oh happy happy joy joy

so apparently my pollyanna attempt wasnt entirely convincing. meh. im no pollyanna, i know that. but i tried! today, i am genuinely happy tho. some good things happened yesterday, so its hard to stay grumpy forever.

firstly i got a little pressie in the mail. it might have been some malabrigo sock yarn in Tiziano Red. it is the most perfect colour for me, and is that not the best name for a red?! malabrigo sock yarn is designed to make you feel better about things all round. thank you, you little elf.

secondly, our second family christmas bbq here went very well and everyone had fun, and everyone loved their presents, and books were opened and read, and i was presented with a lovely box set of the harry potters. as if i needed an excuse to read them again! (btw, i finished atonement over coffee this morning. sigh. so sad, and beautiful. the ending is a bit different to the movie, i think the movie ending might be actually better, but otherwise its very faithful and the book is terrific).

tonight we are doing family dinner out, same people but all together in one place, instead of spread over two nights here. we are going to bbq king in goulburn st which im pretty sure is my favourite chinese restaurant in the known universe. hmmm bbq pork and duck....

but i digress.

tomorrow night i am hoping to get to snb in the city, and friday night we are having drinks and dinner with a visiting academic friend from the US and his wife, and some of our mutual academic friends from wollongong. after much soul searching, i decided to take them all to the latest sensation, din tai fung, for dumplings. hmmm dumplings.

sorry. no, this is not homer simpson writing on my blog.

then saturday we have our dog club christmas picnic, and then sunday the day trip to The Can then on monday we set out for the land of the queen (or the redneck). (god i wish my father had chosen to retire in tasmania, or the southern highlands. somewhere cool and sophisticated, for gods sake. anyway...)

so all this is to look forward to. but wait, theres more.

remember i mentioned i had been offered a job? i did some soul searching and talked to lots of people about it, and i decided to go for it. its a full time job, but because it was offered to me especially, they have changed the nature of the job a little to make it more flexible and to introduce a research component. so as well as developing and managing research projects for the faculty, i will be able to develop projects of my own, and work with others on their research. it is in health, not arts, which is not such a huge shift for me as i worked in health a long time ago, and there is an opportunity for me to bring my social theory to health projects, so i think its a good opportunity. and to be quite frank, arts faculties are dying a slow painful and protracted death. not that i think this is a good thing, because we always need critical thinking, now more than ever, but to be honest, in the race to the cash, arts faculties have merely raced to the bottom and the amount of critical thinking actually going on is pretty light on the ground. i am glad to be out of it.

so anyway, i applied through all the proper channels so that we can make sure everything looks legit, and they want to do the whole interview thing, but we couldnt find a mutual date until january 23. so yesterday they asked me if i would start the job now, just for 3 days a week (in recognition of the fact that i do have a 2 day a week job elsewhere, and i can not be expected to quit it until i have the other contract signed and in my hand) on a short term contract. i said yes. i start on jan 5, but have to go down this friday to sort it all out. i think i am quite excited, and of course i am just thrilled that they are quite keen to get me by the looks of things, and having done the job for a few weeks on a flexible arrangement (including working from home) means it will be easier for me to negotiate more of the same for the full time gig. it is funny how things work out though, isnt it?

all of this is in the future of course. so in the interest of keeping the joy in the moment, i got a couple of photos around the place last night before my camera batteries died. i am very pleased that since we moved here trent has been able to do lots of more training with jem, and he has bought some weave poles. last night they did some excellent training. here is jem weaving:


here is jem with his post-weave reward:

and here is the single big tomato (lots more have appeared on the cherry plant) growing every day:

i hope i get more of these on this plant. so far nothing on the roma...are they usually slower?

now i have some work to do.

k xx