Settling Down to a "Normal" Life

Again, I'm getting pretty bad at this blogging thing - Life is getting normal.  I'm starting to settle down here in Bathurst and it's..well...you know, it's everyday life that you probably don't want to read about.  I could tell you that every morning I have been waking up between 5 and 6:30 without an alarm...what the heck?  It's drivin me nuts, I can't even sleep in when I can. And when I can't I'm sure that's all I will want to do.  Why does it work that way?!  I then make a delightful cappuccino and have it with some amazing raspberry jam and toast.  Then I go for a good run (actually usually I run before the cappuccino, jam and toast ritual), come home, watch some of the Today show, which, just so you know is probably my favorite show out here.  I think I have my first real 'celebrity' crush.  One of the guys is sooo cute!  I'll try and find a pic to post :)...anyway depending on the day, there is not much to do after that except read and write and my personal favorite, day dream about the 1 bedroom apartment I want to move into with the puppy I want to get which then encourages me to continue my massive job hunt - and by massive, I mean, this job hunt is so big you couldn't beat it with an amber alert.  Or, if it is Wednesday, I go to school.  Except not this week..or last week, because we are on 'holidays' (break).  And yes, we have only been in school for 1 month.  As my dad said, you could go to Australia and major in taking a break!!  haha, true story.  Let's think about this...literally we have been in school for 1 month and we have a 2 week holiday...how does that even make sense?  Granted, in the Honours program that I am in, we technically don't have holidays because we are just consitantly working on our research studies (or should be anyway), but still..America should seriously consider these holiday schedules...just saying.

Tonight we went to dinner at Church Bar Woodfire Pizza.  Talk about delicious!  There was a large group of us from the Honours/PhD program and we all shared a variety of pizzas - duck, chicken, cherry tomato, salami, spinach, thai, cashews, feta, sweet sauce, you name it - the list goes on.  Combine it all together and all we were missing was the crocodile and kangaroo pizzas (honestly - I really wanted to get one of them, but they all said that we needed to try croc and kangaroo not on a pizza).  We did get to engage in lots of fun conversation topics ranging from our plans for the wine tour we are going on this weekend in Mudgee (we are riding tandem bikes all around the town to the different wineries all day on Saturday!!!), to why Australians call different groups of people funny names - for instance, we Americans are termed the Yanks, British are Pommies or Poms, New Zealanders are Kiwis...the list goes on I am sure.  We especially got to the nitty gritty in our convo about eating strange things such as:  snails, worms, play-do, some kind of chemically induced medicince you put on mozzi bites, dog biscuits, etc...regardless, It was a lot of fun to get to know everyone in our program even better :)

Well if you have been reading my FB posts lately, you would know that my beautiful beach weather and summertime sun has gone away.  The temperature dropped sooo quickly in the last week.  It was 9 degrees yesterday!  I know..cold right?!  Now figure that out in farenheit and you'll think I'm a big baby.  But, let me tell you my rational.  I left the coldest winter we have had in the Burque in a really long time, to come to AUSTRALIA.  I dunno about you, but when I think Australia, I think beach, tanning, gorgeous surfer guys and just plain old bliss.  Bathurst has been quite the contrary this week.  And really, 49 degrees (yes, thats right 49 degrees F) is technically not that cold but here is where the shitty part comes in.  I won't have a summer until next year sometime!  If I finish out the program in October, it is only barely starting to warm up at that point and then I'll probably be going back to winter in the states for a month and a half which means I will miss peak summer season here in Oz!  Oh geez, all forces are working against me on this one.  I'm screwed.  In the meantime I'll continue bundling up.  Although, we finally began to turn the heater on which means that instead of doubling up on every piece of clothing I am wearing I am only doubling up on socks and sweaters which just about does the trick!

What else what else?  Are you bored yet?  Well here is some exciting news.  My beautiful momma is getting married to her wonderful boyfriend (cough cough..and by wonderful I mean weird).  Ha ha just kidding, Mike!  I am very excited for them.  Especially because I am attempting to convince them to have their wedding this summer in the states so I can get out of winter for a short time!  Not that I'm back tracking to that tangent...I'm just sayin..hint hint, nudge nudge to momma if you're reading this!  And to Mike, in all seriousness, it is wonderful to see my mom happy.  And if that means waking up to your lucious head of insanely crazy bed head hair when I come home to visit, hey..more power to ya, and welcome to the family!

Lastly, I'll be putting in my research project to the Ethics Committee for review tomorrow so keep your fingers crossed that everything gets passed this first time around!  Also, I submitted my abstract to ACSMS (Australian Conference of Science and Medicine in Sport) so hopefully it will get accepted and I'll be heading out to Perth towards the end of October to present on the research study I have been helping my professor with since last year!  I won't know until late May about that though. 

Righto well its time to jet.  While you early birds are gettin your day started in ABQ, I'm just gettin ready to hit the hay :)  Hope you all have a fabulous day!  Cheers! xo