23 December 2013

Nearly Christmas

It's Christmas Eve Eve and I am at home watching the Toy Story Halloween special  - odd time to put it on TV but cartoons are always good. I have been working quite a lot, today was my day off and then I will be working right through Christmas. But apparently they feed us well and we get time and a half, and days in lieu. It's been nice and sunny here, I got sunburnt on my day off last week and it still hurts. I bought Cher a paddling pool to keep her cool and at first she wouldn't go near it, thought it was some sort of trick. Understandable considering that the day before I had to hose her down after she put her face into a mud puddle. But after throwing her toys into the water for a couple of days she finally got used to the idea of the paddling pool, now she gets in after every walk and splashes around for a bit. I know she's spoiled, but today a dog at the park had a go at her and left her with a bleeding ear so she deserves treats.


Today I spent time cleaning my house so that it's nice for Christmas, and made a cheesecake. Presents arrived from Invercargill and now my little Christmas tree looks very happy. I am supposed to be finishing another academic publication but it's really hard to find time - there are other things that need to be done on my day off, so it will just have be a slow effort. I work on it in my lunchbreaks instead, so that I don't feel like I'm completely neglecting it. If I'm going to do work on my days off I would rather look for jobs. There are a few being advertised at the moment that definitely apply to me, and surely more will come up. It would be good to have a job that makes use of some of my very drawn out tertiary education.

In other news, there was a huge bug in my kitchen the other night. I looked it up later and found out it was a huhu beetle. I thought that might be it, and it came in the open kitchen window on a hot night, because the light was on in the kitchen, so it clearly wasn't going to just go back out again of it's own accord. It was up high so even if I had the courage I couldn't have caught it. I tried turning the light off and shining a torch outside to encourage it out but it just fell down into my dishes. So then I really couldn't deal with it (did I mention that it was really late at night) so I grabbed the fly spray, but it seems so horrible and also, maybe it would have flown towards me. So in the end I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and sucked the poor thing up. It was so big that I felt it go up the tube, which made me scream and drop it. Then I left it running for a few minutes just to be sure, and now the vacuum is sitting in the wash house because I'm wary of emptying the bag just in case.


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