Presents all 'round...

You know how I said I got some money? Well, so did Annabelle. Not only did she inherit a little bit, but we have been saving all her birthday money for quite a while and putting money into her account every fortnight so she's got quite a fat little bank balance for a three year old. The idea of the birthday money has always been to save it up and get her something for the backyard like a swing-set or trampoline and the rest is just hers to buy a house with or something. (Just in case you think we are cheapskates raiding her bank account to buy her presents LOL!! Well, ok we are...)

SO, we went to Toys R Us to try (for the gazillionth time) to get her something for the backyard. Every time we try to buy something "big" for her the stores are either out of stock or it's not on sale or it's going to take four months for delivery or something.... So her bank account keeps getting fatter and the backyard stays empty.

Well, this time they had them in stock. And it was swing-sets that were on sale, not trampolines. A bit like this one, except with a slide on the side.

I was swaying towards a trampoline because all her friends have one but when we saw the difference in prices, Mel was quite partial to the swing-set. And you know.. all her friends have got a trampoline so maybe swings are good for something different. So we ordered the swing set and it will be delivered this Friday. Which gives us five days to use it as a bargaining tool. "What's that? You don't want to go to bed? Oh well, looks like I'm calling up the man to tell him not to bring the swing set!". You get the idea. It's working so far.

But meanwhile, she spotted the bikes. We had every intention of getting her a bike for her birthday but she didn't want one; she wanted a scooter. So we got her a scooter and she does love it but she's a bit dorky on the scooter. She hasn't quite got the hang of it. So yesterday we put her on a bike with training wheels and she took off around shop, whizzing up and down all the aisles on it. Better still, she had zero interest in the "Barbie" bike for $150 and seriously wanted the "Butterfly" bike on sale for $70. Done deal.

When we got home and dad finished building the bike, we headed out to the park, her on her bike and me with my 450D. Still practising with the camera but got a few nice photos.

I bought a new camera

I got a bit of money so I decided to buy me a present. Here it is - a Canon EOS450D:



It's only... oh let me see... TWO HOURS old!!.. so I haven't had much chance to play with it yet but OH how I look forward to playing with it. We've always had Canons in this family so I bought this one so that I can use all our other lenses on it, and just because I'm pretty familiar with how they work. You know, since I did a 2-day course and became an expert and all that. Heh.

Anyway, it's just turning dark and Miss Annabelle and I are off to meet Mav at the pier for Friday drinks. I might get some nice pictures of boats that I can post. I'm excited!

and another...

Thanks to Beany for this one. Story of my whole life. :)

Beached as, bro

For my kiwi mates. Made me laugh and laugh.

I went to the psychic fair

Adelaide seems to have a lot of these events and my friend Dija and I (as well as her mum and her sister, Linda) love to get along and have a reading or three to find out what's in store for us.

Linda always wants to know if she's going to have another baby, Dija (being a mother of seven) wants to know if she can rest easy that there are NO MORE BABIES and I'm usually far less interested in babies and much moreso in prophecies of fame and fortune and basically how much longer until I get on Oprah, dammit.

I was a little concerned that today they all said pretty much the same thing and it had nothing to do with fame or fortune. Specifically they said that I have way too much nervous energy, my nervous system is very "shaky" and that if I don't do something about letting go of stress and worry, I'm going to get sick. hmm... ok. I've been a bit stressed so that's a fair call. Except one woman went as far as to say "I mean it! If you want to be around for your daughter, you will pay attention to my advice!". EEK. That's a bit serious.?!

I know lots of people are sceptical of these things but some things were said that were kind of freaky. For example, one woman who said (like they all say) that I will have a baby boy told me what name she thought he would have. It is only in the past week that I have been thinking that this IS the name I would like for my baby boy. (and no, I'm not telling you what it is!). Trust me, it's not a common name. It's a name that's a bit dorky so I've been tossing it around thinking "I wonder if my kid would get paid out if I called him this" so it blew me away that she said this was going to be his name, with absolutely no prompting from me.

One also told me that someone close to me (she named the person) is suffering from a particular medical condition (which is true). Again, I'm not going to go into details because it's personal but it is a very specific thing and not something a psychic could just pull out randomly and pin on a person thinking it's general enough to get a few "hits". Not a chance.

There was talk of a person called Helen who has cats. Mel's mother is Helen and she fosters abandoned cats from the RSPCA. There was something else about Mel being totally shitted off with his work (which he is) and that she's amazed he hasn't told them to get stuffed (so am I). And lots more stuff that was all interesting and insightful.

Whether it's a load of drivel or not, for me it was worth the money to have a fun morning out with girlfriends comparing psychic predictions...

I don't think I'll be having an exhibition any time soon...

I'm doing a 2 day course on how to use a digital SLR. It is really great to learn all the different camera functions, but also really frustrating because it is bloody hard to keep your camera on "Manual" when it is so much easier to put it on "Idiot-proof" (as the instructor calls it)!!! Photos are so much harder to get right, but I appreciate that it's the only way to learn so I'm just trying, trying and trying again and taking a lot of shitty photos along the way.

I got some printed today and will take them in tomorrow to get feedback. Meanwhile, I took a few this afternoon and while the photos themselves were not crash hot, I did have fun playing around with them in iPhoto. It's a blessing and a curse to have access to all these tools that make your photos look nice. It means you don't really need to be a great photographer at all. But I want to be one anyway. :)

If you click on any of the photos, you can see them bigger. I don't know why Blogger makes them so tiny...





My next project is going to be learning how to us photoshop. My mum and dad bought the latest Creative Suite and have kindly allowed me to load the software onto my Mac. Yay!

Tutorial update

Ok, so tutorials are not every week. This is somewhat of a relief. They are around every 3rd week (4 in total across the semester). So in my state of relief I decided to take on a Friday tutorial as well. I figure I can just drop Annabelle with her dad for an hour and collect an extra $70 as I pass go.

What I didn't count on is that the extra class of course means an extra 15 assignments to mark. Bugger. I think when you take marking into consideration the hourly rate drops to about six bucks. No kidding!

So at the end of semester when I have my own stuff winding up... ie assignment, research project etc... I will also have the pleasure of marking 75 assignments. Argh!! Was this a good idea??

uh-oh... not the piggy

I feel ill. Not terribly ill. Not ill enough to have to stay in bed for instance. But I have a feeling I'm on the edge of something. My ears have been blocked for about three days and I've had some dizzy spells. I feel slightly nauseous. And I noticed this morning that I have a greatly reduced tolerance for noise (read: squealy child).

Oink.

Annabelle

She says some funny things and some frightful things. Either way, she entertains us on a daily basis.


Tonight while watching Home and Away she saw Charlie step onto the road and get hit by a passing car. She turned to me as if she was the mummy and I was the child and she said "See? That's what happens."

She has also worked out that swearing is a great way to relieve stress. You may or may not be aware that there is research to support this. (true!) So when Annabelle is really, really cross with us she squares up and says in a very angry tone "FUCKEN!!" That's it. Just Fucken. Nothing after it. Sometimes it's accompanied by a smack, so we attempt to curb the smacking but I'm not sure what to do about the language. I mean really... I got cranky in the car the other day and called another driver a fuckwit, so how can I hope to teach her not to swear?


She has a fabulous little group of friends from childcare and they are all spending a lot of time together on the weekends and we are now arranging dinners and barbecues as family groups. That has been great for making me feel more settled in Adelaide. We are enrolling them all into the same kindy next year and the same primary school the year after that. Yes, primary school. I figure as long as I'm here I might as well embrace it, right?


Where was I? Oh yes, when referring to past events, as far as Annabelle is concerned everything happened "To 'smorning". Doesn't matter if it was yesterday or last week or six months ago. It was "to 'smorning".

There are so many more and I really need to write them down.

Oh yes the latest is "You're not my friend". One day she was adamant that I was not her friend, only daddy was her friend. I told her that I think we are all friends and we all love each other. She told me firmly, "No. I only love one 'chuther".

Anyway, I need to go to bed. I have my meeting in the morning to get my tutorial work to study!!

Fast and furious

That's how my life feels at the moment. I kind of thought after the full-on whirlwind that was first semester at uni, that this semester would be pretty laid back and cruisey. HOW WRONG WAS I?!!! I don't even know where to start, or even how interested you are, so let me give you some dot points...

• Placement is FAB. I have three clients (four actually, but one is a repeated no-show and apparently that's fairly standard in public mental health) and hopefully a new one next week. We are supposed to treat anxiety and depression but of course no-one is that simple so I have a multitude of complex clients and I'm learning SO much. I love it.

• I now have a supervisor for my research project! Yay! Now I just need to finalise my research topic. hmmm... My interest is in maternal and infant mental health and my topic is either going to be evaluating a mindfulness-based treatment for pregnant women to reduce risk of PND, or to evaluate a mental health training program for midwives. If it's the latter, I will design and deliver the training, as well as evaluate it. If it's the first option (my preference), the group is already set to go and I'll just need to help with recruitment and do all the evaluations. But the most important bit is finding a supervisor and I LOVE my supervisor. She's about my age (perhaps a bit younger since I'm an old bag), her interests are very much in line with mine, she has a little 2.5yo daughter and she's really lovely. So I don't really care what the topic ends up being, I think I'll really like working with her.

• I have one actual uni subject this semester and the first class was yesterday. Give me strength! After being on placement, it was extraordinarily painful to sit back in a classroom and listen to a dry 3-hour lecture. Bleuch. Not to mention having to think about doing assignments again. I'm dry-wretching at the very thought of it. No more about that. Thinking about when I'm going to fit it in raises my blood pressure.
  

• Last but not least, I put my name down to do some tutoring work for 1st year students (anyone can handle first years, right?). I'm not talking one-on-one tutoring, but running the actual first-year tutorials. Anyway, they had too many people apply so I missed out on a spot... never mind. But the next minute, I got an email asking if I'm still free and would I mind taking a few third year tutorials. What?? Third year?? I did third year about 20 years ago and I'm pretty sure I didn't do very well at it THEN!! So I said I could only do Thursdays, thinking that would pretty much count me out. She said FINE, she's got a class that runs on Thursdays and would it be ok if she puts my name down for a few of them. Sure, I said. WELL... I have now been allocated the whole three tutorials each Thursday and I think I'm doing this for the entire semester..?? Fark! The woman who hired me assures me I don't need to actually know the stuff to run a tutorial. THIS IS GOOD NEWS!! So I'm meeting with the head teacher tomorrow to get all my reading material and do my paperwork and I'm going to have to start studying up on that before they feed me to the third years next week. eek!! The best part is it's reasonable money and I could use some reasonable money.

Umm.... I think that's it for uni stuff. I have lots more updates though, so perhaps I'll hit submit now and come back with other stuff later. :)