There has been another flat-mate change in our house. Only this time, Flatmate-Boy's moving out wasn't because relations had degenerated to the point where we all hated each other (which has actually happened three times this year, ouch). No, it was because he's going home for three months and didn't want to have to pay rent, which seems fair enough to me.

I'll miss his little face. Probably won't miss the doof-doof music that floated out from under his door, or the occasional rotten garbage fragrance because he hadn't gotten around to taking it out, or the recreational drug use he sometimes indulged in. Still, like I say, we'll miss him because we all did quite like each other.

And he left us half a bottle of vodka in the fridge. This one's for you Flatmate-Boy.

I wonder really what the point of leaving someone one an anonymous message that says, "Fuck off dickhead, no one gives a shit about what you think", really is. I mean clearly, by virtue of the fact that Anonymous felt so provoked by what I had written that they needed to leave a fairly strongly worded message, he/she does actually give a shit about what I think, but has a slightly different point of view.

Abusive message aside, I fixed my message settings so now if you leave one it will actually get published. Unless it is abusive and anonymous because then I'll delete it you clown.

Anyways, here are some more pics: top is one of the pubs in town, The Imperial; middle is Hanna's Arcade where I used to work; and bottom is The Closet, which is part of Hanna's and where I worked most of the time. Unfortunately the picture quality isn't great because these were taken quite late in the afternoon/evening.

I've discovered there are many pointers for knowing you're in the country. Among them are paddocks, livestock (more on that later), no good clothes shops, and the notion that my house can only have a dial-up internet connection, rather than broadband, since we're built in to the side of the hill. Crazy, until now the hill has only caused strange reception for Chanel 7, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. And so friends, I haven't been posting for a week because it was taking 30 seconds for google to load, and that's just not cricket.

On the subject of livestock: when I flew in last Wednesday morning I had the window seat and so could see all the little critters as we came in to land. As we came over a few hundred fields of sheep grazing I noticed that they were all walking in single-file, straight lines, even though they were out in the middle of nowhere. It looked very funny, because they looked like little white woolly ants and it made me giggle.

I took some photos while I was at home...for your viewing pleasure:



These are the view from the top of my street. The one on the top looks out over Mt Duval to the north, and the one below is more out to the west.




This is my house from the back (top) and the front (middle), and also part of the backyard.

I have some more pics to post, I'll do it over the next few days.

Finished my exams. Don't want to talk about them. Ever again. Ever.

I'm going home tomorrow, and because I'm an idiot, my flight is really early and I'll have to get up at 5am to catch the bus to the airport. Maybe I should pack now. I really can't be bothered though, and now there's torrential rain and gale-force wind, and I feel like curling up in a ball somewhere at watching a movie or something.

Went to the IR rally today, which was actually really, really good. Postitive protest, and some very moving speakers, which is always good. By the time Mike and I got from Central to the QVB we had to go coz I had to be back at uni by 12.00, so we went up to the top floor of the QVB for a while to watch how big the march was. Holy shit: it went for six blocks. The estimate was 30,000 or so people in Sydney, 200,000 in Melbourne, and lots, lots more across the country. But Howard's come out and said we're misinformed, and the vocal minority.

FUCK I hate that evil little shit bag!!! He, and his merry band of dickhead followers are systematically destroying everything that is good about our society. If I believed in hell, I'd say he'll be burning.

As I have an exam at 8.45 tomorrow morning I've been procrastinating because my brain has reached a point of crammed saturation and I just can't force anything else to go in there. So I decided to Google myself, as you do, and yay! My blog, growing entity that it is, has entered the realms of Googleability. Which is all very good, but means that my mother will probably now be able to find it. Not that that's a bad thing per se, but I was getting much joy from teasing her by not giving her the address, and if she can find it then my fun will be over.

As I sat in the library tonight trying desperately to shove some more knowledge into my bloated memory, I was listening to a general mix of study music and a live track of Crowded House came on: Sister Madly live in Newcastle; there's a part in the middle with Neil and Paul having a big conversation about how they screwed part of the song up as one of those "tee hee, aren't we silly ultra-famous musos" moments. And I was struck by the thought of how sad it is that Paul is dead now but the part in the song is such a happy moment, and I guess you never know how your life's going to turn out eh.

I don't often get struck by thoughts, they're generally painful and unpredictable. *Kaching* somebody get a drumroll going before they kick me off the stage.

Hopefully tomorrow's exam is ok. I never want to look at that crap again. If anyone's in the vicinity, I'd say I'll be out on the balcony around 2pm tomorrow getting absolutely kerschnoogled. Feel free to join in.

If anyone reading this cares (which, for the most part, I strongly doubt ha) I'm going to be at home on wednesday, thursday next week, and then monday, wednesday tuesday week. If you'll be there let me know and we should get coffee or sit in Central Park and eat Doritos, or something old-timesy like that. Apart from that I'll be in Sydney for the next four months at least, if you're coming down for BDO let me know coz you can probably crash at my house.

Oh and I changed my settings so you can leave me a comment now even if you're not a member of blogger. Please do. Make me feel loved ;)

I was procrastinating big time today and decided to see if there was anything about penguins in the news.
Those of you who know me well enough to know about my slight preoccupation with penguins will understand my devesatation about the following comment:

A piece of the biggest iceberg in the world B-15A (it's about the size of Cyprus..or rather, was..) has broken off. This in itself is not so great because it just gives a little sample of what global warming has to offer. But anyway, that's not the point.

The point is that the 6th largest Adelie penguin colony has its breeding grounds on Ross Island, and its feeding grounds in the sea off Ross Island. Which is exactly where the piece of iceberg has ended up. So now the sea is blocked up with ice and the daddy penguins have to go further to get food. This means that about 98% of the chicks for this breeding season will die. The colony has 130,000 breeding pairs, say each pair has one penglet, that means out of 130,000 baby penglets 104,000 of them will die from starvation.

I'm very sad.
SMH article
SPACE article

On a positive note though, some research that's been done over the past few years on Antarctic penguins has yielded good results: evidence for microevolution!

*Yawn* a couple of times today I've leant back in my chair so far that I've nearly fallen off...especially on those library chairs that have the swivelly base, coz you nearly fall off those when you're just sitting, let alone when you're *yawning*.

I'm going to bed, too much study, too many things to learn by friday, too many hours not spent asleep...except for my power naps which seem to be ending up lasting about four or five hours lately.

I'm unemployed, maybe I have a job at Myer in Bondi, but they said that I would know by today, but I haven't heard anything. I checked my email three times today and each time I had a new message and got v excited, however:

1. the first one was from Malcolm Turnbull: "Liberal MP for Wentworth". I don't know how, but I've ended up on his mailing list and I keep getting stupid electorate updates about how great he is and some thing call dogblogs. If I'd not been so stressed I would've had a gander at dogblogs but I'm sure it'll wait. What I really do not understand is how I came to be on that mailing list...for one thing, I'm not in that electorate, for another I'm hella not a Liberal voter, and lastly..I'm sure I never filled in any forms to do with him. Surely I would've used a fake email address.

2. The second was from Robert King, vice-chancellor and registrar kindly informing me that since the federal government are arsing around with the VSU legislation (yay!) we still have to pay our student fees for this year and at least first session next year. Yoohoo, another extremely akward, self-demeaning, degrading phone call to Dad asking for $250, let's not go in to the whole 'place a monetary value on ruining my childhood' thing.. in the face of economic rationalism he just doesn't really get it eh. Man, I could say so much more here, but I'm tired and it isn't worth the rant.

3. The third from my mother to say that she had gotten the photo I'd emailed and she was putting it on the fridge. Nam, that means there's now a picture of you on my fridge. You should be proud.

Now I'm going to bed, since I have a feeling I might be rambling a little. I have this other story about a nice but shallow girl (not me) and her attitudes toward cosmetics companies that don't test on animals. I'll save for another time though.

Actually no, I'm feeling a bit soap-boxy: So she was in my room the other day having a snuffle round my stuff (because my room is cool, natch) and she sees in the piles and piles of shit in the cupboard some L'oreal face product (that I stole off my mother shh). She turns to me and informs me matter-of-factly that you shouldn't use L'oreal; they're shit because they don't test on animals. She tells me that she would much rather they test on animals that her get an allergy. OK, I was not the right person to tell this too because she obviously doesn't understand the whole animal-rights concept, or the idea that you can actually do dematological testing on humans. And I'm pretty sure that if she knew what they do to cute little bunnies when they're testing make-up on them, she wouldn't be so keen on animal testing. I did want to yell at her or slap her a little, but I restrained myself.

There, soap-box is done.

Found this on Nam's photoblog along with a few more drunk photos of me, and about 2000 drunk photos of many other people. Some scenic shots too...of stuff like rocks. But nothing rocks like a Mulwarree party. Ahha, snigger, I truly am so hilarious that I can't quite believe it, am definately next big thing in witty diary-writers, in manner of Bridget Jones or other fantastic single girl about town.

Am definitely going crazy since I have been studying all day and am none the wiser, and as such can only think, and write, in cliches.

I do actually have a fairly funny story though, which involves me consuming what didn't seem to be, at the time, a huge amount of alcohol:

A group of us went out on Thursday night to the end of session party. Three bottles of pink champagne and a bottle of rose (that I won at trivia for knowing the who-am-I? of Gustav Nossel...but that's really another story for another time) between the three of us, and we made our merry way to the Roundhouse.

Incident numero uno. The six of us jump into the UniBeat with an almost full bottle of pink champagne, to get us through the trip you know, and we're generally acting jovial and probably quite drunk. Then, the driver all of a sudden stops the bus and turns on the lights and starts going "what's in that bottle?!?!", and we're going "we don't know", thinking holy shit, there goes our last bottle of pink champagne for the night, he goes "it smells like beer", we say "no, it's not beer...we don't know what it is but it isn't beer" (imagine at this point all of us looking fairly shifty), he says "give the bottle to me". Again we're thinking holy shit, there goes our last bottle of pink champagne for the night.........he smells the bottle......and gives it back to us.

Strange event 2. We make it to the Roundhouse, drink the remainder of our bottle in the carpark. A thought made even classier by the fact that by now we're drinking it out of the bottle. Anyway, we make it inside only to find that the party's really crap; no surprise there. Jess and Fiona and myself are by now, quite naturally, absolutely on our way to being kerschnoogled and we're dancing very energetically to some mad 80's songs, at which point we turn around to the see IBBO standing behind us trying to join in and looking, as usual, crazy and google-eyed, and well, let's face it: insano. So we run away. Very quickly and probably very obviously.

Unusual happening number three. I meet a lot of people. See a lot of people. Hug a lot of people. Get a lighter from someone I've never met before. Hug some more people. So actually..that one's not so unusual.

Number four. I pass out in MacDonalds for a little while.

Experience #5. We make it home, and say our good-byes and I toddle down the path to my house. I manage to get in all three doors and only run in to one wall, which was a fairly big achievement. I go in to my bedroom and look at the clock: it's around 2.30am-ish. I think to myself, I need to have a shower, else I won't feel so crash hot tomorrow, but first while I remember I'll just change the time on my alarm clock so it doesn't go off at 7.30am (that would be bad). I go to the shower, manage not to fall asleep and go back to my room to crash in bed. I look at the clock and it says 4.50am-ish and I think HOLY SHIT, I've just lost the last two hours of my life!! Where did they go?!?! Surely I wasn't in the shower for two hours. Oh well, I'm very tired, I'll just go to sleep. The moral , dear reader: it wasn't until the next morning that I figured out I'd actually had my finger on the 'time' button, instead of alarm and I had changed the clock before I got in the shower.

Needless to say, now I'm in study mode, it's probably a good time to take a break from the moonshine. No more pink champagne for me.