new year's eve

today has been a domestic day - i cleaned the car (inspired by the moss that was growing on the mudguards), made bread, picked a bucket of blackcurrents, cleaned my room, vaccuumed the house, washed the dishes, did several loads of washing, took up a pair of pants (or would have if the needle hadn't broken halfway through), fed the dogs/chook and generally kept busy being housewife-ish. not sure what brought on this bout of domesticity but it definitely won't continue over into the new year. I feel like i should make an effort and go to town and join in the festivities but i can't be arsed fighting my way around drunk people. but moping around at home ain't much of a way to see the new year in. *sigh*

stolen

things are fun....particularly when you steal them from other people's webpages (thanks clam for giving me something to fill in my evening with). I hate owning a tv - i just got sucked into coronation street of all things instead of doing something vaguely cerebral. did make strawberry muffins tho...yum!! one more day of work for the year and then hopefully i will be off camping of something exciting. weather looks like it is going to be the usual new year's crap but camping in the rain is fun, right!?

post christmas ramblings

christmas this year consisted of 25 rellies, a pre-lunch run and post-dinner walk with much gluttony inbetween. all quite rushed tho - drove to chch on the 23rd, flew to wellington on the 24th, did the xmas thing, then flew home on the 26th, went up the clinton on the 27th and then back home again today. not really much of a holiday. and unfortunately the brain is feeling it. spent the last two days being insanely grumpy about nothing which is ridiculous when i'm being paid to be in the hills in absolutley glorious weather. think i'm well overdue for a real holiday where i don't have to be nice to people i haven't seen since i was 3 or run around organising other people's lives. bring on a holiday.....and soon

work

can often be a drag but not when you work for doc. cancelling my trip up the arthur yesterday because of torrential rain meant that i got to see our three newest ducks hatch which was choice as i had missed the last two hatchings. and i got to get myself on a helicopter flight down to the coast that almost turned into a mission of epic proportions.

we flew down to breaksea island to check out an old hut that needs to be demolished to work out what tools will be needed. it's normally about a 40 min flight but dodgy low cloud meant that we had to take the long route down and almost meant that we didn't make it back.....

landing on the beach was a little tricky as the locals weren't that keen on moving. as was walking the length of the beach to the hut. also saw my first south island saddlebacks but failed miserably with the photography

the hut we came to investigate the demolishing of is in a wicked location. pity i will be in christchurch for that trip in janauary

wet jacket arm was looking stunning on the flight home

but...
the weather packed it in

so... after flying around in circles trying to find our way through a pass, we had to shut down in the kintail and hope for a gap in the cloud. It was looking like it might be a long and uncomfortable night

but eventually the cloud "cleared" for a brief second and we snuck over a pass just above the treetops. i was secretly disappointed that we made it home as i had to get up at 4:50am this morning and do the weaning (as I do again tomorrow) but sleeping in a raven doesn't really rate high on my "must do" list.

oh...the experiences one has when they work for doc!!

i should

really try and write here more often but i have been spending so much time at work in front of the computer that i don't feel like turning it on when i get home (& i want to be a phd student??) speaking of which, i got one of the canterbury doctoral scholarships for being the nerd that i am, so that's $45,000 to keep me entertained for the next three years. that's a LOT of beer. finished the kiwifruit monstrosity yesterday - i would take a picture but i'm too lazy to walk down the other end of the house to get my camera. got dolled up yesterday to go to a races party - nice little green feathery 1920's number. today was weaning/dagging/drenching day - started at 5am and spent the day covered in sheep shit - lovely. up the arthur tomorrow `til thurs, then it's off to welly for the big family christmas shindig. too much to do - whatever happened to summer holidays.

christmas

is just an excuse for overglorified consumerism and today i did my bit by participating in the madness known as christmas shopping. Wandered the streets of invercargill for hours and hours and spent something horrendous in the order of $400. And the best thing of all....I only spent $30 of that on somebody else. So I now have a horrific credit card bill and i am really no closer to having completed my intended shopping. But i do have a lovely new merino hooded jersey and three pairs of pants and some tops and some lovely kiwifruit fabirc from which to make a skirt for the kiwiana christmas party. ok so that last purchase was a wee bit random and will probably end up being hideous. I had actually gone in to look for some cloak fabirc after being inspired by the narnia movie to make a cloak suitable for summer temperatures but got sidetracked by other crazy fabrics. still who wouldn't want a skirt with kiwifruit.....

multi-tasking

is a bad idea when gardening. Particulalrly when one of the tasks involves picking gooseberries and the other trying to remove a horrendous gaiter tanline by wearing a limited amount of clothing. my arms are now nicely scratched and i have spent most of the evening removing thorns. got myself a 5 litre bucket full of strawberries tho. decided that i quite like the rural lifestyle (but not farming per se). will have to find myself a little block of land up in chch next year where i can potter about in the garden.

populating the business plan

i learnt all sorts of interesting business lingo at the recovery group meeting, like how to populate business plans and how to get money through funding grants by usign statements such as if you don't give us money and the ducks go extinct, you'll all look like dicks. managed to impress the RG into giving me about $10,000 towards my research and secured myself a contract to develop and maintain a national whio database for like ever. which is great because it measn that i will get paid to develop a tool that means other people end up doing all of my data entry for my thesis for me!! blenheim was disgustingly hot and reminded me of being back in athens, ga - not so cool. wined, dined and schmoozed. all and all a rather productive few days.

grunty

today was the day pf the luxmoore grunt. 27km of mountain running with a whopping 800m vertical climb followed by an 800m vertical descent. not the kind of thing that sane people do. i didn't really have any great expectations - have been sick with the flu for the past week and a half and spent all this week doing whio river surveys, covering about 50km walking down the clinton, tutoko and cleddau rivers. not really the best buildup. had secretly been hoping to beat my sister but wasn't that optimistic. But,hah....i was wrong!! did the run in 3:14, whipped my sister's arse but 15 minutes and would have been in the top 3 local women if i hadn't stopped for a pee near the end and been passed while i had my pants down round my ankles!! Bugger.

*sigh*

*sigh*...some people have no idea!!

blah

hatching takes such a ridiculously long time. 3 days ago things started to happen. we all got excited. so much so, that i came to work at 3:30 yesterday morning to be on nest watch. did anything happen. no. one hatched a few hours before i got there and then one just after i left. flew up the sinbad to look for nests. nothing. despite my best sneezing efforts. no nests. did find another one at monkey creek. but will have to steal those eggs again next week. sneezed and dripped my way around work again today. missed the fourth hatching by minutes again. in charge because everyone else off sick. me also sick. ducklings cute. feeling too crap to bust out the camera. or even get excited. have to work again tomorrow. can't shake this pathetic self-pitying crap. blah.....

sceptre mk II

started making a kite on sunday to fill in a rainy afternoon and i now have 3m of camoflague ripstop in various sized pieces spread across my floor.  managed to bend the sewing machine needle soon into the game but it will get there eventually.  bought some lovely fluorescent yellow cord for it today - should make it easier to find when it gets out of control and blows away.

 

four of our eggs did the external pipping thing today, so should hatch on wednesday.  meaning that i probably stole them on the day that poor trinity finished laying them, mean and horrible duck girl that i am.

domestic...er...bliss

i started off this morning in a fit of domestication & decided to clean out my wardrobe. this involved emptying out 3 big plastic bin loads of stuff onto the floor that hadn't been opened since i since i moved in april....that was as far as it got. i now have 3 big plastic bin loads of stuff on my floor. not entirely sure how i'm going to get from the door to my bed. spent the rest of the day reading a book about mormons - scary stuff - and generally feeling blah. think erina's bug has finally got the better of me :o(

arthur

the arthur valley provided its share of ups and downs this week. managed to scam a ride in on the waka huri huri on tuesday which was definitley a bonus - saved 19kms of walking!! found 2 wee ducklings up at sutherland falls (see pics below). only about a week old and super cute. two more pairs are still nesting but unfortunately the kerrigans nest looks to have been predated by a possum (bloody aussies!). found the remains of 2 eggs in the nest but luckily sal looks to be doing okay. ended up finishing early, so walked out to milford yesterday and then checked out the cleddau birds today. marge was busy hoovering up bugs, so will hopefully re-nest. louise's nest has also been trashed by a possum. looks like they would have been pretty close to hatching as the eggshell had feathers stuck to the inside. couldn't find her anywhere but did run into angus, the suspected father. trinity and fat freddy at monkey creek don't appear to be up to much, although their eggs should be hatching mon/tues next week (fingers crossed).

more duckies :o)

$87,000

....now that got your attention, didn't it!! I was getting really bored before working on this scholarship application that i've been dragging out for weeks when i calculated how much money i could be making. $87,000 is a lot of money for a few hours work! Got my mind back on track pretty quickly.....although my mind did keep wandering, thinking about all of the things that i could buy with $87,000. that's a LOT of toys!!

Back into the field tomorrow - the arthur valley this week to check on the status of our 4 nests. hopefully yet more wee duckies safely hatched and hoovering up the bugs.

a spring evening at parahau

the bro post-tour

ducks @ forks

gjfirsf

(too lazy to actually think of a title)......good week up the river - 10 ducklings doing their thing, although one nest was destroyed. got my camera 2 mins before i had to leave for the boat, so got a few pics but have left the usb cable at work, so can't share the joy just yet. watched the little bro race in the tour in te anau yesterday and down in inver-vegas today. he did quite wel, although had the usual dramas. raced the whole first day with his brakes jammed on and then accidentally didn't ride the last lap of the race today, so not sure what the final placing will end up being. spent more $$ in town today but came back with a few new clothes. not that there is anywhere to wear such things in little old te anau.

tutoko

ran up the tutoko track today in an insane attempt to beat my boss's record for getting to bushline. made it up there in 1:17hrs but was just pipped at the post by a measely 4 minutes. still, he's 6'2 with legs twice the length of mine, so i didn't really stand a chance. caught up with a pair of whio with 5 little ducklings which was cool. probably only about a week old and tiny compared to our monsters at the wildlife park who weighed in at over 300g today. that's over 120g gained in 6 days. not a bad effort, although they do pretty much eat pure protein, so probably not that surprising. found wade with a new unbanded girl which is great. ended up running back down the track in order to be back at the roadend in time for a pick up. made it with one minute to spare but then had to sit there for an hour waiting `cos they got a bit confused up the sinbad. starred in another exciting film session today "finding" some eggs in a nest. would have been ok if i hadn't said that i was going to go and get the truck from the incubator. hopefully that bit ends up on the cutting room floor.

off up the clinton tomorrow, so no more exciting updates for a few days

cloaked

so i was drunk last nite and wrote this big long post but the server was playing up and i couldn't concentrate long enough to even contemplate writing it all again. and i shan't try and repeat it all again `cos while drunken ramblings seem like a good idea at the time, they inevitably lead to one revealing things that one shouldn't (not saying that i had anything to reveal, of course).
anyway the drunkeness was in aid of kerri's housewarming/guy fawkes party. wore my elven cloak in public for the first time - it's hard to find the right occassion to wear 6m of polarfleece. but i was glad to have it last night, although not so good when it's windy. found some ok cider at the supermarket for a whole $6.95 a litre, so i was set up for the night. fireworks were a bit of a fizzer though.

spent today playing ducks - mainly sitting in the sun watching rod morris, wildlife photographer extraordinaire, take rolls and rolls of duckling pics for some book.

new toys

i just spent lots of $$!! Drove to invers this morning and went to all of the camera shops but no-one actually had the camera that i wanted. did pick up a pair of boots for $100 to replace my completely trashed $500 pair but still, pretty much a waste of a drive. called the chch company the second that i got in the door and ordered a brand spanking new sparkling Nikon D70s and a 28-300mm sigma lense before i could change my mind. should be here on tues - hopefully before i have to leave to go up the clinton. yay for new expensive toys!! now i will be able to post pics of ducklings ad nauseum

ooh ooh

...but i think thati'm gonna go to invervegas tomorrow and buy that camera!!

rain

rain....sums up the day really. rained all the way to milford. rained so that the rivers were too high to cross. rained and got me soaking wet trying to cross the rivers that were too high to cross. rained so that i didn't find the ducks that i wanted to because of the rivers that were too high to cross. rained all the way home from milford. still raining now.

on the bright side, had burritos and grolsch with the cool poppy-top lid thingamabobs for dinner. burritos turned out to be mouldy but the grolsch was sufficiently grolschy and came with free glasses. now i have to go outside and get all of the crap of the driveway that i left out there in the brief moment when it wasn't raining and that has now been sitting in the rain for several hours while i got sucked into crap tv *sigh*

nz rep

that smart little bro of mine has become the 2nd member of the family to represent nz. okay so i did for totally nerdy reasons but he has made it into the national road cycling team which is a pretty impressive effort. not bad for a 20 year old.

I've been trying to buy a digital camera online and i am totally confused. thought i knew what i wanted until i saw an ad in the latest wilderness mag for a canon which is better, cheaper and lighter than the nikon that i was gonna get. but i have nikon lenses, so should really stick with the nikon, i s'pose. might see if i can pick up a cheap(ish) 28-300 lense and just get the body. but not sure what to do. the old indeciveness has kicked in big time (so much so, that i just spent 5 mins unable to decide how to spell indeciveness but i'm too lazy to look it up, so have settled for a probable mispelling)

piccies

at last.....here is a whio duckling.  in fact, have five of the little peckers.

 

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brief interlude while i was shown how to feed the dogs. I am the farm for the next five days.

 

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just voluntarily organised another tv interview on friday.  we are going to go and "collect some eggs" [insert "take some hens eggs from under an aesthetically pleasing bush"].  as long as i don't have to wear the little microphone thing again.  i have a bad habit of swearing on camera!!

volleyball

have been thinking over the past few days about this whole "why do i write here" thing and have come to the conclusion that i don't really do a lot outside work (not sure where this actually fits into the whole "why do i write here" thing). so i figure that it is time i got myself some hobbies or at least partake in the ones that i kinda pretend that i already do. so dragged myself down to the volleyball competition with the work team this arvo. crazy competition with pretty much no rules - head and feet are acceptable body parts with which to strike the ball. I thought that our team in the states was dodgy but we were definitety worse tonite. almost won the first set tho, lost the second two horribley.

Finally managed to steal a digi camera today and took some photos of the ducks but managed to leave it in the back of the truck. so pics tomorrow. took some video too but guessing i won't be able to post that here.

the vaccinator

spent the day in the tailing pen vaccinating 2200 lambs.  got covered in sheep shit, blood and almost vaccinated myself against pulpy kidney, tetanus, blackleg, black blood and some other nasty bacterial infections half a dozen times (never quite managed to get that needle thru the skin luckily).  ran around in the sun chasing lambs up and down the paddocks, got seriously hit on by the "bro farm" tailing gang and then got the fun task of kicking 2200 lambs tails off the back of the truck into the gut hole.  did get quite nicely pissed on champers afterwards tho as we managed to break the 150% mark.  surprised myself by actually largely enjoying the day but it does reinforce my idea of never becoming a fulltime farmer!!

a philosophical aside

don't know about anyone else but ever since i started this blog a whole 17 posts ago, i have begun thinking about my life in terms of how i will write about it online.  which gets kinda weird `cos i tend to spend all day wandering around thinking about writing about what i am doing and not really actually thinking about what i am doing.  the most annoying thing is that by the time i sit down in front of the computer to actually write about what i've been doing, i've forgotten what i had thought to write about.

yawn

today has been one of those days when i've been busy all day but achieved absolutely nothing.  played farmer this morning and chased a few sheep up and down the road, cleaned out dad's university notes from the garage, chased a few more sheep, stuffed about on the computer trying to work out where to buy my camera from and getting thoroughly confused.  that's about it.  just found out that we are tailing at 7am tomorrow which lend itself to a thoroughly exciting day. 

heavy rain warning

spent the week in the clinton doing the whio thing again. managed to scam another ride in the waka huri huri (yay for made-up maori words for things that never existed before europeans arrived) which saved me 13 miles of walking. Wed was a cracker day during which i located a new nest after much cursing and swearing at house-sized boulders and dense coprosma shubbery. a fair chunk of the riverbed was dry, so spent most of the day "looking for ducks" while really avoiding the crowds of walkers that spoil the track now that the season has started. Woke on thurs morning to a big rumbling noise which i was praying wasn't the cliff in front of the hut collasping. turned out it was only an avalanche behind the hut (which is not much of a brighter prospect). pissing with rain and a heavy rain warning on the sched, so i skedaddled down the pomp gorge before the river got to high and then checked out red and kitty who are presumably still nesting. smashed a canada goose's nest much to her distress but better than having a bunch of geese flapping around upsetting the balance of things. looks like verne and shirley are still nesting as well which is good. picked up eric's tx down at 6 mile - not sure what happened to him. no carcass, so hopefully it's a case of dropped transmitter and not something more sinister. Headed back to the hut quite damp and settled in for the evening. lit the fire, cooked up a big feed and was about to go to bed when i heard a knocking at the door. now one never gets visitors at castle, so thought it was a bit weird. turned out to be bushy, the warden from mintaro who had been sent to get me. the office bods were a bit worried that my hut might fall into the river because of the heavy rain, so i had to pack up and walk the hour up to mintaro on that dark and stormy night. trundled back down there this morning to find the hut fully intact (much to my disappointment as i had left most of my crappy uniform in the hut, hoping that it would wash away and i could get it replaced with new things). packed up the rest of my shit and walked out to glade in the pissing rain. 20mm an hour it was falling, with the river rising quite fast. hopefully maude and shirley's nests haven't washed away and the ducklings down at forks are okay. should now be sorting out my wet shit at the backdoor....but where's the fun in that??

melita stream

loaded the kayaks (decided against the jetski as i didn't want to be responsible to liberating didymo into the eglinton)on the truck yesterday and headed up to lake gunn in a bitterly cold south-easterly. nice headwind across the lake which slowed things down a bit. parked up on the beach and then "followed" one of those "i was a nice track in the 1970s but now only exist as the odd bit of permalit on trees that narrowly missed out on being wiped out in a slip 10 years ago" kind of tracks. Thankfully not too much bush lawyer but some nice vertical bits where you are trusting your life to a handful of moss that is tentatively holding onto a crumbling rockface. fun stuff!! Took about 2 hours to climb up to bushline and then it was boulder-hopping up the stream bed to the saddle. bit of chamois sign up near the tops. Took about 4 hours to climb 800m - the saddle sitting at 1309m. nice views down the hollyford and into falls creek - looked like a good spot for whio. managed to find a little more of the track on the way back down the hill which meant that we managed to avoid most of the bluffs.



have spent most of today staring at the computer, trying to write some bullshit about why my research will benefit nz for a scholarship application. bit of a waste of a gloriously sunny day. still, am planning on taking the jetski out on lake manapouri tomorrow.

word of the day: flibbertigibbet

A flighty or whimsical person, usually a young female.

a sticky situation

today was another day of sitting in the sun playing with ducks. put the ducklings into the outside runs today and they went nuts - swimming up and down, diving under the rocks, chasing mealworms. bit of a relief really 'cos they didn't really like water up until this morning. Max managed to put his camera down on a gule trap which meant that everything he touched got covered in sticky bubblegum scented goo - the car keys, the door on the run, my hands, the duckling that i picked and then had to peel off my fingers. We put a cover onto one of the runs this afternoon and i managed to impale myself on a tussock. Damn thing got stuck in my ear but i had to keep moving or risk getting crushed by a few 100kg of steel. think the thing went into my brain. probably did it some good but. off tramping tomorrow with the jetski up melita stream.

...

and here's a pic to keep people happy. Not an interesting one (or even from today's egg stealing mission) but a pic nonetheless. I tried to steal some duckling ones from chris but he had the nerve to not leave them on the work server. will bail hime up tomorrow and hold him accountable!!

off on a wild duck chase

Off i went along the milford road today to look for ducks.  First stop, the chasm.  headed up the west branch of the cleddau following the beeps but soon decided that i was going up the wrong branch and cut across to the main river.  mistake # 1.  a "shortcut" is never a shortcut in fiordland.  Swamps, bush lawyer, rotten tree falls that trap you up to your knees in decomposing muck.  finally made it out to the river and then proceeded to chase phantom beeps around in circles for over an hour. Get a strong signal in one direction, head towards it, signals fades away. signal strongish back where i'd come from.  turn around, head back towards signal, signal fades away.  drives you mad it does.  found donne who was looking kinda shifty, like he might have a mate on a nest.  this fueled the search but i eventually gave up and wandered off up a creek that i'd never noticed before.  after about 200m, the signal started to get strong again.  followed the creek for about half a km, getting very (over the waist) wet in the process.  then once again decided to go overland which again was a mistake.  came across a big pile of feathers and a skeleton which sent the old heart rate racing but the signal wasn't that strong, so kept going (looked more like a kereru anyway).  After a few more circles, a large number of toi toi cuts and some careful poking around, i found her.  Little louise (or lousie as my lovely colleagues call her) sitting on a nest. Not sure how many eggs she has or who her mate is.  Hopefully that wee stoat beastie doesn't find it.  Wandered back down the river (the nice easy way that i would have come if i hadn't spent the morning chasing bounces) and ran into angus, the most likely candidate for a mate, hanging out on a rock.

 

Mission one complete, I drove back to monkey creek to look for trinity.  Jumped out of the truck, flicked on the TR4 and almost blew my eardrum when the beep boomed in. Crossed the road and located the source of the beep in a toi toi about 5m from the road.  Took me 25 mins tho to actually work out where in the toi toi she was sitting. Snapped on a pair of latex gloves and went in.  Stole 5 rather grubby looking eggs and popped them in the incubator, while being watched by a busload of interested tourists, all asking stupid questions as tourists are want to do.  Bit nerve-wracking being in sole charge of 5 eggs belonging to an endangered species.  wouldn't want to scramble them. Drove back to town and was ambushed by a tv cameraman (never again will i radio ahead to let people know that i am coming).  Had to put on the silly little microphone and give a little speal about the exciting things that i had been doing.  going to be very dorky. No idea when will actually air but i will make sure that i don't mention it until after the fact.  Looks like the eggs are only about 5-6 days old, so will be a month before they hatch (assuming my driving was slow and careful enough)
 

this is cool

i'm trying out the emailing thing. i was wondering the other day why you would ever use this but I am not cool enough to be allowed to access the internet at work. but now i can still update this while pretending to do work (assuming that this works, of course).

brown girl in the rain, tra la la la la

I am currently s'posed to be watching touching the void at the movies for the tramping club meeting but my parents (note plural) decided that they couldn't be bothered going, so instead I get to fix my mother's computer. The bonus, i guess, is that I won't get that infernal song stuck in my head for the next two weeks.
Spent the day playing mother duck again - tried to teach them to swim but they don't fall into the "like ducks into water" catergory. stupid ducks.... had to keep throwing them in.

grrrrr

i just wrote a big long post and then my server crapped out and i lost it all. can't be faffed writing it all again. not that you're missing much. all about donkeys and monkeys and other such exciting things. forgot to take my USB stick to work, so no photos....sorry. maybe tomorrow but no guarantees

I've just been playing around with templates and have pretty much ended up back where i started with a few minor modifications. still it will get there eventually. duckling pics tomorrow, i promise

things i learnt in the weekend

1. That one needs to take care when lambing sheep - too much pressure leads to bad things (like lambs coming out in bits)
2. That motherhood is over-rated (for the reasons outlined above)
3. That the human body contains more microbial cells than actual human cells (yay for newscientist)
4. That solar panels take far longer to stick on the roof than you think they will (it took a team of 5 people 7 hours!)
5. That a climbing rope is essential on a roof with a 20 degree pitch to prevent a rapid descent
6. That aluminium joinery is easy (provided you don't want to look at the end result)
7. That standing in the sun for 7 hours fitting solar panels ends in sunburn

taxes

I've just spent a frustrating evening doing my taxes - only 3 months overdue!! I only have adobe reader, so i couldn't save anything and had to keep restarting all of the time. Still hopefully I will soonbe $318.09 richer (or at least my student loan will be $318.09 smaller). This is assuming of course that they still give methe $$ after all this time.Another day of hefting rocks around in the sun - why join a gym when you can get paid to workout. Turned the ducklings intolittle punk rockers by giving them pink and purple nailpolish mohawks, so that we can tell them apart. Rock on, dudes.Will hoepfully get a chance this weekend to make a few changes around here (a little less like another site i know, for starters)with maybe a few more uptodate pics to boot - stay tuned

fenn-o-phobia

Headed into the hills on monday to do a spot of duck watching. nice flight in the waka huri huri up over the mackinnon pass, although i did have my doubts at one point that we were actually going to make it - holy crap do those boys fly close to the edge!! Managed to lug a whole season's worth of tinned food up to the hut from the chopper pad in only 2 trips which impressed the builder's at pomp (an offer of help wouldn't have gone astray, lads).
Headed up to Mintaro on Tues morning all set to find some ducks and do a little stoat trapping. Found 4 birds but of course not until i had walked up the river to the top of the gorge instead of taking the trap (it seemed like a good idea at the time). Collected my eggs and set off for the first stoat trap where i quickly rediscovered my phobia of traps. The first one I set nearly took my thumb off and after my experience last year when I ended up with one firmly attached to my thumb, I decided against any further trapping. Headed back down the valley, cautiously peering into the boxes but couldn't get up the nerve to actually set any of the damn things. Fortunately for me after walking past about 10 boxes, I spied a duck on the river and took off after it to try and figure out who it was. By the time I got back to the track I had managed to lose the spanner in the river somewhere and couldn't open the boxes to set a trap even if I had overcome my ridiculous fear. Oh well....
Managed to catch up with most of the birds and confirm three nests, with possibly another one on the way. Hopefully there will be ducklings next time i'm in there. Hopefully my hut will be too!! At least one tree fell off the bank into the river while I was there and the toilet won't be too far away. There's now only about 5m btwn the front door and the river - hope i'm not in there during a flood (or an earthquake)!! Back to the office tomorrow to play with our 5 wee ducklings - yay :o)

aoraki

Spent the weekend up at mt cook for nita's 21st. Drove up in my wee bomb on friday nite, arriving up there about midnight. Stayed at the NZAC's Unwin Hut which has wicked views up the Hooker and Tasman Glaciers - definitely a place to go again. Woke up on Saturday morning to falling snow!!! A few cm's on the ground around the hut which was magic. There were about 40 rellies and other random people there - heaps of peeps i hadn't seen for 15 years or so. Went for a wlk up to Hooker Lake in the arvo - well everyone else did while Jo & I ran up and back in a snow storm. Took about two hours and was damn cold but a pretty good track and fabulous views of cook. Cracker day up there today - beautiful and sunny. Walked up to Red Tarns in the snow and took some wicked pics of cook reflected in the tarns. I'm old school when it comes to photos though, so you'll have to wait a while til my slides come back. Actually got quite sunburnt!! Drove back this arvo and trying to psych myself up to go back to work. Hard to get used to 2 day weekends after having 2 weeks off at a time over the winter. Still, could be ducklings tomorrow - that's a good enuf reason to get excited about work.

scholarships & ducks

I rang the UC scholarship office today to chat about the doctoral scholarship that i'm applying for and it turns out that i have to apply for special addmission because i have a foreign degree. stupid because i also have a kiwi degree and a pain in the arse cos it is heaps more paperwork for essentially nothing....grrrr

our eggies have almost hatched!!! The wee blighters are into the aircell and will probably hatch on saturday - crazy to think that a duckling is going to jump out of those tiny little eggs!

Oh & I've just added the only digital photo i could find of myself (that was publishable anyway) - a tad older (& wiser, perhaps) than that now!!

statistical nightmares

I just spent 3 hours doing my mother's stats assignment - not sure why she expects me to remember how to do things that i did in highschool or how to use a computer program that i have never seen before!! Yay for my fantastic ability to sound authoritative while spouting complete and utter bullshit.

It absolutely pissed down this morning with thunder & lightning - storms are great. Of course, I cooked this afternoon in my sexy polarfleece work pants and now it is pissing down again - spring weather is great.

I will get around to making this pretty at some point but blogger was down for maintenance last night when i was trying to do it and now i can't really be arsed. & besides, I don't think that anyone actually knows that this exists yet anyway

the world premiere

So I figured that i never update the old page, so why not start something completely new. The likelihood of me ever using this one is probably nil too but hey it's worth a shot.

Got to heave lots of rocks around at work today...the runs for the whio babies are starting to actually look like rivers which is cool. Must have caught several thousand insects which got dumped rather unceremoniously into the runs, although a large amoutn got lost in the back on the truck when i managed to get it stuck .... grrrrr!!! Should be writing my proposal as we speak but stuffing around doing this is much more entertaining.

Aha...so i figured out the putting in pics bit (not that it was particularly technical). This is SO much easier than the old way i used to do things. Anyway...meet Elton & Charlie ... potential breeders from the Arthur Valley. Breed, my little duckie friends, Breed!!!