be so valuable as to make the hours of boredom worth it. At other times, 100% is useless. Today was one of those rare orientations where about 80% was useful information. Among descriptions of various courses and services, I learned what happens if a student and supervisor fall in love. I have to thank whomever it was that asked that question for the outrageous laughter than ensued. I also learned that the completion rates for PhD's hovers around 50%. The professor who presented this information urged us to not be dismayed. Dismayed? I thought. Isn't that supposed to be a challenge? Just like being told that the number of women in the sciences drops off radically after the master's level. I guess my attitude is something like: Ha! Take that!

I've also recently begun to string together bits and pieces from the various topics that I'm interested in. At first I thought that I would have to make a decision to study one thing or another. I've begun to see how they might all slot together into a unified whole. This is very exciting in a very nerdy, scientific sort of way. Which is perfect, because I'm exciting in a very nerdy, scientific sort of way.

How getting a PhD is like trying to get a truck out of deep sand

Today I had lunch with an old friend who's also a scientist, also a woman, and who also did her postgraduate work at Melbourne Uni. When she heard that I am feeling more than a little lost, she said that everyone feels this way at the beginning of a PhD program, particularly one without coursework. She thinks she did about 10% of her PhD in her first year (and about 80% in the final six months), which sounds about the same as my master's. At the beginning, there's so little guidance, so little structure. I suppose the main goal of this first year can be succinctly summarized: know more. So I'm reading and taking notes on what I'm reading and looking for more things to read and then reading them and taking notes and reading more. This process involves little action, little doing. And the more I read and learn, the more I realize how little I actually know. At the end of the day, it's all quite unsatisfying.

Which brings me to today's metaphor. This first part of a PhD feels a lot like trying to get a truck out of sand: lots of going nowhere interspersed with brief moments of movement that, ultimately, don't really get you anywhere either. And the whole time, your heart's beating fast enough to blow a rib because you're so afraid of being stuck in this place permanently. And you're trying all sorts of different approaches (reversing, rocking, sticks under the wheels, rocks under the wheels) but with a certain overtone of panic that makes it hard to give any one approach the time and attention it requires, all the while cycling between fear (How long before someone comes along?) and intense jubilation (The truck moved - it's going to wo--). After what feels like an eternity, you wear yourself out enough to calm down and commit to one approach. You dig several layers of rocks in under the tires and, miracle of all miracles, you manage to pop out of the hole you're in and you're rolling - you're rolling! - and you can't stop or turn around or do anything but drive steadily forwards until you're back on solid ground.

Not that I've ever been in this sort of situation.

Day One

Things you want to know:

- The woman whose desk is next to mine studies kangaroo fertility - or more correctly, she studies kangaroo birth control. I kid you not; her dissertation involves dosing roos with hormones that are identical to the pill.

- My supervisor apologized for my office, which contains brand spanking new desks, a huge window, and my own file cabinet. He started to apologize for the desk chairs - which were not designed for use in the bowels of a dreary office building housing an underfunded government department in the 50's, do not come with wires to poke me in the bum, and do not list dangerously to port - but I cut him off. My office used to be in a trailer, I explained - a trailer that during one particular deluge, started to float. I kid you not.

- I remembered to wear pants.


Things you don't want to know:

- The basement houses a room of aquaria full of venomous marine creatures. Occasionally, the marine tech walks in to find undergrad's from other departments wandering around looking at the tanks. When he asks them what they're doing they usually say something like, "We heard this room was here, man, and we heard it was really cool." He's asked for locks to be installed on the door because there's only one thing worse than finding random students wandering through your lab: finding random students passed out in your lab.

- The same marine tech told me about a student taken by a shark a couple of years ago while at his dive safety stop. There was also a student who lost a leg. (I should not be blogging about this - the family is going to freak.) Both occurred in South Australia, and the leg loss occurred after the divers were spear fishing near a seal colony. I will not be diving in SA, nor will I be spear fishing near a seal colony - or really doing anything in the water near a seal colony. And I have already promised my husband that I will not let myself get taken by a shark.

- I remembered to wear pants.

Early this morning I woke up with a jolt of panic: I was late for school. Except that school doesn't start until tomorrow - and here it's not called school, it's called Uni. My friend A keeps reminding me of that. She also corrects my pronunciation of the word "mobile" - as in, cell phone - to make sure that I enunciate the "ile" part of the word, which I tend to swallow making it MObl rather than moBILE.

This has nothing to do with anything much at all. There will be no pithy sentence that ties this together with the fact that we scored a dresser yesterday off a NY'er who lives around the corner and who advertised it on Craiglist, a service that I wish more people in Melbourne would use. I feel like I unpacked for the first time in a year and a half.

This also has nothing to do with the fact that I'm addicted to spider solitaire and that I will have to uninstall it this evening or risk never finishing my dissertation.

Which reminds me that I'm starting my dissertation tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be a doctoral student. And presumably, one day I will be a doctor. In case it wasn't completely obvious, this fills me with nervous, jittery excitement. I'm sure that tonight I'll have one of those dreams where I'm giving a presentation to my colleagues only to realize half way through that I'm not wearing any pants.

Oh verr

I am done with my temp job. Let me hear a chorus of "Hallelujahs". Lumpkin suggested I steal a t-shirt on my way out the door, one that read "Foster's - Australian for Cow Urine". Lumpkin makes me laugh. There is only one thing I will miss from that job and he sat a few rows away from me. Boy was he nice to look at. But I am more than happy to give up eye candy and air conditioning for the glamorous life style of an underpaid, overworked grad student.

Other wonderful things in my day include the cool breeze wafting in through the back door. Stepping out of the office today, the air felt heavy as if it really wanted to rain but couldn't quite get over the habits formed by eight years of drought. Droughts are addictive.

Speaking of droughts, I arrived home yesterday (bearing ice cream) to find my large tomato plant wilting miserably in its pot, it's leaves shriveled and dry. I rushed to the rescue with a bowl of gray water (we recycle the dish water) and less than ten minutes later, the plant was back to its rabid splendor. I swear it grows half a foot a day. If you notice that I haven't posted in a while, send clippers and a machete.

And that's about the news from here. It is refreshingly cool. I have a five day weekend and then - ack! I start my PhD. Oh shit. I hadn't really been thinking about that. For every "oh verr" there's and "oh god".

What's in a look

When you've lost all your clothes the phrase, "I have nothing to wear" takes on new meaning. I'm working hard to regenerate my wardrobe but it's a struggle. Part of my problem is that I don't want to look like everyone else. On the tram to and from work, I am surrounded by hoards of identically dressed women, none of whom have a style I want to even come close to emulating. Think: Marina chick in a southern Californian mall. On a good day, I'll see a couple of women wearing an outfit that I like, which makes for pretty slim pickin's inspiration-wise and complicates this whole fill-up-the-wardrobe thing. When I try to go shopping, I end up rejecting over 90% of the clothes most shops have on offer. It's all the same! It's all U-Glee! And then there's the fight against the urge to buy the safe clothes, the things that look good but bore me to tears.

After reading this article, I realized that what I'm actually struggling with is defining my own style. I have never - NEVER - been a style junkie, or a fashionista, or someone who can name more than three labels - and that's on a good day. My uniform until a few years ago was a t-shirt and jeans. Now I own heels and even occasionally wear them. Admitting that I do appreciate clothes and want to feel confident in what I'm wearing has been a big step for me. Actually leaving the safe comfort of t-shirts and jeans for clothes that are stylish and opinionated is one hell of a struggle.

One of the first steps is admitting that I like clothes. Hi, my name's Bartlebee and I like clothes. Having never been to AA, I'm not sure what comes next. Perhaps recognizing that fashion does matter, that what I wear does matter, and, most importantly, that it's ok that it matters. This part is a work in progress.

If you like fish...

... here are two particularly novel ways to show your love. If you like music as well as the fishies, then try this lovely fish tank piano. If seeing a piano reminds you of the hours of practice that you were forced into by a mother who could tolerate your tantrums and still get her way, hours you would rather have spent in the bathroom, then perhaps this fish tank will be more
to your liking.

Proof that moving countries is hard even when you allegedly speak the language

Exhibit A: The following conversation, which ensued after I pulled my morning snack from my bag.

Colleague: Oooh! What’s that?

Me: A scone.

Colleague: But what’s wrong with it?

Me: What do you mean, what’s wrong with it? Nothing’s wrong with it. It’s a scone.

Colleague (poking scone): But it’s so flat.

Me: Aren't scones supposed to be flat?

Colleague: No they're not.

Me: They are in the States.

Colleague: They’re not over here.

Me: Then what do you call what I'm eating?

Colleague: I dunno. Is it a muesli slice?

Me: What’s a muesli slice?

Colleagues: A slice with muesli in it.

Me (under breath): Well that's helpful.

Colleague: That has muesli in it, doesn't it?

Me: No, just oats.

Colleague (looking at me like I'm a moron): Right. So, it has muesli in it.

Me: Yeah?

Colleagues: So it's a muesli slice.

Me: Of course. How could I be so silly? Why yes of course this is a muesli slice.

Bleak

My brother Lumpkin just sent me an email. He's sitting at home in his shorts with all the windows and skylights open. He lives in New York. It's January.

Stop and think about that for a moment.

On Christmas day, Melbourne and NY shared the same temperature. Middle of summer; middle of winter. I am starting to think that my Master's advisor may have been serious when he told all of his grad students to buy land in Manitoba.

I had a nightmare a few years ago in which The End had come. My friend KC and I were in a tent in the middle of an apocalyptic desert surrounded by blowing sand and searing sun, applying duct tape to the zippers to try and keep the toxic winds out. And then we huddled together, recalling images from our favourite hiking spots: the towering green freshness of the redwoods; browned California hills scattered with wildflowers and scraggly oaks; the glacier-smoothed granite of the Sierras. And we cried at the loss which was so much greater than our own lives. I woke up soaked in desolation.

I am still occasionally gripped by panic at the thought that the Earth is going to hell in a hand-basket. Or more correctly, that Homo sapiens is going down and taking most things with it. And then I get an email from my bro and I realize that this is actually happening. This is not some nightmare. This is not a thought to try to avoid in order to feel better. This Is Actually Happening. Will politicians wake up in time to avert the worst of it? I don't know. Can I do much more than I'm already doing? I don't know - we have green power, barely drive, vote for people who understand environmental issues, and shop with a conscience. Is it enough? I don't know. Do I feel hopeful? Rarely.

Prognosis: bleak.

Black

The new look of my blog may be bright and colourful ("clownish" according to Z), but my mood certainly isn't. After a week off between Christmas and the New Year, I am back in the tedium that is my temp job. No matter how many times during the day I repeat, "Six days left ..." it still sucks. Even Si's "I am in my happy place" Ikea-faring mantra does nothing to help. It's also hot hot hot except at my desk where I sit literally shivering all day. Have I mentioned that I don't like my job?

I suppose I can't wholly blame the job for The Mood. It's been skulking around for a couple of weeks now and as much as I try to shake it, it won't be shook. So, I garden and bake and organize the kitchen's stock of dried goods into neatly labeled jars and, when that's done, find myself staring into the blackness above our bed and, when I get tired of that, pacing the hallway through the witching hours. I'm sure the insomnia-induced exhaustion doesn't help.

And I'm also sure it will pass - I mean, eventually it has to, right? Until it does, I'm staying close to home and (here I quote Mr. Sassyass) missing y'all terribly.

The good kind of censorship

From Lake Superior State University's list of banished words for 2006, comes the following:

Halthy Food
Someone told Joy Wiltzius of Fort Collins, Colorado, that the tuna steak she had for lunch "sounded healthy." Her reply: "If my lunch were healthy, it would still be swimming somewhere. Grilled and nestled in salad greens, it's 'healthful.'"

And my other favourite:

Combined Celebrity Names
"It's bad enough that celebrities have to be the top news stories. Now we've given them obnoxious names such as 'Bragelina,' 'TomKat' and 'Bennifer.'" -- M. Foster, Port Huron, Michigan.

"It's so annoying, idiotic and so lame and pathetic that it's 'lamethetic.'" -- Ed of Centreville, Virginia.

Lamethetic is a great word - watch, they'll have to ban it next year!