The postgraduate study room for Linguistics is on the 9th floor of the Napier building overlooking the Torrens and all sorts of lovely things. How is one supposed to study when all one can see before them is other people chilling out on green green grass? Look away, avert your eyes!

Life goes on

Long time no post, I know. I no longer have regular internet access so it's going to be well patchy from now on. What have I been doing then? I started uni for one thing. Became a little overwhelmed by just how much reading I was going to have to do to come up to speed with everything. Spent a lot of money on textbooks and reading bricks, spend a lot of time reading and re-reading rather dense text packed full of seemingly incoherent nonsense. Obviously I'm not quite up with the Applied Linguistics lexicon yet, but hopefully that will change!

Last week on Saturday I did my last shift at the horrendous cafe and felt awfully glad about it. Took my pay and a few biscuits with me... I borrowed my brother's car in order to shift a box on Saturday night and when I came out in the morning to take it back to him caused a street-long traffic deadlock by not hurrying up when someone decided to put their blinker on and wait for me to leave. I did have a load of stuff to get in the car and they could see that, but they were obviously very desperate for the park! Did anyone know that there is a Farmer's Market on Sundays at the showground? There is. Every Sunday 9-1 there are cars fighting for parks all up and down my street. I haven't actually gone and checked out the markets yet becauseI always seems to be busy doing something else, but maybe next week... Actually, no, definitely not next week because I have a huge weekend lined up. Friday night Quiz Night, Saturday night hosting Dinner Party and celebrating a certain lovely lady's Birthday, Sunday arvo Mum's 50th. My God, it's like I have a life or something! And the weekend after that? Housewarming matey!! Gonna make some punch and crank up the stereo and see if we can't get the cops over...

Random pub crawl photo...

One Broken Door

So today I started moving my things to my new place and had a minor incident. I propped the screen door open on it's little dooflicka up the top and this prompted the top hinge to snap off resulting in the Leaning Door of Goodwood. So already I have caused trouble at my new address and I'm not sure people will pay to see this Leaning Monument To Dodgy Workmanship so I will have to fund the repairs myself. BOO.

Last night after touch training I headed to the showgrounds to play basketball with my friend. She has a team with school mates and some weeks they are struggling for players so I thought I'd go along for a run around even though I have no basketball skills whatsoever. Lucky I did go this week since only three of them turned up! It was looking to be quite a dismal game since they usually get thrashed anyway, when we realised that the other team also only had 4 players. Yar. In the end we WON! It was quite exciting. At first our opponent was all friendly and so on, but after they realised we actually wanted to (and could) win the game the game descended into a Bitch-a-rama. As usual it was the peole of smaller stature who started it all - what IS it with short people? Why do they always feel they need to make up for their height by being aggressive? The thing about basketball is that it is a contact sport which means that you expect to get a bit of hip and shoulder during the course of chasing the ball around. It means that if you don't enjoy being run into, pushed or leaned against you should probably take up another sport. Instead of taking my advice a couple of girls on the other team decided to just start slapping us whenever they could. At one point I was holding the ball up high just looking for someone to pass to and this little girl was jumping up and down in front of me, got pissed that she couldn't reach me, so just slapped me a few times. Nice. This is supposedly "social basketball" mind you. What the hell? It wasn't fun, it wasn't enjoyable, it was like a visit back to my primary school days. I think I'll stick to touch footy in the future - at least there most people have a sense of sportsmanship and fair play and can handle the incidental collisions that are unavoidable in sport without having a sook.

Let's go to the Excitement Factory

I have a new job! I am very excited about this one, as the bloke who rang to tell me would tell you were he available for comment right now. So now I don't have to remember sandwich prices anymore, only how to use MYOB - much more my style. I start Monday week so I have plenty of time to work out some office attire. YIPEE!! The bloke said it came down to 2 of us and they decided to go with me cos my personality came out more in the interview. Haha, it appears it helps to have a personality, whatever it may be. All useful tips kiddies, write it down. Take Personality To Interviews. Well, I was stoked, he was stoked, there was a lot of jumping around and general excitement. To celebrate I have made some chocolate biscuits that each contain a square of caramel chocolate. Yummo. Found the recipe in the cupboard here and figured there isn't a better way to celebrate really. Except maybe champagne? yeah, gonna get some of that tonight too then :)

Forward motion

Sooooooooooo, the interview on Friday was a bit of a disaster, but perhaps I will get the job if every other applicant turns out to be a complete idiot. There's always hope. Never mind because there is other excitement to distract me; I have a place to live! My friend put me in contact with an old work mate who is looking for a flatmate and we met up on Saturday after work, I had a look at the place, we agreed on a price and a day to move in and I'm set! It was all too easy really. The place is in Goodwood, really close to everything, trains, trams and more importantly, The Showground! Come September while all those other suckers are searching or paying through the nose for parking I'll be able to stroll out my front door and onto the ferris wheel. Nice. Only problem now is figuring out how to get my bed from it's location at dad's place to my new place without a car... Could strap it to the back of my bike I guess? And most importantly, uni starts next week so I can start worrying about that stuff rather than all the other boring stuff I usually worry about.

Little smiggler

I have a new friend in my bed. Unfortunately it's not as exciting as it first sounds... Alpha, the cat I am feeding while his owner is away, has decided that we are mates now. One the mornings when I am not getting up for work he jumps off his sleeping basket quite early and bounds up on the bed, sticks his face in my face and wakes me up, then, when I reach out from under the doona to pat him he jumps into the little cave created under the doona by doing so, snuggles up next to me and falls back to sleep. It's very cute. On the mornings when I DO get up early he wakes up with the alarm and does the same thing, only I can't snuggle up with him for long cos obviously the alarm means it's get up time. He likes to push against me with his feet when I change position - presumably so I don't roll on top of him! I have to say that I am a bit of a fan of cat ownership. But I can't have one of my own until i decide to stop travelling - so I hope it'll be a while before I move the kitty litter in!

In other news... due to the wet weather and the abysmal state of the fields touch training has been cancelled AGAIN! It's SO annoying, was looking forward to a run around all day. Instead we are all set for a video session at the British apparently. Great, so instead of running around now I am going ot be drinking beer! Gah!

Pushies

All this glorious rain is great, but can it not stop for long enough for the touch fields to dry up please? Games were canclelled twice this week cos of the soggy fields and when we finally did play on Thursday it was chaos since there was no grass anywhere but just a big pile of mud! Bit hard to step someone when simply walking across the field poses balance issues! I did almost score a try though - just need to work on my diving issues... I didn't play for my team though cos I mixed the game times up and had to play for the other uni team. Oops. Did my best to sabotage them though ;)

This morning I thought "Hmm, nice day for a ride... and then a few minutes later a friend messaged me and said "Let's gofor a ride!". Nice timing! So we headed down to Glenelg and then out to Henley, had a coffee and headed back up Anzac Highway. Nice to get the heart pumping on a Sunday morning. It was good to ride with someone else too, never done that before. Plenty of head wind on the way back from Henley! Now I have the rest of the arvo to whittle away... Might get some reading in...

It never rains but pours...

I just got another job interview today! It's not til next Friday so plenty of time to prepare - gonna need it considering that i don't even recall applying for the position and now cannot find the ad to tell me what it involves! Yesterday i had my interview at the boarding college. It was all looking really good before we got to the bit about availability. Turns out all my contact hours at uni are exactly when they would want meto be at the college supervising homework time... BOOO with extra boo cos it seemed like a great opportunity and they were really keen on me. She said that if my schedule changes I should get in contact, but that's not going to happen. Keep looking then I guess!

Yay

I have an interview! It's very exciting. I applied for a position in a boarding college at a private school on the outskirts of Adelaide. Basically I supervise the girls a few hours a week in exchange for rent/board. Nice deal, it means all the money I earn elsewhere I can simply pocket! Like housesitting forever! Of course I would have to donate some of my time, and I'm not sure that my uni schedule will even allow me to fit in with the times they would want me to be supervising - i guess I'll find that out on Thursday at 12:30! Wish me luck!