Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

You may or may not have noticed that I have been more absent from cyberspace than usual. I haven't been maintaining my online presence very much recently- not so much because I haven't had time, but more because I haven't made time. Its true that I am working more and longer days than normal again at the moment and it is true that I have been settling in to a new place and a new housemate, but that hasn't stopped me from doing more arts and crafts than I usually manage to fit into my weeks (partly that is probably due to the fact that my art and craft supplies are so much easier to access in my new place because they just sitting in boxes against my bedroom wall rather than hidden away in a cupboard. Mostly this is because I don't have a cupboard in which to hide them.).

I have been settling in to the new house well. I now know where a good percentage of my stuff is and I have explored the contents of all my kitchen cupboards (but I don't have a slotted serving spoon anymore. I'm sure I used to have a slotted serving spoon). I have spent exactly no time in my new garden which may be a problem because there is so much of it and I am going to have to stay on top of it a little, but to be fair most of the time when I am home it has been either dark or raining or both.

Tiani and I are getting on well. We haven't got any sort of schedule for whose turn it is to do what chores or who gets to have the first shower, but we haven't run into any problems yet (except the one time I was nearly late for work because neither Tiani nor I planned on being the first person in the shower). I've got Tiani hooked on How I Met Your Mother which she has watched a lot of over the last few days as she has been in bed sick. Consequently, we both now say "Legend- what for it- dary! Legendary!" a little too often. That's the other reason I haven't been online much recently - Tiani has had Bernard the Laptop in bed with her for the last few days watching stuff. Frequently she has also had me in bed with her watching stuff in between getting home from work and cooking tea. We watched Tangled and Gnomeo and Juliet the other night. I love kid's movies. Speaking of which, I can't wait to see the new Winnie the Pooh.

Anyway, thats about it for now. I've got both tomorrow and the next day off work which is an absolute luxury - its annoyingly rare to have two days off consecutively. I plan to go home tomorrow and soak up some family time, but after that I'm not quite sure what I'll do with it. There's something kinda wonderful about having time off and no definite plans for it :)

Wols!

A new home.

Most of you already know this, but for those few of you that only regularly communicate with me through this blog, this is pretty big news: I'm moving house.

Its a complicated story, so I'll try not to make it too confusing. One of my bestest friends, Tiani, usually lives in Hobart with her husband, but applied for a job in Launny because she was looking for work and the job was perfect for her. She got the job, which is great, but made her life quite complicated. Tiani knew that I had been thinking about renting in town for a while so she asked me if I wanted to find a 2 bedroom place with her and split the rent so that she could live in Launny Mon-Fri and go home to Hobart on weekends. That resulted in about 2 weeks of house-hunting in Launny and Tiani making a ridiculous number of trips up and down the midlands before we found, applied for, and were offered our new home.
We signed the lease, got the keys, and delivered our first couple of boxes of stuff yesterday afternoon.

Our new home is actually 3 bedrooms, not 2 so we have a spare room if anyone wants to visit us. Its a 2 storey place with Tiani's room, the kitchen, bathroom, and living spaces all downstairs, and my room and the spare room upstairs. Its almost half-way between my work and Tiani's work so we can both walk to work fairly easily, which will be a nice change from the 30min drive from Mum and Dad's. It also has a bit of garden (in a fairly wild state at the moment) and lawn, as well as plenty of parking space for the two of us.

The power doesn't get connected until Tuesday, but after that we'll be staying there and settling in. So, if you're ever in the area, swing past and come see my new home.

The Eagles Lair

Last week at work we had an overnight field training trip. We were split into two trips so that there were enough people not away to look after all the devils. I was on the second one and it was awesome. The trip was led by Nick Mooney, who has been a hero of mine since I was a teenager, and he was an absolute legend, happily sharing his incredible wealth of field skills and knowlegde of wildlife with us all. We focused mostly of devils, of course, but the most memorable bit for me was the detour hiking up the side of a mountain to observe a wedge-tailed eagle nest.







The only bad part of the trip was catching my workmate's cold which was pretty unavoidable as we were all confined in a car for several hours each day, but now the cold has really set off my asthma and I've had to take a day off work.

The Owl and the Pussycat...

I'm not as obsessed with owls as this guy is...

Port Macquarie summed up in photos.

The resort where we stayed...

The wildlife...

Butterflies

Fruit bats

and Pelicans

The koala hospital...

Me pretending to be a koala...
The scenery...