I know you've all been on tenterhooks to find out if the mobile home detox van accepted my batteries and compact fluorescent bulbs, even though some of their literature said not. Well, wonder no more: they did. Phew.

I suspect my reading will be curtailed this year, as I've started a Masters degree. Time I would normally spend reading will now be spent, er, reading, only it will be articles about organisational behaviour and change management instead of the usual nonsense.

Speaking of the degree, I came home the other day to find the university had sent me a welcome pack:



Surprise stationery is always welcome. I am particularly taken with the crayon highlighters, which I have never used before. And now that I have used them, I won't be going back to the felt-tip kind, because the crayons are fab. Second best is the magnetic whiteboard. (Oh, and there was also a pin with the university logo on it, which I have stuck into my pinboard. I forgot that when I took the photo.)

February books read

* Happy are the Meek - Andrew M. Greeley (1985)
* Hell! said the Duchess: A Bedtime Story - Michael Arlen (1934)

( Happy are the Meek )

( Hell! said the Duchess )

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to do some post-graduate study in health economics this year, half paid by me, half by my work. The university year starts next week so I was doing some preparatory stuff today - writing due dates in my diary, that sort of thing - when it hit me: this is it. This is what I do. I mean, it is what I do, but up till now I've seen myself as a jobbing accountant; in the future, though, any new jobs I look for will be in the health system like my current one. Which is not a bad thing, but it just sort of crept up on me.

I watched an episode of Time Team yesterday. They must have dug up half of Britain by now without ever finding exactly what it is they've been looking for, but happily finding something else instead. I'd like to pitch a TV show called Tax Team, in which a team of specialist accountants (including: Phil, capital gains tax; Jenny, fringe benefits tax; and Cam, wine equalisation tax*) audit the financial affairs of various historical figures to see how much they would have owed the Tax Office - or would they have got a tax refund? Dun dun DUN! You can't tell me that won't rate.

My boss was reminiscing yesterday about the summer job he had a teenager as the lifeguard at the Cobden (pop. 1,400) swimming pool, and how it was burgled twice one year. 'They didn't take any money, though,' he said. 'Both times they took all the lollies, including the Lions Mints. That's Cobden for you.'

When I was little, every Labour Day (the second Monday in March) was spent glued to the TV, watching Melbourne's Moomba** parade. Oh, it was brilliant! Businesses and government departments had themed floats on the back of trucks, using crepe paper and balloons with gay abandon, and in between were pipe bands and ethnic dancing groups and teeny tots doing calisthenics and two ghastly old clowns called Zig and Zag and it was all overseen by a local celebrity who had been crowned Moomba Monarch. To a small child, it was great; as an adult looking back, it encapsulates the essential dagginess of Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s (they don't do the parade any more). I thought of the Moomba parade the other day, when I saw these photos of Mardi Gras. Not because of the similarities (ha!), but because I thought that if young me was impressed by a truck decorated with crepe paper and tin foil, then Carnival would have blown my mind.




( *, ** and *** )

I had my last exam - ever? - on Thursday (it went well). Now I just have to write a research paper by the end of the year and I'm done. Before I start devoting to much time to that, though, I have to put on my financial hat and do the end of financial year (30 June) stuff at work. Oh, PAYG Payment Summaries: how much do I hate you? (Answer: Quite a lot.)

Yesterday, I helped John catalogue some things donated to his archery club. A man just turned up to their meeting and said he had some archery stuff from thirty years ago that he didn't want and he was moving and didn't want to take it with him, so would the club like it? And John, thinking it would be a ratty old bow and a few tatty old arrows, said yes, why not? Imagine his surprise when two big boxes turned up, containing two quite good bows, enough arrows (of good, bad and indifferent quality) to kill an army of orcs, and all sorts of other archery knick-knacks, including some nocks.

Also, my lovely ribbony scarf is coming along apace. The pattern involves wrapping extra yarn around each stitch and dropping it on the next row to make long drops; even for a slow knitter like myself, that hurries things along. The colours in it are gorgeous; each new one is prettier than the last. And, oddly enough, that's making me reluctant to wear the finished product. I've noticed this before, that I sometimes seem to feel as though I need permission (from whom?) to have nice things. I don't think that's a particularly healthy or happy mindset, so I try to shake it off, but it does pop up unbidden every now and then.

I rounded off my week of swanning about the state with a day in Melbourne, spending seven hours at a seminar on Advanced Salary Packaging for Non-Profit Organisations. Yet again it involved mention of novated leases. I really must find out what they are.

And now I'm on leave; from work, at least. I've taken a week off to write three thousand words on How Bicameral Relations Influence Responsible Democratic Government in Australia. That'll be thrilling. Part of me wants to see if I can do it without once mentioning The Dismissal*, but that would be foolish. I'll also be writing two thousand words on something to do with audience behaviour, but I haven't even thought about that one yet. I really must read the question.



* In 1975, the Governor-General (the Queen's representative, appointed by the government, and a post that is more or less ceremonial) responded to a protracted and bitter financial dispute between the upper and lower houses of parliament by sacking the elected government. This is far and away the single most interesting thing that has ever happened in Australian politics.**

** With the possible exception of the time a staid and straight-laced former Prime Minister, visiting America, was found wandering about Dallas in a "confused" state while not wearing any trousers.

Our Prime Minister is this far away from putting a giant, solid gold statue of himself on top of Parliament House. Watching the news these days is so depressing.*

I'm getting my stuff ready for next semester, and today that entailed buying DVDs for my screen theories class. We won't be studying The Usual Suspects, but we will be studying the usual suspects: Casablanca, Battleship Potempkin, Un Chien Andalou, Vertigo, etc. They're classics for a reason, obviously, but wouldn't it be interesting, just once, to study genre and narrative in, say, The Muppet Movie? Or discourses of masculinity in, ooh, Dude, Where's My Car?? That'd be fun. Anyway, where I bought my DVDs they had a big Superman promo, obviously getting ready for the soon-to-be-released new movie. Underneath a poster of New Superman was a display of DVDs of all the Old Supermen - the dopey looking boy from Smallville, the other TV one with Teri Hatcher, Christopher Reeve, George Reeves - all wearing the blue suit. How odd to see so many similar-looking men dressed identically!

Thinking about The Muppet Movie got me thinking about Kermit and Miss Piggy and what an odd couple they are. Either she is a miniature pig or he is the world's biggest frog. What sort of freaky mutant children would they spawn? After tonight's depressing news bulletin I was flicking through the channels, and so caught an advertisement for some sort of Airwicks home deodorant product, featuring an female (cartoon) elephant saying how her trunk was sensitive to bad smells and how Airwicks had helped disguise the smelly feet of her husband... a centipede. That's even less likely than a frog and a pig.



* Except for this story, about a man who stole more than 50,000 $2 coins from the Royal Australian Mint by hiding them in his shoes. I was also briefly entertained by news of an outbreak of sugar cane smut, until that turned out to be a Very Bad Thing.

Time to pick next year's classes, that is. There were three subjects I particularly wanted to do, but they're not being offered next year. I may be able to pick up one of them (Sociology of Health and Illness) in 2007. Since I work in the health field, I thought it might come in handy. The other two - linguistics electives - are lost, alas, forever.

As it currently stands, next year I will be doubtless be wittering on in here about: Australia's Cultural Policy, Sociology of Race and Ethnic Relations, South East Asian History and Screen Theories. A nice variety there, I think.

The amazing thing is that this will be the start of third year. Third year! When I started I was an unhappy Commerce graduate looking for a way to avoid doing my professional qualifications. I still remember the look on my former bosses' faces when I told them that I was starting an Arts degree rather than my CPA studies. As one of them said, doing it part-time meant that it would be six years before I was free to do CPA. Ah, 2007 - how far away it seemed! And now, four years later, I'm on the home straight. (I've had several letters from the faculty about an Honours year and post-graduate stuff, but I'm not sure about that yet.)

A busy week, this one. Unusual, in that I’m very rarely so busy I’m rushed off my feet these days. All over now, though: with exams done and no temp work on the horizon, I’m effectively on holiday for a few weeks. I’m not going anywhere, despite my itchy feet. Departure for further climes needs more stable finances than I have right now. Still, I love the winter weather here and I have sundry diverse projects in mind, so my enforced break should pass by pleasurably.

I had a long post planned detailing my frenetic week, from the baptism I went to on Sunday to the charity film screening I went to last night. Musings on how much I love the stained glass window in St Joseph’s Catholic Church (one of the little-known gems of the City by the Sea) to my so-far fruitless search for my grandmother’s diaries (previously thought to be in a box in the airing cupboard, but, in fact, not there) to meeting up with friends visiting from their new home in Vanuatu to how my exam invigilator’s efforts to ensure silence are actually more disruptive than the people talking outside to comments on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Shrek 2 to the book I've just finished reading and how I'm 100% positive Antonia Forest must have read it too.

Only now I’m here I can’t be bothered.