*bounce*

Have a friend coming to stay for a long weekend… I think she’s off the plane now, but won’t make it to Canberra now until sometime tomorrow. Gotta love the internet – strange how you can be good friends with someone from the other side of the country!

Whirlwind Canberra-ness planned – touristy things, cocktail bars, coast, Jindy… exhaustion here we come! :D

Something I Ate

One of those nights where you get home and suddenly it’s “change of plans”… ugh.

Anyway. It’s a good excuse to have a relaxing night, get my book finished (I’m reading “The hour I first believed” by Wally Lamb), and drink a heap of peppermint tea. I love peppermint tea :) Best herbal tea EVER!

:p

Full on weekend. Went to Newcastle for an engagement party, too many people packed into such a short time.

Question time: What’s the purpose of an engagement party?

I’m still gathering my thoughts on this one. Plus, what’s the “deal” with engagement presents? From what I saw on Saturday night, they seem to be the same as wedding presents. Only half the people will be also going to the wedding and will have to think of something else to buy in 12 months. And how to people go about choosing them, particularly as couples are often living together anyway if they’re getting married, and in some cases appear to have a fully stocked house already…

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I just don’t ‘get’ a lot of the things to do with engagements, weddings and marriage in general.

Maybe.

…

So I’m resting up tonight – we have a friend coming to stay from Wed – Monday, so that’s going to be full on – Canberra, possibly the coast and/or the mountains. Fun fun fun. But I need to be healthy, hey? :D

So much language!

A very language filled day. Stretching my brain to figure out things it’s not used to, things I take for granted. Like the l sound at the end of words. How do YOU end the words ball, bell, apple, girl, and any other l-final word you can think of. Do you say the l? Do you get your tongue into position for it and stop there? Is it more of a w? Or dropped completely?

Or the schwa, that Principal Skinner made famous. The “neutral” vowel… or the one that we hear in NZ English, or our un-emphasised syllables. Like in banana after the b… “Discussing” this in a room full of 26 or so speechies, trying to figure out the best transcriptions for our speech assessments. Having people say it slightly differently, or claiming to say it differently. Then trying to find it on our little vowel charts as to what the phonetic transcription should really be. And how it’s changed since people were in uni!

Fun, tricky. (Nerdy!)

Then we get to a similar thing in Japanese, trying to figure out the katakana transcriptions for the “foreign” words and names we want to use. Similar process, just different symbols. Still nerdy and fun. As is when the grammar just clicks for me and I figure out the rules for myself and then could apply it. If only my vocab was bigger.

Sore but not sorry

Body starting to not feel as sore after Sunday’s run and gym sessions with Rish.

Started with the 5k loop. 33:33, not a great time, but that included a part of it being walked ahead of a “pitstop” about 3/4 through. Nice and fast at the end though, coming down off the Commonwealth Ave bridge. Inhaled a few bugs when I went through a bug cloud.

The to the gym – first “weights” session in quite awhile. a little bit on arms, but also with lunges, dead lifts and lots of ab / core work. My body was not moving too well last night! I think the killer was the medicine ball work right at the end!

Going to try to slip in a quick cardio session tonight before heading to Hugs Breath for a birthday dinner. Hopefully my late group won’t end too late and I’ll make it there!

For a rainy day

Apparently the BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books on the BBC big read top 100 book list.

How do your reading habits stack up? (books I’ve read in bold)

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens Read the rest of this entry »

Slow Like Honey

A long week. Long days, lots of travel in the car to schools. Started with a hectic drop-in, finished with a kid with average scores but still things going wrong.

The gym has helped my brain, and a glass of wine has helped me to send an email that I felt sick thinking about writing, but knew I needed to do.

3 weeks of term left. Bring on the holidays!

Smells like Books

The ANU library babysat me last night after my Japanese class, which waiting for Rish. Wandering through, deciding to go in search of something to read. Past the economics texts, and the ones on the economy before the black death…

Into the over sized books, and into the linguistics section.

Skimming through Middle English dictionaries, something on phonetics, texts on teaching English as a second language, and a dictionary of the slang of UCLA.

Could have left me there for hours. No wonder a Linguistics postgrad is becoming more appealing. Nerd :)

Pocky Review: Milk Flavour

Got these pocky sticks for $1.49 from the HUB Asian grocery in Belconnen when I was up there for a meeting last week…

Cute little cow on the front, and $2 cheaper than the Hello Kitty Strawberry and Thomas the Tank Engine chocolate pocky they had! A little bit grey in colour, but harmless and pretzelly enough :) *crunch* Not a huge amount of flavour, but I shouldn’t expect too much for “milk”… :)

worth the $1.49 ;)

Purple Work Shoes

I can’t help but love our fairly relaxed work dress standards. So long as we’re neat, it’s all good. This is why I love my Keds, and more lately, by purple “I heart Billy” purple flats I got in St Kilda for $10 :)

As you see, purple shoes, and black jeans. Teamed with a red (work-logo embroidered) polo shirt, hair in a messy bun and dangly purple earrings. My only worry with the earrings in having one ripped out by the kids. Though they tend not to get too aggressive towards me. I always have the fun sensory toys – like koosh balls and other feely things!

The kookaburra hot air balloon followed me to work yesterday morning :) I was hoping it would land on the oval, but it didn’t. Oh well! :)

Conversations with Children

Child: Do you get cranky?
Me: I’m not cranky now, but I get cranky sometimes.
Child: hmm
Me: Do you get cranky sometimes?
Child: Yes.
Me: We all get cranky sometimes.

Would you be surprised if he tantrummed before the session was out?