Wednesday, June 30, 2004

HAILSTORM outside !!!!!!!!! and I am in Australia... I may have picked the wrong state...

I have finished my poster for the conference and now it is in printing... my very first poster ahhh :o) I have been sickish this week, sore throat and fever but I saw it coming since I got so cold last week. Hopefully it will be all gone before the conference. Yes the CONFERENCE, The Australian Mammal Society (Mamm Soc) which will be in the Barossa Valley near Adelaide, jeiiii... We will be driving over there on Sunday, I have been this route 4 times already but never before in such a good company as now :) We are all very very VERY excited !!! Barossa Valley is famous for its Wineries and we are looking forward to some yummy wine tasting :)

Friday, June 25, 2004

We went to Melbourne last night and met Meg there, had dinner at a funky bar in the city (had to wait ages to get the food..) and then headed to the Alex Lloyd concert, which was in a place called HiFi Bar, pretty cool place. The supporting act started at 8 and we were there around 8:30... the rock band playing was just awful... lots of noise but no music and the singer thought he was the coolest but he wasnt. Then a long breake followed by a girl and a guitar... She played very soft music for an hour or so and everyone fell asleap... Then a looooong break with the latest Beatle album music... I love the Beatles but they were NOT the appropriate music at the time... We tried to cheer up and sing along with Yellow Submarine but it was just too strange... Then fiiiinally at almost 11 o'clock Alex Lloyd appeared with his band. They were very good but we were still a bit frustrated to be kept waiting so long and I was soooo tired like I explained in my blog yesterday that I could hardly move to the music. No seats so everyone was standing... After the consert I was completely dead, could hardly keep my eyes open in the car home (an hours drive from Melbourne) and then when we came back the house was so cold that I went shivering to my cold bed and shivered there for a long time. So both a pretty great and pretty miserable day I had yesterday. We slept in this morning and oh that was so good :) Came to work and ARG me and Kate had to wash our very pooie traps... stinkie stinkie... We started and had only washed a few when everything went pitch black. The power had gone off the building and we were in a lab with no windows. We struggled to get out and had to wait for ages for the power to get on again. We are going to a housewarming party tonight, Jonno at work just moved to Point Lonsdale so it should be great fun :) He is also celebrating that he finished his Honours talk today so happy day Jonno :) Have a great weekend everyone :) smooch

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Its been a long time since I have been as tired as I am now... Im almost falling off the chair. Me and Kate have been trapping all week, three of her sites and my Urquharts Bluff site... 190 traps to check every day. The first 3 days were ok because the weather was quite good, Kate sites are horrible though, specially one which is just one thick prickly bush and branches which we had to fight through, and it is in a slippery hill... In the end of the first day my feet were trembling and I felt like a cookiedough. Today we picked up the traps and the weather was just horrible, it rained all the time and we were absolutely soaking and dirty. We still have not washed the trappes, will do it tomorrow... sigh... BUT this is only the bad part of the story, the GOOD part is that we caught a lot of animals. Mostly bush rats on Kates sites and minnies (Swamp antechinus) on my site BUT we also caught a WHITE FOOTED DUNNART, which are soooo cute. I have caught one before with Kylie but Kate had not seen one before. They are just adorable. And all my minnies were there, did not get my little missie nr 44 on the first day which made me worried because she is very trap happy. She comes usually in the traps every day and sometimes twice a day because she likes peanutbutter. So when I did not get her the first day I was so worried that she was dead but she came the next day so I was very happy :) My boys are getting quite big and agressive, with biiig scrotums and lots of hormones. Sad that I will never see them again because next time I will trap, in August, they will be dead... Yes all the males die after the breeding season poor things. Me and Kate had meant to go for a swim after we finished today, yes my site is ON the Great ocean road nearby the best surfing beaches in Australia... we saw lots of surfers but in the end we were so cold and wet that we just wanted to go home and take a shower... Tonight me, Kylie and her "friend", Ellen and Meg are going on a concert with Alex Lloyd, so I better go back home and have a kip (nap) so I will stay awake tonite... Alex Lloyds most fammous song is probably "Amazing" which some of you may know... Well, Im off... zzz knusimusi

Friday, June 18, 2004

They did not mention our national day in the aussie news, how rude of them ... :) But I made everyone at work celebrate, yes, I brought red, white and blue balloons, baked a cake and made lots of icelandic flags :) I even dressed up in the flag colours even though I did not do it on purpose... I tried to teach everyone to sing : hae ho jibbi jei og jibbi jei, tad er kominn sautjandi juniii" but they did not seem to be able to remember it... They loved the word "skuffukaka" though which is the name of my cake :) Jonno did not come to work that day so we put all the balloons on his desk... see 17. June pictures here :)

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

New favourite band: The dissociatives. BRILLIANT !!! The singer Daniel Johns is the former singer of Silverchair (a very famouse aussie band) and Paul Mac is a dance music guy. So go and check them out :)
Last weekend me and Kylie went to Portarlington to check out the Celtic festival, we could only be there for few hours because Kylie had to work... the weather was really bad and it was just too expensive to buy a whole day ticket for 40 bucks (2000 kr) and just stay for 2 hours... so we checked out the garage sales instead and what a bargain I maid... 6 belts 1 dollar (50 kr), sunglasses 1 dollar :) I was very happy and then we went to Myers supersale and I bought a really reeeeally nice warm sweater and a shirt for 25 dollars (1250 kr).
Garage sale = a sale in garages, lawns... people put all kinds of stuff for sale, very very cheap :)
Monday back to work and I have actually been very productive, working very hard on my literature review, spermatogenesis failure in poor male antechinuses etc...
I am going to bake a cake tonight and bring in tomorrow with balloons and Icelandic flags because it is 17th of JUNE tomorrow, our National day :) jeiiiii hae ho jibbi jei og jibbi jei, tad er kominn 17. juniiiiiiiii. Gledilega tjodhatid :)

Friday, June 11, 2004

We wrote a Harry Potter poem at work as a part of Kates diary tasks...


Harry Potter, what a treat!
I laughed when the monster book tried to eat
The shoe which Harry took off his feet

Hagrid he was still hairy
Peter Pettigrew appeared from thin air-y
And the dementors they were pretty scary (by Kate)

Does Ron have a crush on Herm?
He acts like he does not like her perm
But in fact she makes him squirm (by Rannveig)

The movie was really great
When Ron made the spider scate
But the book was better...mate!

"Spiders are trying to make me tapdance!" (by Jonno)

The hippogriff was called Buckbeak
Yummy ferrets he did like to eat
The minister for magic wanted him to die
But Sirius Black rode off on him into the sky (By Ellen)

Thursday, June 10, 2004

HARRY POTTER in 4 hours !!!! Me, Ellen and Kate have been driving people crazy at work talking about HP all day :) Jibbbiiiiii

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Only two more sleeps untill Harry Potter... yes they are very LATE here downunder!! Me and Ellen have had a count down for few months now and Jonno bought us all tickets two weeks ago. Nothing much else is happening, I am flat out writing a literature review and building up my poster for the conference in July (jeyyyy). Next weekend there is a Celtic festival in Port Lonsdale and we are going to check that out, too bad I have not found a band to play with yet...
I read on mbl.is that AC/DC were going to have a street in Melbourne named after them, it has not been big in the news here... Australians call them Acca Dacca and are extremely proud of them :)

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

I had a presentation yesterday on Icelandic mammals for the School of Ecology and Environment where I am doing my project. It went pretty well I think, I got lots of questions and everyone seemed to be happy about it :) I have also said yes to give another talk about it in October. That will be for the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria (Field Nats..) which is the group me and Ellen with to the Grampians to find Smokey mouse. Should be fun :) And now finally I can spend more time on the Poster I will present on the conference I am going to in beginning of July. We are a merry group of 7 or 8 girlies going together, should be great fun :)
Saturday we went to see Troy in the movies, quite good, makes me want to read about what really happened. And Sunday I went to a choir Master Class with Graham Abbott, a famous Australian conducter who has conducted Handels Messiah 60 times... and this man is only around 40 years old I would guess. We sung two chapters of Messiah (Halleluja of course), Ave verum by Mozart and pieces of Missa brevis by Palestrina. The choir was pretty good and Graham was absolutely amazing... it was fantastic to sing again, I have missed it so much... doremifasolatidooooo