5 posts tagged “sheepish”
* the sound effect intended is the collective gasp made by westley and buttercup as they emerge from the lightning sand, but that was way too long a title. thank you.
so, here we all are, nearly a month after the horse-trampling debacle. i could say that the leg turned out to be much worse than anyone suspected, became gangrenous, and ultimately had to be amputated, thus providing a handy excuse for my absence. but that would be a lie. i did develop some spectacular bruises, my knee is still a little stiff and i actually still have a hoof-shaped and -sized patch on my shin that is completely numb, but other than that i can't really complain. as i said, i count myself very lucky. i do intend to go riding at the same place again in a few weeks when our pet canadian returns to nz for a visit, so i'll let you know if anything else of excitement transpires.
mostly what's happened to me in the last month is: theeeeeeeeeessssssiiiiiiiissssssss. i managed to get the whole thing assembled into a first draft, submit it to my poor supervisor, receive the first round of comments, respond and update accordingly (a process that ultimately drove me to a college-worthy near-all-nighter just to get the damn thing finished again), and now it's in his hands for round two. should go to review in the next couple of weeks.
there have also been various visits from out-of-towners, toings and froings within auckland and surrounding counties, dress parties, concerts, the purchase of a suprising number of potential wedding garments, sick kuhli loaches and a small but persistent obsession with season 3 of boston legal. now we've moved on to flight of the conchords. there have been sweepings of autumn leaves from the driveway as our japanese maple does its annual shakedown of all leaves (whomping willow-style). there have been the usual cat-cuddlings and spider-feedings. and i have applied for a couple of jobs, but more will not be revealed until more is known. (enjoying the cryptic statements? plenty to go around!)
in any case, in the relatively chaos-free interlude that marks the final throes of my phd, i will try to maintain more of a presence here, so i don't have to condense weeks into paragraphs again. and if that all falls apart, well, there will be photographs of the next trip in a little over 6 weeks. :D
i am away this weekend (away i say! from my thesis! from everything! from planet earth! ... in any case, the interweb) and so, alas, no bugs or herps or other miscellaneous wildlife will be appearing here for several days. and the fact that i need to walk out the door in 5 minutes for a smashing pumpkins concert (eeeee!) means none of the above for today either, even though i did catch the mantises again this afternoon (all three of them). they will make their debut soon. in the meantime, happy long weekend!
it's not my fault. i can explain everything. after my all-too-informal references to the hedgehog gods, a small but spiky army tricked the cat into letting them in, marched up the stairs, and bore me away into the night to do penance. on a small but mobile sea of pincushions, i was brought before Their Most Divine Pricklinesses. luckily the journey had taken us through dense underbrush, and i was able to surreptititiously pocket a large number of juicy, crunchy snails along the way, which mollified and distracted the assembly long enough for me to steal away unnoticed, in spite of zebra-striped pajamas.
actually, i was on the moon, with steve.
and from our lunar hideaway, although largely beyond the reach of the interweb, i was able to finally get this paper submitted and make some other thesis progress. i also managed a few earthside interludes, during which we hiked the tongariro crossing again, visited family and crazy dogs in nelson, and i did a marine mammal medic course that prepares me to assist at future whale strandings.
also, it's summer in new zealand, which looks like this:
... so i confess that mustering the motivation to spend time inside on a computer has been more difficult than usual, and that the aformentioned indoor time has been largely spent thesising in order to rationalize having earned a few more hours outside. (and, er, playing scrabulous. evil, evil scrabulous.) my new mountain bike from the pebbles has been an added distraction - so fast! so red and shiny! - but i tell myself that anything that moves me further away from the troglodyte end of the spectrum is probably a good thing.
but look, i came back just in time to notice that this site is one year old tomorrow. and as one of the inaugural posts was about our local household spiders, of which we once again have a considerable and diverse population, perhaps i will manage to get together some more spidery goodness to share. bet you can't wait.
after a loooooong delay, i've finished adding the rest of my photos from japan. of course, now they're all buried under each other and the more recent posts, so here's the quick rundown - asakusa & tokyo at night, the national science museum, the imperial gardens, and our last day in tokyo. sorry it took so long - at least i managed before the new year!
don't think that i haven't been (using a lot of negatives because i have and) collecting material for the last month, though, because it's summer in new zealand and that means outdoors - showing ww3 around while he was here, and then diving, beach, and using my new mountain bike (since christmas anyway). so keep an eye out here - 2008 looks like a fairly easygoing year (cough, snort) so those should be appearing here soon. ;) in the meantime, here's something real purdy that appeared for me under the christmas tree...
hello! i'm back in new zealand now, and obviously waaaaay behind on posting the last of my photos. i have now added the ones from berlin, and will hopefully get the rest of japan uploaded over the next couple of days. and lest everyone think i have just been resting on my jet-lagged laurels over here (instead of, you know, working on my thesis or planning a wedding... i know! eeeee!) we actually took my visiting cousin, WW3 (tee hee), to a few picturesque spots in new zealand, so i'll get those posted shortly as well.
