D-A-N-A

Capping off a week of high productivity on my thesis (have I mentioned that my mood is contingent on how productive my day/week has been?), we've just finished a really nice weekend. Friday night, I went out to a Canadian-Australian club function. Ah, the comforting sounds of Canadian accents. I can't even begin to tell you how nice it is to have people pronounce my name right the first time I tell them. Here's a typical conversation with an aussie:

random aussie: What's your name again?

me: Dana

random aussie: oh, Deena.

me: no, DANA (in a slow, loud voice)

random aussie: How do you spell that?

me: D-A-N-A

random aussie: so your name is Donna

me: sigh, yes, you can call me Donna.

At the beginning, I kept trying to get them to make that hard 'a' sound in my name, but they often became completely flustered, and would mutter "I'll never get it right". So, I've given up, and I'm now known as Donna by many of my aussie coworkers and acquaintances.

Also this weekend, Gus had a friend sleep over. So we had an exciting Saturday night of pop, chips and kid movies. And Sunday, we did a little prep work for our upcoming camping trip. We are now better equiped than we ever were in Canada after buying up a ton of camping supplies from an Irish couple who just finished a cross-country tour. We've also gotten our big ol' car serviced and picked up a NRMA membership (like CAA) for extra piece of mind, in case our car decides to give up while we're on some remote mountain road. We're all set and very excited for our first camping trip in Australia planned for Easter weekend.

Pics from the weekend:

Chips and jelly beans for the sleepover. Is there a better combination?


This weekend, we also did a little tour of Bare Island Fort, which is in a suburb called La Perouse, and was one of the sites used in Mission Impossible.

The tour was a nice way to spend a sunny afternoon, despite being a little spooky with all these crazy little rooms that soldiers and others lived in thoughout the past two centuries. Here's Vic walking through one of creepy hallways.

For some reason, all our outings seem to involve ice cream?!? Funny how that happens. I'm not sure if you can tell from this badly taken picture (really I should find the manual for this camera), but Gus has the funniest expression in this picture. The kid cracks me up.