Happenings

Two weeks ago, I finally got away from my desk and started the meat of my thesis; a survey of people who inject drugs. So far I have a sample size of 15, with the goal of eventually getting 260 participants. After a year and a half into my PhD, which involved successfully defending my thesis proposal a few months ahead of schedule, only to go through a very messy divorce with my thesis advisor shortly after, followed by a change in thesis advisors and a change in thesis topics, it feels great to finally be at the point of data collection.

It's been a challenging start to the survey for many reasons, one of which is that I'm so used to having a flexible schedule, able to drop Gus off and pick him up from school on most days. So it's been difficult for the both us to get used to me starting this more rigid and more demanding schedule. Luckily, Vic's parents will be here on Monday and will be a huge help with picking Gus up and being at home with Gus while I'm out surveying people for my thesis.

Completely unrelated, but slightly related to my elevated stress levels, is that we now know for certain that flying foxes (the big bats that live here in the Sydney area) are nocturnal. A group of them recently settled into a macademia nut tree behind our apartment building and man are they loud. They sound sort of like a bunch of angry squirrels, and we've had a few nights of crazy bat sounds going on all night. aaargh! The tree grows right above our clothesline, and we quickly realized that you cannot leave your clothes out overnight or they will end up covered in bat poo by morning. Last night we came home shortly after dusk, and ran to the back to get our clothes off the line before the pooping started, and as they swooped around the tree, disturbed by my presence, Vic decided to stand back and watch, while letting me know that there was a bat right above my head that had a funny, scrunched up look on his face. But he must have misinterpreted the bat's look, because I (and our clothes) came out unscathed by bat poo.

For those of you who live in the area, we made a great little day trip last weekend to Bundeena that I highly recommend. It was one of those hot, hot days. So we packed up our swim stuff, drove to Cronulla (which we had never been to before, but always had negative connotations for me because of the whole race riot thing that happened there about 5 yrs ago - however, it looks lovely and hopefully we'll explore it a little more on another trip), and then took a little wooden ferry to Bundeena. Bundeena has some nice cafes, a great kids' playground and a few beaches within walking distance of the ferry. We went to one of the more deserted beaches, and it was beautiful. Lots of shells for collecting, and a short hike nearby where there were some aboriginal rock carvings to check out.

Here are some pics from the day:

Waiting for the ferry, eating cornettos.

On the ferry on the way to Bundeena.

Making pictures in the sand.

Beachcombing for shells and other assorted things, and on the way to the bushwalk, where we saw the aboriginal rock carvings. Very, very cool and definitely the highlight of our trip to Bundeena.