My new stencil

This is one of my new favourite shirts - a snowy owl stencil that I finished the other night. This is by far the most involved stencil I have ever cut out, but I think that it was worth it. I'm going to have fun wearing it.

Also, some of my favourite badges sneaked into this photo :)

What's wrong with Emma?

In todays episode, we ask the question, "What's wrong with Emma?".

So, what is wrong with me. I have two possible diagnoses: a brain tumour or being secretly drugged with some experimental drug designed to produced some sort of super warrior. One of the guys at work has a third possibility, he thinks that I am developing super powers.

For nearly a week now, I've been surving on a ridiculously small amount of sleep. Not just surving, thriving. Every second or third night, I'm sleeping fairly normally, but the rest of the time I can't manage more than 3 hours. The weird thing is that on the days I haven't slept, I feel fine. Without even needing coffee, I can survive a normal days work and even be in a good mood while I do it. In fact I've been in a very good mood, thinking that everything is strangely hilarious, especially my workmates. This, of course, supports the "on drugs" hypothesis.

The days after I have slept on the other hand, I feel less than fabulous. This makes it harder for me to force myself to try to sleep, knowing that I feel worse after I do than when I don't.  I keep expecting it to catch up to me one day, and I'll go crashing down in heap too exhausted to move, but so far it hasn't happened. I suppose it will one day. We'll have to wait and see.

Koala Capers

 

So, its confirmed. I've been accepted as a volunteer to spend a couple of weeks playing koalas in Port Macquarie. I've been to the koala hospital twice in the last couple of years and I've wanted to spend longer there ever since. The koala hospital take volunteers all the time, but they can only take a couple of newbies at a time to train them so you have to book in well in advance. Usually I'd have to wait until next year to volunteer, but because of my wildlife and vet nursing experience their going to take me on an experienced volunteer basis. So now I just have to book flights and accommadation and everything and come October I'll be the only getting up close and personal with the koalas being rehabilitated at the hospital.

Birds of the Sunshine Coast

Osprey

Blue-faced Honeyeater

Grey Fantail

Brush Wattlebird

Nankeen Night Heron

Brahminy Kite

Eastern Yellow Robin

Scarlet Honeyeater

Two unidentifed honeyeaters having a domestic

White-cheeked Honeyeater

Unknown

Osprey

Noisy Miner

White-necked Heron

Crested Tern

Dusky Moorhen

Life

I'm currently watching little Darcy running in his mouse wheel. He still crashes it occassionally, but he has gotten much better at driving it. He has grown so much over the past couple of weeks since I got him, and I have gotten to watch him learn quite a lot of new things. As soon as I find a food that he likes enough to use as a reward, we'll start training, but he is a fussy little mousie so it is taking longer than I imagined it would. Now that he is a full-size mouse, I've been giving him a little bit of time in his mouse ball running around the house. He seems  to love it. I would say that his favourite things at the moment are running in his mouse ball and sleeeping in his "sleeping bag" (a baby sock).

I am supposed to be writing an instruction book for looking after Darcy because tomorrow afternoon he is going to stay with his Aunty Christie and Uncle Wayne for a week while I'm in Queensland. At the moment, this is all I've written:

"Hello, my name is Darcy. I am a mouse. I like sunflower seeds. I do not like baths."

In other news, as previously mentioned, I take off for Queensland on Friday morning with my family. I've moved everything out of my housesitting house, so I'll just visit it one last time tomorrow and then it goes back into the care of its owners. So now all I have to organise is pack up everything Darcy needs to go to Christie's, and pack up everything I need to go to Queensland.

I've been off work since Sunday because I very cleverly and sneakily linked my rostered days off with the leave I had to take for our trip and gave myself 16 lovely days off work. I don't even feel guilty about it because everyone is back from their fieldtrips now and life out at Cressy has settled down heaps in the last couple of weeks. Honestly, I would have taken at least Sun, Mon, and probably Tues off sick anyway because I'm still valiantly fighting a cold. I should have had Saturday off, but I worked it because there was no one to cover for me, and I was going out to dinner with everyone at work on Saturday night anway. I managed to enjoy dinner even though I felt incredibly ill, but if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't miss that particular evening out, there's no way I would have spent the night anywhere but my bed. I spent all of Sunday either on in my bed or on my parent's couch recovering from it, but I would do it again because we all had a really great night.

Anyways, there are things I'm supposed to be doing, so I'll be going now.

World, meet Darcy

This is my brand new, absolutely adorable mouse, Darcy. Darcy is approximately 3 weeks old and still has a bit of growing to do so he his mini even by mouse standards. I have had him for 2 days, and he is setteling in well. He is happy to be handled and even went to sleep in my pocket.

Darcy has an amazing three-storey house (bargain $15, marked down from $90), but for now, he is only in one floor until I decide that he can't squeeze through any gaps and then he will have multiple levels of fun. He also hasn't been introduced to his run around ball yet, but I'm sure he's going to love it when he is. At the moment his favourite thing in the world is running through toilet rolls.

He is absolutely tiny, and one of the cutest things I have ever seen,

Its about time I posted again, so here goes

Well, I'm exhausted. Today was the 9th day in a row that I've worked. Every one of those 9 days started early or finished late or both and involved a lot of very exhausting bits in the middle. And I have to do it all over again tomorrow. We have gotten 31 new devils and 3 new staff in the last week. Anyhow, I feel like the only thing I've been talking about for weeks is work, so I'm not going to re-cover ground that I've probably already told you about sometime in the last week anyway.

You probably also know that my work contract expires in 3 months and that I have no idea what I am going to do after it does. That isn't really worrying me much, though. I've got savings and plenty of options so I see it as an adventure rather than a cause for stress.

In other news, I've decided that I'm going to get a pet mouse. I would already have gotten it, but there are none to be had in any of the petshops in Launceston apparently. So I'm now not-very-patiently waiting until I can get one. I bought a beautiful 3-storey mouse house on special a couple of weeks back and now I just want a little furry friend to put in it. He is going to be called Darcy and he will wear top hats. I can't wait to meet Darcy and take lots of photos of him in a top hat and post them so you can all see him.

I'm housesitting yet again at the moment - this time I'm in Hagely looking after a herd of goats and a farm cat named Herman. So far, Herman doesn't like me, but I'm sure that I'll convince him eventually. I'm housesitting for 5 weeks so I have plenty of time to win him over. I'm only spending time at my country house every second day at the moment because I've been at work such long hours, but I'm looking forward to going for a visit tomorrow night and having a nice long soak in their giant bathtub. With the amount of aching muscles I've got at the moment, I think a nice long soak is exactly what I need.

And finally, I've enrolled myself in an online photography course which starts today. I don't know yet how much work will be involved in the assignments, but I decided that I need some form of deadlines and assessments for me to make any progress in my photography. The course I chose is a nature photography course so it should be something I'm interested in.

Now I'll leave you with a photo of a bunny wabbit that I got to snuggle yesterday at work. We evicted 3 baby bunnies from their house while we checked to make sure they weren't sharing it with a devil and I got to snuggle them.