Interviews and possums

The last week was a bit of a bust when it came to work. I just couldn't focus, writing a thesis can be terribly depressing when you have a supervisor that seems to doubt everything you say. So instead of work I took the dog for walks and stopped being lazy about her obedience training, made a dress, knitted a hat, watched movies, read a book and baked giant cookies. Plus I got an interview for a job at Te Papa, as a tour guide. So I'm going to Welly for a few days, because after my PhD troubles I told myself I would never take a job without checking out the place and the people first. This job would perhaps not be much of a career move, in that it is only casual, part-time work that doesn't require all my tertiary qualifications; however this job would get me to Wellington and into Te Papa, where I can start getting to know people, making contacts, and trying to convince somebody to give me the type of job that I want. There is a press at Te Papa where they publish non-fiction books - if I am there, on site, perhaps I will be more likely to work my way into an editorial job there? Plus I've been back from Ireland for 6 months now and I think I've had about enough of Invercargill, it might be time for a change again.

The biggest challenge about moving to a new city now would be getting to know a new place, and finding dog-friendly places for Cher. We will need a new run to go on - I will probably miss the Waihopai walkway, where there is so much space and for the most part I can let Cher run without a leash. On the upside, perhaps I will find a good dog park. And most cities have some kind of large park or botanic garden, it will just be a case of finding our way around. Queen's Park is so good for dog-walking though, and I have never been told off for having Cher off of her leash (although I did get a talking too at Sandy point the other day, which is what encouraged me to start training her again). Over the last three days in our daily walks through Queen's Park Cher met a new animal - a possum!

At first I thought it was just a bit odd, to find a possum on the ground during the day time. There was Cher, barking like it was some sort of threat, and this possum just slowly uncurled and looked at us, then eventually climbed up the tree some way. We went on our way and I thought no more on it, but the next day Cher found the possum again, in the same place! This time the possum didn't even bother to try climb the tree, so as I dragged Cher away I wondered if maybe it was old or sick or hurt. Turns out it must have been. Today on our walk Cher ran ahead to the tree, to look for the possum, but this time it wasn't there. We kept walking and after awhile Cher wandered off and disappeared - when I noticed I started to call her, and going back to obedience training is paying off, so she came running, only she had something in her mouth. She is always picking up sticks but this seemed to be something sort of floppy. She caught up to me and yes, she had a dead possum in her mouth. She was very pleased with herself and not too impressed about having to drop it, but luckily Cher has a one track mind so as soon as you point her toward the path she's happy enough to continue with our walk, and forgets whatever I have made her drop.

The trouble with dogs

A couple of days ago I was taking the dog for a long run because the weather had finally cleared. We had a good run and were nearly at the hospital to visit my sister, when I realised that I didn't have the dog's leash anymore. You think I would have learnt by now to keep a better hold on it, but I can't seem to keep from disappearing into daydreams while I bike along. Unfortunately, Cher is far from being a sniffer dog and is not help in finding things at all. So we turned around and started slowly making our way back while I looked out for the leash. Eventually I gave up and turned back toward the hospital, but my slow backtrack had given Cher time to get into mischief. I don't know where she went and what she did but she came back all covered in mud. Now, it's not unusual for her to run through the mud and splatter her legs and stomach, but this time she managed to get mud all over her back. We continued on our way and I found a half of a broken leash further down the track - that combined with the drawstring of my track-pants provided a makeshift leash, as I couldn't very well bring a dog into the hospital with no leash. Of course, with her being all muddy I probably should have left her outside, but I couldn't trust a drawstring to hold her so I had no choice. However, as we left the estuary and continued to the hospital, I noticed that we hadn't left the estuary smell behind. So I was not only bringing a dirty dog into the hospital; I was bringing a dirty, stinky dog into the hospital. Luckily, I didn't come across any nurses on my way in. Cher was tired and seemed to feel quite sorry for herself so she settled down quickly enough:

Now you might think that the trouble with dogs is the stinky mud they like to get into. But with Cher, that's just the beginning. This was only the second time that she has gotten so smelly, but there was just no avoiding the need to give her a proper wash. Bathtubs have gone out of fashion, which is not really ideal when you have a dog that needs a bath. So I began by tying her leash to the shower handrail, but she's not a stupid dog so she knew what was happening - as soon as I turned on the water she managed to slip out of her collar and go running through the house, spreading water and stink everywhere. To get her back into the bathroom I had to pick her up, then I had to keep a tight grip on the scruff of her neck to get her to stay still. I wet her down, lathered her and tried to scrub away all the dirt, all the while holding her in something like a headlock. As we finished with the lathering and starting rinsing, she went from struggling to struggling and whining. Only it wasn't normal, quiet whining. By the end of it I wouldn't have been surprised if somebody had called the police because it sounded like someone was being murdered. So I gave up and began to towel her down, and she continued to whine and cry. By the time it was all over, the bathroom was flooded, the living room carpet was all wet, she'd gone through about three towels, I was soaked and Cher was hiding under the washing rack. What a pathetic dog I have, she loves to swim but is terrified of having a shower. After all that drama we were both exhausted:

No Job Interview :(

So I didn't get an interview for the most recent job I applied for. It's probably not such a bad thing - I was overqualified and I don't actually want to be a microscope technician for any significant amount of time, but it is the type of job where they would prefer to hire somebody who will stick around for most of their career. But it still leaves me in a rather unsecured financial position. Technically I have enough savings to keep me going for a good few months after my student wage ends (which will be in about a month or so!). However, if I have no work and live off of my savings I won't have anything to fall back on in case of emergency, and I will have no money left to take a holiday back to Europe. So it's on to the next thing, because my thesis is not really full time work right now anyway. I just handed in the next draft of the next research paper to my supervisor and in my opinion, it is close to being ready to submit. The introduction and discussion needs work, but everything else is looking pretty good I think. There are two more chapters to finish of course, but I can't do anything about that until my supervisor gets back to me with comments. So for today I am taking a break from the thesis, I have updated my CV and I am about to make some phone calls to various publishing houses to offer my name as a freelance editor. It's what I want to do, so I might as well just try to get started, right?

Making those sort of phone calls is difficult though, so first I am procrastinating by writing. I had a terrible week last week - I came down with a tummy bug and a bad cold and I could not make the most of the clear weather we've been having. My poor dog was neglected because I was too ill to take her for proper runs, and I had no appetite so I couldn't even make myself feel better with comfort food. Luckily I came right around Thursday because I had to get cracking on my entry for the Oyster Festival fashion thing. Talk about last minute - it's lucky I had the idea and did the basic construction before I got sick or I would have been screwed. The judging was on Sunday so I spent to days making the biggest mess imaginable with my oyster sacks, paint, sand and glitter. After a long day on Sunday it is all over, except for the show itself, and I'm glad because I large part of me couldn't really be bothered with it all anyway. There were only three adult entries and the other two were adult-child pairs so I'm not sure if my ridiculously huge, painted monstrosity of a dress can compete with all that cuteness. Here is my entry, I have no photos of it being worn yet but it looked pretty good. I really, really hope I win something - have to pay for my sewing machine after all, and it would make me feel better after not getting a job interview.

So that's pretty much my life for the past two weeks. I don't appreciate all the cold rain today because, no matter the weather, I still have to take the dog for a run. Despite having no financial security, today I feel like shopping would cheer me up - perhaps I will go buy myself something nice. I'm debating over whether to spend a chunk of my savings on buying a car - then when my sister is out of hospital and wants me out of her house, I could just take to the road for awhile. After all, my work is pretty mobile and flexible. But then if I find now work how will I keep it running? So with that thought in mind, I guess I should pick up the phone and start trying to market myself as a freelance editor.

Not much to say...

So what have I been doing for the last week or so? Well, first of all, I decided at the last minute to enter the fashion competition of the Bluff Oyster Festival again, after all these years, so that required a trip out to Bluff for last minute sign up. Now, why might it take nearly an hour to drive to Bluff? Well, when you are stuck behind this for one thing:

I'm not quite sure what it was, but it took up both lanes and moved very slowly. After that trip I decided to take a drive out to Colac Bay; I was struggling to find motivation for my thesis work and I thought a change of scenery might help. It didn't, I spent two days reading books instead (finally read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and it was really good, so I had to read the whole trilogy). The scenery was nice though, there was a really high tide, lots of wind and clear skies at night to show off all the stars.

Now another week is here and I am finally getting focused on my work again. It is going slow, but that's how these things work. As well as the thesis I have two weeks left to make my entry for the Oyster Festival - which has shown me that it's high time I bought myself a sewing machine. I borrowed a machine that my Dad had hidden away in a closet and it's the most obsolete dinosaur of a sewing machine that I've ever come across. I don't know where he got it but it surely belongs in a museum or the tip, not really sure which but it really is impossible to use and I refuse to waste my time and energy trying to make it work. Instead I'll use it as an excuse to go out and buy one of my own - I mean, I would be needing one anyway so why wait? However, now it's late afternoon and even when I take the thesis work slowly it is still draining (especially when it's chemistry that I have to get my head around) so now it's time to rustle up a snack and take a break.

ANZAC day 2013

The last couple of weeks I have been properly hard at work on my thesis, which makes for a rather dull and tiring couple of weeks with very little interesting stories to tell. It started last Monday, which feels like ages ago and not just last week, when I had to drive up to Dunedin to use some microscope software at extremely short notice - as in, I got an email at 10 am saying that the microscope would be free that afternoon, but after that not for at least two weeks. So I had to collect all my thesis stuff and jump in the car, on a very rainy day that wasn't really suitable for driving in. I also had to dump my poor doggy at doggy-daycare, even though she had a cut on her foot that I didn't want to get worse. So I drove up to Dunedin, picked up a hitchhiker on the way to keep me alert, found my way to the electron microscope unit and after awhile I managed to remember how to use the software and did what I had to do - which after a three hour drive ended up taking no more than an hour. I'm not used to driving long distances so between that and being in a dark room on a computer for an hour I was already pretty tired, so I couldn't just drive back. Luckily I managed to get in touch with a friend so I had someone to eat lunch with, we caught up and chatted about all sorts of things, and then I had to drive back to Invers. Did I mention that as soon as I had driven out of Invercargill the driving rain disappeared? So I drove back into darkness, because it was late afternoon, and rain, and when it was all over I was very tired. The dog, on the other hand, was far from tired and would not stop jumping all over me - an entire day away is a bit much for her, she still has some separation issues.

After that very exhausting Monday I finally had access to all of the data I had been missing, which meant that I could continue re-writing one of my thesis chapter drafts. However, the next day I finally got an email from my supervisor with edits and comments on what I had sent her so far - in some ways good because I could include all of that in my new draft, but in other ways not good, because she expected a response and my draft wasn't ready yet. Which is why I worked really long, exhausting hours for a few days (because, though it may not seem so to some people, spending the whole day staring at a computer is actually really hard). Then I sent the draft to her, and had to quickly write up the assignment that was due for the publishing diploma that I'm doing part-time - hopefully it was good, I almost never leave things to the last minute like that! Then I had to get straight back to finishing the images I was working on for my thesis - I spent the weekend figuring out how to do what I wanted to do using photoshop, which is a very annoying program sometimes, completely un-user-friendly, and which I think I need to buy when I get a job because my copy (that is, a pirated copy, how bad am I) seems to be having issues. And my shiny new computer is having issues too - or perhaps it's Windows8, which may be a great new thing for tablet users but is really irritating for real computer users. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that because of computer/photoshop/windows8 issues I had a huge scare a couple of days ago when the images that I had nearly finished vanished from my computer! As did the new draft of my thesis chapter. I keep all of my thesis backed up on the internet through GoogleDrive so things aren't supposed to be able to just disappear, yet they were nowhere to be found. Luckily, I did eventually find them - in the trash of my online GoogleDrive, which is very strange because to get there the files would have to have been deleted, but all that happened was that my computer crashed while the files had been open. Both strange and worrying - as soon as I got all my documents back I made a new back-up of everything, for just in case.

Now that I have finished the second draft of that chapter I need to do the same for my other chapters. I'm working on an easy one today, because it is a public holiday after all. In fact, maybe I should stop working and make some ANZAC cookies - yep, that's definitely a good idea on this cold, rainy day. As well as my thesis work and my publishing diploma work (which luckily I find quite easy, so it doesn't take up much time) I have found a job to apply for, so I need to write an awesome cover letter, fix up my CV, maybe phone the place up with some queries, and sort out references. The references will actually be the worst bit - I will have to ask my supervisor, and first of all knowing that I am looking for a job may make her be even more negative about my thesis work, and second of all, I'm not sure if she will give me a good reference, on account of our precarious relationship and her apparent antipathy of my attitude to this PhD research (as in, she clearly thinks that I am incompetent and haven't completed tasks to the best standard - which is a load of bullshit, what is really going on is that I no longer give a f***). So anyway, you can see why I would be wary of asking her to be a reference, even though I have no choice as she is my most recent employer. Perhaps the 11 hour time difference will mean that there are no phone conversations, just emails, and that it will all stay vague and friendly. The job is electron microscopy technician at Massey University in Palmerston and I think I would really like that sort of a job - for awhile at least, and then we'll see. Plus, there isn't a lot of choice really, even if I look in Australia there are not a huge amount of jobs for someone with my specific science skills. So fingers crossed for this one! Time to go make bikkies...

Bright and early on Sunday morning

Every morning Cher begins to wake me up slowly at some ungodly hour (I refuse to wake up enough to look at the time but I'm sure it's insanely early). She starts by sitting by my bed staring at me, and I know that she's there without even opening my eyes. Then she paces; through the house, to her bed, back to my bed to stare at me some more, and she might let out the odd whine while she's at it. I continue to ignore her, but she has a very accurate internal clock. Come 7.30 she jumps on my bed, half the time landing right on my guts, and if I'm lucky she'll curl up and go to sleep for another half hour. Or she'll be restless and continue to pace, on my bed, up and down from the foot of the bed to my pillow, flopping herself down and rolling about whenever she thinks I might be about to wake up and pet her. So then I kick her off the bed but she continues to stare at me so I have to get up eventually. The hours I keep may seem a bit slack to you but you have to remember that first of all, I am a student and second of all, every day I have to wake up and face the depressing, anxiety-ridden reality that is my PhD thesis, with all of it's negative, non-expert, multi-disciplinary, disjointed, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink results. So I think I deserve to stay in bed till 8.

Anyway, regardless of my desire to stay in bed the dog makes me get up and feed her as close to 8 am as possible, and is so excited when I haul my ass out of bed that she jumps all over me and rolls at my feet and when I lean down to rub her exposed belly she waves her paws about regardless of how sharp her claws are. So after feeding her and then myself and all the other necessary morning things that have to be done it's time to run all of her energy out of her with a big bike ride. However, on Friday morning my back tire was completely flat. We made do and I took it to Dad later to get it fixed. We found the puncture and fixed it and I biked home and everything seemed fine. So the next morning, after being woken up by sad dog eyes, we were just about to head off on our bike ride when I saw that the tire was flat again! There must have been something wrong with it, right? Later that day I took it into the shop to get the tube replaced because it is an old bike after all. I give it to the bike guy and he looks down at the tire and the first thing he sees? A staple stuck in it. Now why didn't I see that? I didn't even look, great way to make myself look stupid. Could have avoided that second puncture altogether but hopefully I will be more on to it next time. And if not, I think I'll take it to the bike shop again because what took me about half an hour to do on my own the bike guy did in 5 minutes.

Now it's Sunday morning and high time I got out of bed properly. I have work to do because I've been too slack this last week. Right now the dog is entertained with her toy that holds treats, and the way that she wrinkles her forehead in concentration is really adorable, but eventually she'll get them all out and then she'll be bored and expect her morning run. At least it's not raining - the other day we got soaked within about 5 minutes and I think she dislikes going out in the pouring rain as much as I do. Then it's time to get my act together and really get to work this week (although when you don't get any edited drafts back from your supervisor there really is a limit to what can be done). It's halfway through April and when I left Ireland I really thought I'd be finished by March. I thought the bulk of it was done but without real feedback I don't even know if I am on the right track - still, I hope it will only be a matter of another month or so. And then I'll have no wage so maybe I should start buying lotto tickets...

Sunny Easter Weekend

Easter and chocolate finally arrived to take me away from an awful week of PhD work (hopefully this week will go better?). Friday featured an impromptu drive out to Riverton to take my pick of plants and belongings from my Nan's old house, all in the midst of my Mum's latest drama - her cat went missing. Between the two of them those cats would have cost more than 10 grand to get them to NZ so they aren't allowed to run away or die. Yet it's hard to get too worked up over it when it's only been missing a day, there's not really a lot you can do to find a cat really because when they want to hide they're really good at it. So I left Mum to it and went for a drive, helped myself to pot-plants and a couple of little things, but not much really because to be honest I'd already had a good nosy on the sly and taken a couple of things that I wanted. So what do you do after the long enough drive to Riverton on a really hot day? You take a drive down to the rocks and take some pictures as proof of our amazing Easter weather (because it's Autumn now and it's really not normally quite this good by this time of year).

So after all of that and a drive out to Colac Bay for a bit of a feed we drove back to Invercargill to attempt to rescue the poor pot-plants that had been neglected for about 9 months or so - they're surprisingly OK. It was so bloody hot that it was just too hard to really do anything at all (so I ate an Easter egg and watched tele), and then the same thing happened on Saturday! Not that I'm complaining, I love the sun. I spent the day gardening which was really exhausting, while the poor dog mostly sheltered inside. She's been taking couch liberties and I've been letting her, because she's just so cute.

Anyway, to get to the end of all my stories, first of all Mum found her cat - locked in the neighbour's garage, right next door all along. He didn't learn his lesson though. Easter Sunday was supposed to be colder but it wasn't really, then it absolutely poured down all night and for a bit in the morning - great for the gardens and farmers but bloody cold. Took the dog for a run when it cleared up, she got a bit of a surprise when the river was so much deeper than normal, but then halfway along it started to come down again and we got soaked. Luckily it stopped before too long and the wind was strong enough to dry us off. It probably wasn't enough to end the drought though, the afternoon has been humid and hot and who knows what it will do tomorrow. Out in Colac Bay now, it's cold and windy out here and the surf is huge today. Hopefully I'll have a good week of work.