Month: November 2007

Old bad habits

In my post exam state I am reverting to my old bad habits.

I am playing on the internet a lot.

I am not going to bed until 11 or midnight, and

I have 4 books on the go at once (and another that I need to read before the movie comes out in december)…

And to top it all off everything that I learned for my exam is slipping predictably but lamentably out of my brain. I got asked about the brachial plexus the other day and I had to pause for a bit and really rack my brain to dredge up the details. A month and a half ago I could have recited it in my sleep.

Oh Noes!!!!

Moving with the times

You know the times are a changing when you have your (semi-) regular phone home to talk to the parentals, and have them recommend a half dozen videos on You tube that you just have to go and look at.

It used to be that what your brothers have been up to, and events in the parish were the conversational contents, but no more…

The Gecko Nation

Something odd that seems to have accompanied the arrival of summer temperatures has been a lot of geckos in the house.

Whereas they used to be something you would see occasionally scuttling out of the way earlier in the year, now they seem to be around all the time, and it’s creating some amusing moments because Jack feels compelled to chase them, but because they seem to always crawl around on the upper edges of the walls he is helpless to do anything other than watch them with his tail flicking excitedly back and forth. It’s actually like some kind of remote sensing system, because Jack will be tearing around and then suddenly stop and stare intently in a direction, and you can bet there’s a gecko there.

Luckily however he hasn’t managed to catch any yet.

Piccies

Today we had our 19 week morphology scan, and got to see our baby properly for the first time. Of course in good Ramsay fashion it spent about half of the scan time rolling backward and forwards, wriggling around, putting it’s hand in front of it’s face, and generally making like difficult for our Obstetrician who was doing the scan.

I’ve put some pics up both on facebook and in the photo section of our blog.

We’re getting another one in 4 weeks and I might try and get a few more then as well.

To see the Pics click on the thumbnail below.

1616

Contracts

Simone is currently accepting tenders on proposals to redesign the anatomy and (more importantly) physiology of the female reproductive system in specific relation to it’s adaptation and responses to pregnancy.

All design proposals with appropriate costings should be forwarded to Simone, care of “M**** F****ing Morning Sickness, Bentley Park, Cairns”.

One additional design suggestion which while not being an absolute requirement for any submission, would be a favoring component of any successful bid would be the ability to transfer symptoms (or indeed just the entire pregnancy) to the male other half…

Knockin’ my balls around

On the weekend Simone and I took a trip out to the local driving range and hit a few golf balls around.

Now I’ve never actually played golf properly, and my previous experience involves a lot of mini golf, a lot of Mario golf, and one prior trip to a driving range (with some high school mates, were the twofold aims were hit it further than the guy who went before you and try to hit the buggy going around collecting up the balls).

So I was surprised that I managed to put in not too bad a showing, and found myself rather enjoying the whole thing, especially once I figured that I was much less likely to slice the ball off on some wild angle with the 5 iron than I was with the driver. The only thing I didn’t try out was seeing how far I could get the ball to go with a wild swing from the putter (a little something I can try out next time maybe).

Perhaps when it cools down a bit again and I can bear to be out doors for more than 30 minutes at a go I could take some lessons to see if I like the other bits of the game as well.

Addendum

We went grocery shopping today and after weeks of looking at all the election advertising, almost all of it was gone.

Apparently the industrious little candidates and their helpers had taken most of them down overnight.

The amusing thing however was that there were still a few Labour signs up and about, and I had to agree with Simone when she suggested that perhaps the reason for this was that all the labour camp were still recovering from the celebrations from last night.

Choice ’07

Last night was of course the election, and unsurprisingly Kevin Rudd won.

However for me the real conundrum was a lot greater than who to vote for (firstly because there really was no competition, and secondly because I couldn’t vote anyway), but rather what to watch while I waited for the election results to come in. TopGear or Empire Strikes Back.

Oh the  tension. The indecision.

And in an amusing followup to my previous post, it appears that effort *does* win elections, because in our electorate the underdog Labour candidate (who you will recall has had minions and supporters out waving plackards all day every day) was elected after a 15% swing in favour of Labour. Huge!!

If effort won elections…

In our electorate it seems that the Liberal candidate is going to beat the labour candidate on the day, however if effort counted for anything then it should be a raunaway labour landslide.

Pretty much every day now on the way to and from work there are people on the sides of the roads with “Your rights at work” shirts on waving campaign posters for Kevin Rudd, the local labour candidate, and union propoganda, I mean policies, in general.

What’s most noticeable however is that while the Labour guys are always there, I’ve never seen any of the other party’s candidates being supported in this fashion, and it makes you feel that perhaps no-one loves the other guys enough to make the effort of standing in the rain and shine waving their placards around for them. And if the labour followers are that enthusiastic then surely this guy must me amazingly inspirational and far more worth voting for than the others…

At the other end of the spectrum however has been poor John Howard, who has finally reached the point where he can’t think of anything compelling to say and so can only resort to the frankly pathetic “You should be afraid of change, so you should vote for me again (although I can’t think of a more convincing reason why you should otherwise do so at the moment…)”. Even Simone who’s a lot more Liberal party tolerant than I commented that it was pretty pathetic.

Oh thank heavenly merciful crap

I passed the exam. Don’t know exact details yet as to how much I passed by but for the time being I’m happy enough. Now I just need to get rid of all the excess adrenalin that’s currently running around my body (It was a little anxious waiting for the results, and there were some hiccups with the college website this morning which meant that for about a quarter of an hour I thought I’d failed and had resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to continue studying and re-sit). In hind sight the coffee I had this morning may not have been the best idea…