A little bit of everything - Part 2

Over the last month there have been some good things and some bad things happening. I'll start with the bad first.

School always has it's disadvantages and after the break when I started my lizard project I thought things were going pretty well. Although I had to change my project to study tigers everything seemed fine until in the last few weeks all of my assignments were due  and the stress was rising with the deadlines. After spending hours on a huge assignment I finished for the day and had just a few more assignments to try and finish the next day (Saturday). The next morning I opened my computer to find that it would not open windows at all! I did everything from dismantling my computer to reading forums on Matt's computer only to decide it had completely crashed. Luckily the assignment I had finished the previous day I had e-mailed to the tutor and was able to retrieve it to turn in and all of my other assignments I hadn't started and just needed my articles which were on an online server. A friend tried to retrieve my files only to discover the hard drive had a damaged partition and he didn't have the time to do it. I'm currently still working on retrieving my years worth of photos, movies, documents, and music from that hard drive. So I used Matt's computer for the rest of my assignments which did not have powerpoint on it. In order to get powerpoint I somehow erased all of his office products and we ended up using a free trial of Office 365 so I could complete my presentation. Whew!!

We did see this once at least!

If that wasn't enough...I went on a mandatory boat trip for one of my classes that ended up making me very sick. I was so excited we were going to see so many cool wildlife, but the weather was so windy that we stayed in the harbour forever spotting birds, then when we got out the waves were so massive that even though we spotted a whale or two you wouldn't see much before another wave hit. To add to this I was VERY tired and FREEZING! My friend next to me was a little sea sick and threw up a few times, and after a while I just wanted to sleep. The teacher came to chat for a minute and all of a sudden I had to vomit bad! I rushed to the edge and blew out everything I had eaten for the day. It was awful and messy unfortunately. After six hours of sitting in the freezing cold I finally sat in the warm cabin, cleaned myself up, and took a nap until the end. Not a pleasant trip and it took days before I felt normal - it wasn't sea sickness, I actually think I got a cold from it all.

In the end I finished all my assignments on time, but not nearly the quality I had hoped to achieve. Also, I was fortunate that the new Macbook Pro's came out at the end of October so I now have a nice new computer for next year. I need a Mac for some of the audio software I'll be using, and the new Mac's have a lot better battery life!

In the midst of all of this homework craze...Matt and I were able to do some fun things. We had an awesome game night with some other couples in the ward where we played a fun charade type of game. That was a memorable night where I learned the names of some famous people I've never heard of. Another member from church invited us to play a new game called Dominion which Matt quickly fell in love with. I'm sure we will make many more visits in the future to play it. We played Phase 10 with Brock and Kaytlin another night and it was incredible how close it was at the end!! Kaytlin won, but just barely. Also, we took Josie and Lachie Mackie to a place called Flip Out that we had a Groupon voucher for. It was an absolute blast! Luckily I still have photos and videos of that! It's been really awesome to get out and do things with more people!

On the other hand, we have also had some pretty good date nights. We used up coupons to Outback Steakhouse. The food is still great, but Australia your restaurant service is terrible. Our second visit they forgot our onion bloom appetiser and didn't bring the bread out till the end. All I have to say is that an onion bloom is only good fresh. We also went to the newly opened TGIF's which I am happy to announce that Matt loved! Good American food, but unfortunately not American prices. Although pricey, I am hoping we will be able to go there more often because they have a menu with so many good things! Our most recent date night was to see Thor: The Dark World at the IMAX Theatre in Sydney. We had great seats right in the middle of the screen and it was a good movie to see IMAX style. I'm just glad we got groupon vouchers for that because it's so expensive I don't know if we'll do an IMAX full price ever. The night life afterwards was fun too as we watched some street shows on our way to the car park. I love Sydney!

Just some other little things that have happened....

I made the most amazing french fries, but I ate them all so fast I took a picture of the empty bowl.

I also made snicker doodles for the first time with a recipe that doesn't make up crispy! They turned out perfect!

And just for cuteness...I found a big family of duckies as I was walking to the bus stop in Uni.

That's it for now! Hopefully I can be a lot better at consistently posting now!