spring has sprung (for now)

creative coronation

i found myself describing what i got up to last tuesday night to a friend and was suddenly horrified to find that my life recently seems to have revolved around sitting at home watching two-hour episodes of coronation and knitting while waiting for my bread to finish baking in the oven. i never thought that i would make good housewife material and i was naturally somewhat distraught.

But then I took a step back and thought about the things that have come about because of my coronation street addiction and things came back into perspective. Now I'm not advocating that you all tune in to the dramas down at the rover but you might be surprised at what you can achieve.

pretty in pink

hoody #2 - moss green

15 months in the making but worth every second

wouldn't want my lady grey to get cold now, would we...

luxmoore grunt

hmmm....sometimes i wonder about my sanity. like right now for example. i just got up at 6:30am to enter in a running race in december! not just any running race but a 28km mountain run with a 800m smack bang in the middle. how is this a good idea?! admittedly i did do it last year and i did kick my sister's arse by 15 mins but she be on the ball this year, so i imagine the tables will turn. not to mention the fact that the last run i went on happened to be the said race lsat year!! of course, not helped by gammy knee which decided to dislocate itself midway through a river crossing out in the middle of nowhere while looking for ducks. but i suspect that this might be the thing needed to pull me out of this rut i have got myself bogged in. guess i should stop my early morning ramblings and go for a run....

lake rotoiti at dusk

glorious geekdom

it's great when you find something that really gets you going - something that lights your fire and makes you wanna sing it out to the world. i had one of those moments yesterday! it involved...ergh...writing coded population models and fiddling around with maps in gis. Everyone else talked about outside dirty things like catching ducks and banding things and jabbing birds with big needles while graeme and i hung out in the kitchen with imaginary numbers and beta distributions and geeked our little hearts out. It was so much fun and, the best bit, we have pretty much solved an entire chapter of my thesis already - i just have to plug in the numbers!!

presentation blues

another weekend wasted stressing about a presentation that i have to give in order to get funding for my phd. It's very pretty but i've been struggling to put the concepts in words that make sense without waffling on for half an hour. Had a practise run through today during which i didn't get slaughtered, so hopefully it should run smoothly tommorrow in St Arnaud.

Am driving up there tommorrow and give my talk and then hang around for a workshop on wednesday. thinking i might meander back on thursday and stop and play in the hills on the way, although the weather looks like it might be rubbish, so we'll see how that goes. should be a go trial of the waterproofness of my new tent either way. J&P have gone up to the north island for 10 days or so, so will have the house back to myself for a while again.

will post pretty pictures when i get back :o)

blah

Have been kinda stressed these last few weeks - lots to do at school, funding proposals to write and present, conference talk to write (for which i don't have the data), no guarantee i'm gonna get the funding for my project, $700 of my own money to fork out for the conference.....i could go on but whining about it ain't gonna help. had a bitchy weekend and am driving my poor sister (and no doubt, phil) up the wall.

I need to get out of the house and do something!!! start eating, sleeping, exercsing properly and generally stop sulking!