Melbourne

Sent in the final draft.... this time at a much more godly hour - it's now down to the last round of very minor edits from my supervisor tomorrow and freedom is around the corner!

Evidence of how I'm clearly done with this is that for the first time in my life, I am actually under the word count (310 words even below the 10% margin) without even having tried to cut any words out. And I can't be fucked just babbling on about anything else extra. I truly look forward to never posting about this ever again in the near future (I guess I will check my marks when they come out)

Treating myself for at least the next fortnight.

back from beach, it was cold, I should have had a scarf and gloves

my little local beach was very changed, the recent strong winds and high tides tore up most of the big vegetation/bushes and washed them inland, sand was pushed into the grasslands ,

some local roads were covered in sand and small stones

I saw a big spiral shark egg

Presentation was a total clusterfuck - took waaaaay longer than I expected and absolutely bombed some of the questions asked - but at least it's over and I will absolutely not dwell on what went wrong (although I have a bit of a pit in my stomach)

All I need to do now is finish up the penultimate version of this thesis for my supervisor to make final comments and then I'm submitting the damn thing tomorrow. Fuck, I'm just so done with this

e: delayed anxiety is making me feel increasingly nauseous, think I'm going to go outside for a bit of fresh air and maybe drop by the chemist

I told my boss about my studying (complete career change) and how I would be leaving at some point. Told him about my last lot of annual leave was for my placements and I'd have enough leave for my next placement but after that I'd probably have to leave.

His response was: Don't worry about taking leave for it. We'll work something out.

I was umming and uhhing for months on whether I should tell him or not and decided yesterday to do it because it would then force me to decide how to approach studying/working instead of worrying about it. That went a whole lot better than I expected.

I accidentally put my Myki card in the wash with my jeans. Need to take PT tomorrow, do you think it's going to work?

I felt we were really cheated by autumn this year which is why winter feels much more miserable than before. It's not even July and I'm already over this shit

Put the blinds completely down last night to get a truly good night's sleep and it worked a bit too well, I'm struggling to get out of bed. But there is more reading and writing to do, and crucially, a presentation at 2 (that I have yet to rehearse)

At least I'm not feeling anxious like I was last night. I'm giving myself until 9:30 and then it's action stations! 🦾

2 more sleeps till the trip!

So fucking tired today. I could legit go to bed right now.

Found a great online learning platform for drums which I'm excited to start with. Organised some sessions with the new trainer for next week.

Had a phone interview which went OK.

Big day!

Aunt saw dog at the vet called banh mi. Don't know what kind of dog it was, but shall report back.

Edit: it was a cavoodle

I had the pleasure of sitting through a nearly hour-long meeting today, that was entirely for the benefit of padding the presenter’s cv. Aargh!

WE’RE A TEAM!!

The new BBQ gas tubes have arrived. Happy days.

Inspection got moved to tomorrow morning, which is good because I'm still motivating my partner to tackle the bathroom 😂 then I have a lil vacay (as I'm thinking of it) over the weekend which will be nice. I'm bringing a book called We'll Prescribe You A Cat by Syou Ishida - my Nan and Opa got it for me for my bday and I still haven't read it despite hearing great things about it, I'm hoping this weekend will give me the motivation to start it!

I think I'm feeling better now. Still a bit of a sniffle, but mostly fine. I'm out of bed, showered and even took Mr Woof for a walk (he is thrilled to have the daily walks again). Now I can hopefully get into gear to do a bit more unpacking - I've done the easy initial bits so it's very tempting to keep putting off doing more. But it needs to be done and I'm a bit sick of all the boxes everywhere.

I had to drive to Williamstown yesterday to see the dental surgeon, which was absolutely horrid driving with the weather. But the good news is the implant has healed (implanted?) successfully, so I'm free to move on to the next phase of getting the crown. I might push that off into next year so I can get another insurance rebate for it, I've not got a lot of cash spare after all the moving costs.

Roast chicken is in the oven. It took a bit of looking through boxes to find a few vital components - most important being the baking dish. It's the oven's first roast, I've only used it for heating a pie before. It's smelling pretty good. It's a much bigger oven than I'm used to, which could be handy sometimes (but mostly I just use the little toaster oven/air fryer).

I've had a productive day. I've moved a few bits of furniture around and assembled a shelf unit that will hold a lot of the pantry/storage items. That section has been the cause of a bit of roadblock that stopped me doing things in other areas, so this should mean I can start getting a lot of stuff out of boxes and properly sorted out. Mr Woof was very unhappy with all the banging going on while the shelf was being assembled and evacuated to the back yard until things quietened down, but Miss Meow was right there wanting to be involved and investigating everything.

The small fenced off area around the back gate to store the bins in and keep the pets back is working very well. Amazingly the width of the panels fit across the gap between the house and fence perfectly so it looks like it was made for the spot. Hopefully it lasts ok in the weather, it's designed for indoor use so it will probably rust out at some point, but if it can last me for a few years while I am here that will be ok.

Lonch

I have decided to cook curry for themy next wave of meals which a lot of chicken and some veggies.

Mild Butter Chicken curry it will be!

I eat berries straight out of the punnet, no washing. Am I a savage? Maybe. But the raspberries I just ate were particularly delicious.

Well El Jannah is open in the CBD. It has not been love at first taste for me... but I think I'll do a little tour of the menu and hopefully find a favourite. Huge serving size though. My little insulated lunchbox did *not *cut it.

The high tide yesterday was interesting.

Coming into Flinders street station thru Spencer street I could see the Yarra was really high

Coming home in the afternoon and entering Seaholme I could see the rivers and marshes were flooded, close to home all the streets except in my little area were underwater.

The water has receded now .

Maybe I should have taken pics. Next time.

Welcome back YarraByte, hope you're feeling ok. It's a bit of a nasty bug that's been going around.