A seemingly no-progress week

This week has not been a great week. The thesis, that giant looming thing that should be all-important right now, has been progressing in a very intermittent way. The week started well and I finally sent some work to my supervisor - then I lost my motivation. What really screws up the pace is trying to make so many negative results sound like a significant level of work. I mean, I did work my ass off to get those results, it's just my bad luck that nothing worked. Then when it comes time to write them up, a year's worth of work can be summed up in a couple of paragraphs and a single table. So most of my week was spent staring at these paragraphs, trying to figure out if I could write more without repeating myself. The rest of the week was spent lazing around with the dog. This next week I'm going out to Colac Bay again where there at least isn't the distraction of people and shops. Though there might be the distraction of sunny days as the rain has finally stopped. Here in Invercargill we have discovered a couple of nice walks, like up along the Waihopai river and into Thompsons Bush, a small reserve area - altogether the walk is nearly 2 hours so between that and finding some random dog to play with, my poor girl was completely tuckered out all afternoon. Which meant that for once I could paint my toenails without her standing on my feet and ruining them.

But actually, to get back to the story about the Waihopai walkway, it turns out that there is this little reserve behind the end of the walk, in amongst all the farm land, that I'd never seen before - turns out there are quite a lot of little areas like this around:

I don't know if we're allowed in the little reserve area but there's probably native birds in there so I haven't tried because I know how much Cher would like to chase them. Instead I let her go after the ducks but this river has high banks and the dog wasn't brave enough to jump in after them, so she just jumped through the long grass instead. Must be exhausting - but hilarious to watch. Also it was hilarious to watch her chase a little bird straight into a wire fence, though I felt bad for laughing in case she hurt herself. She didn't seem to worried about it though, so I guess she was ok. Hopefully next time she'll see the fence before she runs into it.

After all that she need a good nap. I wouldn't have minded one either, but instead I had to do the dishes and my washing. But at least it's sunny.