the tardus sporting its new shiny paint job

i'm home

Finally got the phone turned on this morning, so i can connect back to the real world again. And fast too (still dial-up but it's amazing what an extra 20kb can do!!)

packed everything i owned (apart from the shit that is secretly stashed where my parents will never find it) into the back of my starlet on saturday. good thing i own the tardus cos there was a lot of stuff in the back of that little car. drove up to dunedin (sorry matt for being uber-slack) for my brother's 21st and then onto chch. Pretty nice place - nice quiet street, no lawn (so no lawn-mowing!!) but a deck and wee bit of garden. 7.5km bike to uni each way which is killing me but has to be good, right? People in my lab seem vaguely normal so far and apart from having furniture, i'm pretty much settled in and doing things. Off camping this weekend at mount cook :o)

radio-controlled whio

like ducks to water

today was release day for our final lot of ducks. sad to see them go but nice to see them out in the wild, doing their ducky thing. so nice to be out in the field again too, even if it was more time in a helicopter than actually on the ground (oh what a tough job i have!!)

so cannot wait until i don't have 20km of copper wire btwn me and the telephone exchange. watching things download at 64b (that's bytes, not kilo-bytes) is just a tad frustrating!!

flambe duck!!

the third clutch of ducks was treated to a little accessorising on thursday with transponders inserted in their neck, bands on their legs and transmitters on their back. definitely the trendy ducks on the block. however, one of them almost had an involuntary haircut when the meths used to sterilise the microchipping site caught fire during the transmitterising process!!

winter has come early and has prompted me to have a domestic weekend in front of the fire. made soup and bread, playing an assortment of instruments and am about to get out the knitting.