Josie's Birthday and a quick update

The University Rose Garden and view of 'the mountain' on my walk to work. Yep, I did say walk!

This may be a bit of a scatty post because I'm at work before 8am, I'm supposed to be working on a fellowship application and I could do with about 3 days of extra sleep! Today is a gorgeous day - the sky is crystal clear, there isn't a breath of wind and it's the beloved's birthday! I have to admit that I am 'the suck' as far as partners go, since I didn't say happy birthday until we stumbled upstairs for breakfast to find a table decked out with cards and packages! Bad Jac! I will make it up to her tonight (I hope) since we are going out for our very first dinner together, alone, since Marty was born! I'm taking her to Piccolo in North Hobart which I was very impressed with last March, so here's hoping they're still on fire. Of course I will blog the entire meal later :D

I was going to write a post about my new workplace with lots of pics but like i said, there's a fellowship application calling so for now you'll have to settle with a news brief and some photos from our last few weeks in Texas.

News Brief:
I'm about to finish my 3rd week of work and it is all going well. Looks like there's plenty of project that my input may be at least partially useful on. I'm fired up to get some grants in and get some funding so that's all good. I don't have a computer yet and it looks like that may still be 3 or 4 weeks off so thankfully I have my laptop! Only downside is it means another 4 weeks on the unpredictable wireless network.

We're still house hunting - both to rent or buy. It turns out we're quite fussy... who would have guessed?!

We're starting to get out and about a bit more although we still haven't got into the swing of really catching up with people (we're getting there though!) Marty is finally settling down sleep wise, which is making a big difference, but again he has a way to go yet.

We miss everyone from Texas horribly. I had a bad moment on Saturday where some of the reality came crashing down and I turned into quite the beast. I guess it is a form of grief and it sure does come sneaking up on you when you don't expect it! Thank goodness for the internets! Chatting online and skype help make the distance feel less vast. If anyone wants to find me I'm almost always on gtalk (http://www.google.com/talk/)

Hi ho hi ho off to work I go. Here's some pics to tide you over until I get a more interesting post up!

Mr Happy having a lovely time on John and Jo's lawn. This was about a week before we left Texas, in the middle of an absolutely stunning spring! (well, apart from the insane clouds of oak pollen)

It's amazing what you'll do to keep a little one happy while the movers spend six hours packing up the house around you. Marty is water obsessed - he crawled fully clothed into the bottom of Josie's shower the other day and was having a lovely time! He was probably due for a wash ;)

All we needed was a sink, and old apple and a giant grapefruit to keep him happy. If only he were still amused by simple things! Now he's more interested in attempting to dismantle a TV remote, work out how a heating panel works or dismantle Papa's newspaper!