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...