School's Out For Summer!

Okay, so maybe school technically isn't out, and maybe the weather we've been having is closer to winter weather than summer weather, but still! I'm done!

On Monday I had my practice proposal. I had been losing sleep for the past month or so over this presentation, and last weekend I was pretty much locked indoors, glued to the computer, pulling it all together (well, that and it was raining and cold, so going out wasn't all that appealing anyways). All the hard work and lack of social life paid off though -- my presentation went great! Everyone was really impressed and excited about the direction I'm going in, and I got lots of great feedback from people too.

My actual panel presentation is scheduled for the end of February. It's probably more time than I need, but as Gary, one of the professors here, was pointing out, that gives me time to work on my ethics application. And, if I do get accepted to the IASSCS conference, I'll have to write a paper for that as well.

Having passed through the first of a series of hurdles to get my research off the ground, I have decided to take a mental break. With the pressure of a looming deadline off, I quickly realized that I really do need a bit of brain rest, and that if I start up now with the readings and making changes to my proposal, that I'll get right back into the cycle and push myself through the Christmas break. So, since my campus is closing next week for the holidays anyways, I have decided to just not do any uni work until after Christmas.

Instead I have been catching up on my RA job, catching up with friends, and catching up on sleep. I've also got some catching up on Christmas preparations to do. I am going to treat myself to a couple of luxuries I've been putting off as well -- like getting a haircut and checking out the new cheap bookstore near my tram stop. Over the holidays I'm just looking forward to being able to get out and explore more of Melbourne without having that lingering guilty feeling that I really should be finishing that book or typing up my notes or whatever.

The other thing I now have time to do is house hunt! No, I'm not buying a place, I haven't suddenly won the lottery. My housemate and I are looking for a new place to rent as our landlord has taken to devaluing our place and upping the rent. And, despite my love for northern Melbourne, I have agreed to moving south of the Yarra. So today we're heading out into the southern suburbs to check out a couple of houses.

It's funny, when I first moved here being near the city was so important to me. But now that I've been here nearly a year and have established myself, that has become much less important to me. I love my neighbourhood, and I love the next neighbourhood up even more. If we can find a good place in the same area we're currently living in, we'll stay. But so far we haven't found anything there that's a step up, or even sideways, just down.

Even if we do find something in our neck of the woods, it's actually more convenient for me to live in the south. Most of my friends live in the south, the group I go to on Thursday nights is in the south, and pretty much any activity I'd be interested in getting involved with in the future is probably going to be in the south. Everything seems to happen in the south. So as far as I'm concerned, right now, I'm happy to make the change.

Time Flies When It Matters

All of a sudden it's December and I'm 10 days away from the practice run of my proposal! My anxiety levels are pretty high right now. While everything does not need to be perfect, or complete, for the practice run of my proposal, I do actually need a theory section, a method section, and a powerpoint presentation. So while we are enjoying some lovely summer weather, I am hunkering down and getting to work. Any minute now.

I decided to take yesterday off and spent the afternoon wandering around Collingwood, something I told myself I'd do back when I first moved here. Yesterday we had really nice summer weather and I was very glad that I decided to go out and enjoy it, so any minute now I'll get back to work.

I had some visitors towards the end of November: Jeannine and Drew came out to Melbourne for a couple of days. It was really nice to see them, especially since it's been something like 5 years. I was happy to have people come out to my city and have a chance to show them around. Unforunately, they were only staying for a couple of days at the end of their vacation in Queensland, so we were limited in both time and energy. I took them up to Carlton and we had dinner at an Italian restaurant, then gellato as we headed back into the CBD. The next day we met up again and I got to show them a bit of the Queen Victoria Market, which is right across from my campus. Then we went on a couple of river cruises on the Yarra. It was a nice, relaxing way to spend the afternoon, but I didn't feel that the river cruises did Melbourne justice.

Well, I guess that's enough avoidance of my work for the time being. So I will leave you with this: a picture of the latest creature to set up house in our back yard.