The dreaded lurgie

It's been a week between posts! argh.

I did some kid sitting on the weekend and it seems that I don't have babysitter immunity yet because I picked up the nasty chest bug that they had. Going swimming with 2 sick kids probably didn't help, but it sure helped the whole tired, bed time thing. It was lots of fun to hand out with kids again and I watched Nanny McFee which made me cry! Lucky I was watching the end after they'd gone to sleep ^_^

Back there this weekend for a 'six year old pool party'...12= kids, one pool, major chaos. But it should be lots of fun too. We're having an adult de-stress later that evening.

There's nothing like a raging head cold in the morning to make you want to go and buy drugs, and by drugs I of course mean legal medication, pharmaceuticals and the like. But since I have to go to a drug store to do that... Anyhow, I now have red pills for the day, blue pills for the night, yellow pills to suck and make my throat go numb (and my mouth taste terrible for hours - an unfortunate side effect) and white pills if none of the above seem to be working. Needless to say I still feel like crud. Yay for science. However, copious amounts of vitamin enriched pink grapefruit juice seems to be helping ^_^

Work has been busy, nay, hectic in recent days with a few late nights in the office. It all seems to be under control for the moment though. We have a bunch of major grants due soon, and I've been preparing abstracts and submissions for conferences and well and working on lots of small but urgent projects. I like it :)

And finally, in news that isn't about Jac, my dear friends Kath and Andrew had a little boy the other day, Angus. He's lovely!

Tiny Size!

Wandering through Target on the weekend I stumbled across these miniature gems! Aren't they wonderful? I've never seen camping gear displayed like this. Imagine being the person whose job it is to miniaturise all the tents into display form. I wanted to get one as a house for Purry but they only sell the big ones :( I was also very tempted to raid the toy isle and tuck a whole bunch of bears into the mini sleeping bags, but I restrained myself.





All is well here. It's clear and sunny again but the few days of rain we had have dome wonders for old San Antonio. The temperature has dropped to a simply delicious 35 degrees C and everything looks so greens. It's given a whole new lease of life to all the poor plants, as though they've been waiting for months to have one huge growth spurt, and now everything is just covered in green. I don't think I've ever seen such growth and so quickly!

(PS. Tiny Size! is a bit of an in joke but it's a brand of mexican gum - Kath and Andrew used to send it to Jo and I when they were in the states and "Tiny Size!" kind of entered our vernacular. Got to love bad translations!)

Hansoi

Unless you're an avid ego-surfer you'll probably never read this, but I want to say a huge thank you to the mystery person who runs the "hansoi" shoutcast online radiostation. You keep me sane at work when my head is full of numbers. Whenever I think that we have similar tastes in music you add yet another CD that I adore! Please, keep the music coming ^_^

Floods, explosions and an overactive imagination

Ok, so I'm getting my wrists slapped for falling behind with posts, and rightly so I guess!

Yesterday was pretty amazing, it rained ALL DAY! I haven't seen so much rain since I've been here. It started just as I pulled into the carpark in the morning and only got heavier as I waited in the car for it to ease up so I could make the mad dash to the office. Needless to say I was literally dripping by the time I got inside! While we desperately need the rain, the downside is that San Antonio is not a city that was build to cope with the rain, even a little rain... there's no curbside drainage, the roads aren't rounded and water pools on the highways in no time. The urban planers here should definitely win the Atlantis Award for drainage. It only takes about an hour of heavy rain for us to have widespread flash floods, but do you think the crazy drivers slow down? At all? Nope, if anything they're worse! I left work late last night waiting for both the rain and the traffic to calm down as much as possible.

We had a little excitement outside my office on Friday. I was writing an email when I looked out my window to see one of the workmen (just finishing the renovations and finally packing up) knock a hole in the top of a huge gas tank! The huge stream of white vapour not 20m from my office caught my eye! I then watched as the workman kind of pretended nothing had happened, then slunk back a few paces, then thought better of it and wandered off to tell someone there was a problem, then more workmen congregated (meanwhile the tank is still spewing gas like there's no tomorrow). I became somewhat concerned when the laid back workmen started moving back and standing behind trees, then more so when the fire brigade turned up and got them all back behind our building... Meanwhile I'm still sitting 20m away from the thing separated by a window and wondering if I'd have time to dive under my desk if it exploded (cold war style). Anyhow, it all turned out fine, of course! They basically waited for it to empty itself then took at away. Kept me entertained before pub time though ^_^

I kid you not, the weather forecast for San Antonio today is "Isolated Sprinkles"... Choc chips or 100s and 1000s?

Sleep Deprived!

Well, last night I had the worst sleep EVER! I went to bed a little earlier than usual with the hope of catching up some...Ha! I was having trouble getting to sleep anyway, it was really muggy last night because there was a storm approaching, so I was either hot and sweaty, or cold and sweaty with the A/C on. Ick. Anyhow, after an hour or so of tossing and turning the smoke detector in my bedroom starts doing the flat battery beep, stupidly loudly! After attempting to sleep through it I finally spat it and climbed up on my (rickety) stool to take the $*#& thing down, only to discover it's hard wired in and taking out the battery just makes it beep more! Anyhow, at my wits end (and about 2am) I finally spac it, make a pile on the lounge floor out of my 2 doonas and the cushion from my chair and attempt to sleep on that. Even with all the doors to the bedroom closed I could still hear the beeping thing (ha!) Needless to say, I didn't sleep much.

On the up side, soon after that at started raining! Sweet, glorious and soaking rain that lasted half the day. It was wonderful and the temperature dropped to 20ish C, delicious!

Invaders

I got inspired yesterday and went to the craft shop to buy some painting gear! My walls have been horribly bare so I though I might try to come up with something! It's been a very long time since I painted though so I started off VERY easy! Kate send me a coolhunter link that inspired the bedroom invaders. They still need to be sealed but they were good practice, although my hands cramped so badly I nearly couldn't finish them! I'm working on something a little more Jac now ^_^

Holidays

Just a quicky to say Happy Father's Day to all those dads out there...including the somewhat terrified dad's to be :) I'm thinking of you all.

Well, call me slow but I have just worked out the Monday is a holiday here (Labor day) so YAY for a long weekend! It was that day, four years ago (2002) that this whole adventure started, when I was accepted into a statistical geneitics course in LA. Little did I know the doors that would be opened in that week!

(told you it would be a quicky!)

Thank you

I just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who helped us with the visa. I should have said it yesterday but I was a little overwhelmed with relief. There was a LOT of paperwork to collect and most of that was from trying to second guess what they might ask for (the website is not up there on the clarity scale). Thanks so much to everyone who wrote letters, provided shoulders to stress on and all those other things that made the process that little bit easier ^_^

I'm off to a BBQ tonight with the aussie contingent from work (and a few honoraries). It's at the house I was sitting with the pool, so I'm looking forward to a swim. Nothing hugely exciting planned for the weekend. I think we're all at the point where we're over the heat and just waiting for it to break. We've even cancelled friday night drinkies lately and that's almost unheard of!!

Oh, and if anyone can work out how to get me one of these you'll be on my lost of world's coolest people FOREVER!

Yay!!

Well, some of you already know the good news... Jo's visa was approved yesterday! Talk about major sighs of relief!

I don't really know the details but the interview went well. She now has a 5 year visa (longer than mine...go figure!!). The odd thing is that point of entry [immigration in LA airport] decide on the duration of stay, which may be 6 or 12 months, then you reapply for an extension internally (yay for not having to border hop to do paperwork) and that process can continue for up to 5 years. I might remind you that 5 years is definitely NOT on the cards ^_^

So anyhow, I'm stoked and Jo seems stoked too, although the reality of coming the the US is probably kicking in about now and that can be nastier than a bucket of moonshine. But no matter how far removed from the happy mateship of old oz, I have no doubt that being here will be a great experience for both of us, and fun too!

*happy dance*