Last week

This past week, Vic and I have been busily planning out our trip to Bali. Holy hell, I'm so excited about it. We've decided to break up the trip into three bits: the first bit in Ubud (major city and Bali's artistic and cultural hub), the second bit on a tiny little island just off of Bali and the third in one of the more popular beachy tourist spots. Getting to this plan was a bit tortuous because Vic WANTS TO DO AND SEE EVERYTHING and me, well I want to go for spa treatments, sit on a beach and maybe do a little yoga. So it took us a while to come to a compromise of three different Balinese cities/towns and I think we're both pretty happy with that. Honestly, I haven't been this excited about a trip in I don't know how long.

Right now, Vic and Gus are off at one of Gus' soccer games and I am simmering a sauce for a killer lasagne I'm making from a Jamie Oliver recipe. Did you know Jamie is my secret boyfriend? It's a secret 'cause he doesn't know about it, but Vic and Gus are well aware of my naked chef crush. Whenever he's on TV, they like to make smoochy noises and generally make fun of me. It's so fun living with two boys. Jamie's Food Revolution USA just started airing here and I caught the end of the second episode last night, where the folks of Huntington, WV make him cry. Poor Jamie!

Gus starts school again on Tuesday next week. Thank God! Once he's back in school, I can get back into the swing of things and finally finish up a draft of a thesis chapter I've been working on for an embarassingly long time. I am looking forward to that.

Floundering

Last week was the first week of Gus' 2-week school holiday. As I usually do during school holidays, I mixed it up with some Gus-Dana time and some vacation care for Gus so that I could get some work done on my thesis. Except that inevitably, because the time spent on my thesis was in small bits and pieces throughout the week, I ended up getting very little done and feeling really crappy about it by the end of the week. So mentally, that's where I'm at.

There were a couple of highlights though. Yesterday we went for a walk along the coast from Clovelly to Bronte (part of the coastal walkway we hadn't yet explored). Beautiful!

We also booked our flights to Bali for a trip we're planning for the next school holiday (in early Oct). BALI!!!! I'm so incredibly excited. The only problem is that we're going for 12 nights and it seems that that is not going to be nearly enough time for everything we want to do or see. We're trying to fit in spa time, shopping, an elephant sanctuary, a monkey forest, a hindu temple or two and some wicked snorkelling. I CAN"T WAIT!!

Views from our coastal walk to Bronte.

King of the world.

A stop for smoothies in Bronte...

...and to let our puppy have a run.

Mountain goats.

NAIDOC week

Today is the first day of NAIDOC week, a celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. We spent the day at Ku-ring-gai National Park, learning how to make a humpy (don't google "humpy", just click on the word... trust me), eating bushtucka, drinking billy tea and practicing our spear throwing skills.

It was a typical sunny Sydney day and Ku-ring-gai National Park was nothing less than stunning. It's about an hour north of us, and while we were there, I remarked to Vic that I couldn't believe we've lived in Sydney for almost 2 years now and have only now ventured into this park. It made me feel slightly panicky at all the things we haven't yet seen and only a year or so left in our oz-venture. Perhaps not a coincidence, when we got home Vic immediately hopped on the computer to start researching possible locations for an upcoming holiday.

Gus trying out a humpy.

Bushtucka

Billy tea

Bushwalking.

An Aboriginal rock carving.

Gus, trying his hand at spearing a goanna

Zombiefied

Ugh! The flight from Toronto to Sydney last week wiped me out. And to top it off, I caught a cold on my way back and the combination of jetlag and cold/flu symptoms left me in a zombie-like state for most of last week.

I did manage to get that essay handed it in. Luckily in Australia, as a PhD by research student, there are no course requirements. This means that any courses I do take get graded simply as unsatisfactory or satisfactory. And this essay that I handed in could only be described as satisfactory (and not much else!). Oh well, onwards and upwards, as they say.

Here are a couple of my favourite pics from our recent visit to Canada. They're of a beautiful day of sailing we had in Montreal: Gus at the start of the sailing trip and after he's feeling a little more comfortable on the boat.

Good Morning!

It's 6:30 in the morning and I've just spent the past hour working on an essay due tomorrow. Eeek! I'm not usually one to put things off till the last minute, but I had grand plans to work on it while I was in Canada for the past two weeks (just got back yesterday morning). But instead of working on my essay, I spent my time in Canada doing the following:

1) Visiting family and friends in no less than three Ontario cities + Montreal
2) Driving to all those cities (which actually wasn't so bad, and based on that experience, I'm considering an alternate career as a truckie, should this whole PhD thing turn out to be a bust)
3) Attending a public health conference in Toronto
4) Attending a wedding (Congrats Neil!!!)
5) Eating lots and lots of foods and drinks not available in Sydney (the list includes: Timbits, Tim Hortons' iced coffees, poutine, mmmmm poutine!!!)
6) (When not being looked after by generous family members) entertaining Gus with trips to a water park, arcade, the local pool, and a six flags in Montreal.

I had a great visit to Canada, but it was a whirlwind tour, the planning of which was akin to the National/Provincial/Territorial meetings I used to plan when I was a public servant. And despite good intentions, I missed seeing some friends and family members that I really wanted to see again.

Anywhoo, here I am, back in Sydney, suffering from another bout of crazy jetlag, but extremely happy to be home and see Vic again (who stayed in Sydney while we were in Canada eating timbits and poutine).

Off I go for a run (my cure for jetlag is sunlight and exercise), followed by more essay writing. I'm trying to get it all in early, since if yesterday is any indication, I'll likely be falling asleep tonight at around 6:30pm.

Getting ready to climb back down

About a week and a half ago, I handed in a couple of papers to my thesis advisors to review. And while I was waiting for their feedback, there were about a million things I could have done (reading, start writing an essay due in June, drafting up chapters for my thesis...). Instead, I procrastinated, procrastinated and then procrastinated some more.... In my defense, I think I was a little burnt out from all the work I put into those two papers. In the week in a half since I handed in those papers, I did a minimum of thesis work and way too much friday-night-lights-watching and playing in general. Just yesterday, Gus had a sleepover at a friend's and Vic and I enjoyed dinner and a movie (complete with a choc top), and this morning - out for bacon and egg rolls and flat whites at a coffee shop down the street. mnum, mnum. But, it's all coming to an end. I got their feedback on Friday and I need to hunker down and finish up these papers (one is due on May 31st). So, scuse me, while I climb back down into the hole that is my phd. I'll be back soon.

p.s. - went to see Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last night and it was a ripper! (as they say). Lisbeth was fantastic and the winter scenes reminded me of why I shouldn't complain that it's only going up to 18C tomorrow. If you haven't yet, do go see it.

Go for a run with...

Michelle!

I'm soooo jealous of all the flatness in those pictures.