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.