Every Day Life

After a short streak of doing a blog weekly I have failed! Nevertheless that just means I have to start again and keep trying just like every day life.

Here are some highlights over the last couple of weeks:

1. FHE with Brock & Kaytlin

One week we played apples to apples where we decided to play until everyone (specifically me) had at least obtained one card. Who knew that would be such a daunting task? After something like 24 rounds I finally got a card and we could end the game...epic fail for me!

The next week we had another couple (Tom and Jessica Frost) join us and I did a lesson on family history and challenged everyone to explore the family search website (familysearch.org) and obtain their four-generation chart. We are still working on getting Matt's and I definitely recommend all of you out there to do the same!

Four Generation Fan Chart - I'm working on getting the missing data fixed.

2. Young Women Activities

Due to a very small amount of young women for mutual we decided to do a fun movie night at my house. We chose Sherlock (the UK version) in the end and it was just a nice night with popcorn and laughs with our two young women.

The next week we only had one young woman for mutual, but went ahead with our cake/cupcake decorating activity. We had fun using the different tips and tools to create new designs and in the end were glad the young men could help us eat them since we had a lot of cupcakes.

Sarah Scott decorating cupcakes

The few that I made

3. Relief Society Birthday

Not too long ago was the Relief Society birthday weekend filled with multiple stake activities. It all started Saturday morning with a trip to the temple. I went with Cate Lynch and although we got there 30 minutes before the next endowment session the temple worker let us know that there may not be enough seats! We stood in line hoping to make it and in the end we were just two spots away from the cutoff! It was a huge blessing I think because I got to see some new things this time and had a wonderful and spiritual experience.

Later that evening was a pajama (spelled pyjama here) party with all the stake relief society. If I hadn't mentioned it before, my stake is mostly Polynesian which led to quite a wild party. I was looking forward to spending time with some of my ward relief society, but when we got there they split us up into even groups. My group was the purple lilies and although we had some awesome women, not everyone was willing to participate in the activities. Naturally as a younger member of the group I was volunteered for nearly all the activities. I'm glad I went, but it certainly wasn't what I expected and some of the Polynesian woman were absolutely hilarious!

Had to move an oreo from your forehead to your mouth

One woman wearing a balloon tower

To complete the weekend we had a musical fireside the following evening. The talks and musical numbers were amazing! I was also grateful we ended up having a great turnout for our small ward and our song Search, Ponder, and Pray with all sisters sounded great!

4. Searching for....

The rest of the two weeks has been full of searching. Matt is still searching for work, and tomorrow he has been 3 weeks without work! He hasn't been actively searching that much either since it is so easy to just hang around home and watch Netflix shows including Digimon and Pokemon. This week he hopes to really make an effort and visit all the local real estate companies.

I am still searching for other tiger sites for my master's thesis and have not yet had responses to my e-mails. The good news is that I am no longer searching for a desk and can start working in the lab room again. Additionally, today I just confirmed that we can go set up our equipment at Taronga Zoo! I have to leave at 6:30 am to get there by 8:30 am, but at least that leaves me the rest of the day.

Matt and I also had some fun one rainy Sunday morning as we went on an investigator hunt. We had agreed to pick up two investigators for the sister missionaries. The first one we couldn't find the right building but right when we decided to leave and find the next one I decided to try one more building and found the investigator! Unfortunately she was sick and couldn't come, but at least she knows we didn't abandon her. The second investigator we never found as the GPS took us to a bunch of shops and after driving around we had to give up and got to church late.

Small cubby accessorised for cats in the side of an apartment building

Now I am just searching for time to get everything done that I need to such as taxes, prepping the audio equipment, meeting with Young Women, planning a Young Women camp, and more. I've also been really good at working out daily and completed another 7km jog/walk with some strength exercises on Saturday with Cate Lynch! I am still quite sore and apparently need new running shoes.

Bay run sunrise - not edited!

And of course the best way to end any blog is with cute cat photos! Have a good week peeps!

Shade wedged between us on the couch

Shade loves cups

Matt's 30th Birthday Thrill

This last week I have spent a lot of time at Uni trying to get things done. Since I don't have a desk I have been working in my supervisor's room which she kindly set up space for me complete with a tiger picture. Not much to say about my work except that I now know how to work a SM2+ recording device and even read the entire manual!

Meanwhile, Matt was told he wasn't needed at the job site he was at and is now officially out of work. He's been taking advantage of sleeping in and is finally finishing painting our home. We now have the kitchen and laundry painted and parts of the entry and stairwell! I was skeptical the paint was too brown, but now I can definitely say he picked the perfect colour. The light cream from before almost looked orange-pink because of the pink carpet, but the beige doesn't have that affect at all. He also painted our new hall table that we picked up from the side of the road!

Last Tuesday we had the opportunity to go to the temple with the youth to do baptisms for the dead. Instead of doing baptisms I got to help be a temple worker which was new and fun since I got to watch all our four or five youth do the baptisms. Matt was also a temple worker and helped with displaying the name for the person baptising and marking the names off once completed. It was a wonderful evening!

Wednesday I went to a fun seminar on huntsman spiders! Apparently some huntsman's are quite social and live in communities underneath peeling bark. When I got home Matt had captured his own huntsman spider that was hanging out in the shower. Not so much of a fun discovery as you're about to take a shower, but I'm glad Matt thought to capture him to show me later.

We also had the elder's over who also enjoyed our temporary spider friend. Luckily we didn't serve it for dinner and instead had some yummy hamburgers. Lately we have been having so much fun chatting that we always keep them way too long! Luckily they live across the street basically and can still make their curfew!

The next day I went to a special launch meeting at uni for the new genes to geoscience modules (workshops) for staff and postgraduate students. This year they are doing three modules alone on the R program, which I think will soon become the most popular statistical program! It may sound crazy but I'm really excited for those because R is really hard to learn at first, but it has so many uses for any kind of statistics you need to do.

That night Matt and I watched the Amazing Race, which I highly recommend since this season is with tons of awesome teams who didn't win from previous years. We were really sad that one of the teams we really liked didn't make it! There was just the classic case of unfortunate events.

Every second Friday night is the ward game night or "feeding friendzy" at church and Matt and I had missed the last couple so we made sure to be present this time. Well cooking the chicken broccoli casserole took longer than expected and Matt had to give a painting quote to a neighbour so we showed up half an hour late. To our surprise, no one was there! I started calling tons of people with no luck of what was going on. The elders said they were on their way so I just told them to come to our place to have some of the casserole. It was more of a mini ward game night and we played Martian Fluxx which due to the lack of time we had to call it quits before anyone officially won.

To add to more fun for the weekend it was finally time to celebrate Matt's birthday (March 9th)! I had planned for over a month for us to go skydiving and had asked missionaries and others to pray we would have good weather! Well the prayers had been heard because despite constant threat of rain on Saturday it was a BEAUTIFUL day! Matt had no idea what I had planned and assumed it was surfing so I let him think that and we took tons of beach stuff and a packed lunch. I figured if we couldn't do it at least we could go to the beach.

We left at an early 6am to drive to Tuggerah on the central coast. The drive proved to be a special treat with a gorgeous sunrise filling the whole sky!

When we got to the turn off Matt saw the sign and said "We are going skydiving?." After I confirmed he was a little nervous, but excited. We had to wait till about 8am before we drove to the plane and took off. This was my second time so I wasn't nervous at all and surprisingly Matt didn't seem nervous either. The plane ride is awesome because you could see the coast and tree-filled hills and nearby lakes of the area. Some people pay hundreds just to get views like that, but we get it two fold because we got the views from the plane and then jumped out of it for even better views! I won't go into major details of the whole experience, but let's just say there is nothing quite like and you truly feel like a bird for a little while.

After the rush and maybe a little bit of motion sickness we ate snacks and rested a bit before heading home to have a real nap. It was so nice to take things easy and relax! I showed matt a game on my phone called Disco Zoo and next thing you know he downloaded it and was obsessed! We spent the afternoon talking about the different animals we caught. It's amazing how much enjoyment we can get out of the simple things.

Later that evening we had our friends Josie and Lachie Mackie over for some fun. You know you have good friends when you can spend loads of time just chatting! While we were sitting on the couches the power suddenly went out! Josie happened to have a wind-up flashlight and I used Matt's phone to find our giant flashlights. Apparently it was affecting most of our suburb. It didn't deter our night at all and we ended up playing Martian Fluxx by flashlight!

On Sunday was Matt's actual birthday and so we had a nice big breakfast with ebelskivers, bacon, eggs, and chocolate milk. It was so filling we didn't even need lunch! After church and choir we were finally ready to eat again and we made a nice chicken alfredo that was also SUPER filling. We had the McComb family over later which was a lot of fun. Their two young boys enjoyed pretty much everything they could find from our large exercise ball, the cat, and cat toys. I was amazed at how good Shade was with the two youngsters although I think he was very confused why the one boy was playing with his singing stuffed reindeer. Eleanor helped me cut and peel apples for apple crisp while Matt and Kyle played Martian Fluxx (it's just a Fluxx weekend). Finally when dessert was cooking we were able to all play Star Wars Epic Duels. After Matt and Eleanor one with Yoda and Anakin, we topped the night off with some apple crisp and ice cream!

It was a very fun filled weekend and now it is back to regular life!

March Planning

I would love to say that last week has been fairly eventful, but lets be honest....it wasn't. Since I don't believe there is some unwritten rule that every week of your life must be absolutely amazing in order for you to write a blog, here are some small events of the last week.

No one seems to mention that when you are working on getting a Master's or PhD that you will spend a good chunk of your time filling out and waiting on paperwork in order to even do your research. Although I'm lucky I only had a couple of forms instead of many licenses and permits that wildlife researchers need, the waiting is still a pain.

So what form is the most painful? The animal ethics approval is in my opinion the most annoying, but is also the most important. In this form you have to explain all the details of what you plan to do with the animals and also explain why this research is necessary, why you couldn't do any other way, etc. I really dislike these because some of the questions aren't really applicable for the extremely non-invasive nature of my research. What am I doing? Putting audio and video recording devices in an area the tigers can't get to and recording the tigers. How will this affect the animals? It won't. In fact, this research is so non-invasive that Taronga zoo, where I am doing the study, doesn't require ethics and they call this opportunistic sampling. As annoying as ethics forms and their questions are, they are very important in assuring all research is taking into consideration the welfare of the animals and other alternatives that may be available.

Not really relevant, but still awesome!

At Macquarie University the animal ethics committee meets once a month to discuss all the applications so it is important to get in the forms as early as possible. This is all done electronically for the first time at Macquarie and this presented many frustrations. Although my supervisor filled out the online application in January, we found out in February they wanted some revisions and details. That's when we discovered that the website had some major flaws. It took me over an hour just to log in to the program and get to the correct page, then of course it would log me out and not save what I had just typed. Luckily I got it all done the day the committee was meeting!

Unfortunately, not too long after we were informed our approval was denied and we would have to make more revisions and turn it in for the next month! My supervisor was very angry that they would deny "the most non-invasive research" she has ever done. Later, I had a full day animal ethics workshop (required for all newbies doing animal ethics forms and research) and was able to ask the main ethics dude why it was denied. It turns out some of my edits on the form did not get saved and therefore the committee didn't see that we had fixed issues. Additionally, we still needed a license from Taronga Zoo showing that they have the authority to have tigers on exhibit. If I could make the edits and get the license he said he would get it approved and I wouldn't have to wait another month. After many calls and e-mails to people at Taronga Zoo we finally got the correct form and I was informed on Friday it had been approved! This was a gruelling experience that I hope to never repeat again! At least now I know that the ethics site doesn't have issues on PC's!

Whew! During all the paperwork fun, I was also able to get a job! I was told about a coaching/tutoring job for 5 hrs/wk helping a student with some animal related courses. One of the courses is taught by my supervisor Jennifer who referred me to the job. I love tutoring so I'm excited to help and it's not too many hours to overwhelm me and it pays $45/hr!

On a different note Matt and I were able to go to the temple on Thursday night. It had been a long time since we just kept forgetting about it. When we got there we were asked if we wanted to do sealings and I am glad we did! It was nice to do something a little different and also be reminded of the commitments we made to each other when we first got married.

Over the weekend I did some much needed cleaning and was even able to pin Matt down to do a planning meeting! We scheduled in the next month's temple day and other important dates, discussed our monthly goals, and important things we needed to get done. It was great and this was part of the result:

I know have LOTS of calendars and lists, but whatever works to get things done! Matt now has a white board full of long list of to-dos that I will no doubt keep regularly stocked. Unfortunately he just happened to marry someone that is not so great at sitting still, but at least we were able to end our day with a nice movie called Princess Mononoke and some Tim Tam Slams (click here for some Tim Tam wikipedia info - apparently you can do this with a twix)!

Speaking of important things to get done....US taxes are due just next month! This has been an extremely frustrating process for me since our tax forms showed up at different places and I had to track them all down, and some things were missing. It turns out even though I qualify for education credits at Macquarie, they don't file the typical forms that US institutions do. After contacting IRS tax offices, H&R Block tax consultants, our personal tax consultant, and reading about all the details on the IRS website I finally figured it all out. Basically I just need the university to give me a filled out unofficial form with supporting documents so I have them on file if the IRS needs further documentation. Not to mention I just found out we can claim moving expenses, so that's yet another thing I have to calculate. This is certainly a complicated process.

Yesterday was also surprisingly eventful as I decided to work from home and found out that the researcher who's desk I was using came back! He'll be around for the next two weeks so I guess I'm back to being a nomad. I'm crossing my fingers I can officially claim the desk and then start redecorating the area with tiger stuff. Luckily, I was able to still get work done at home and used a new pomodairo app to help me stay on task by working for 25 minutes than taking short 5 minute breaks.

Later that day I went to have my skin appointment to help treat all my acne scars and discolouration. This was the first time I had this treatment and it is kind of painful, but it was the smell that got to me. I told the woman doing it that the device smelled awful like it was burning, and she laughed and said actually that's your skin! So now I know what burning flesh smells like and it looks like I got a bad sunburn just on my face. I'm glad I've worked with these people for months so that when I got to this point I trust them!  Here are some progression photos (I couldn't find my before photos which are awful!) and yes I look terrible, but the point is to show that it is getting better!

After first few treatments

After about 5 months

Right after my last treatment 

Surprisingly no one commented on my weird blotchy red face when I went to our second "Come Dine with Me" dinner at Mike and Erika Barnett's place. They did a fantastic job! They made multiple sliders (mini-hamburgers) placed on plates out of pieces of wood which they had burned letters into to signify which one was Chicken, Pork, and Beef. They were quite tasty as well as the cole-slaw, potato and sweet-potato wedges to accompany them. For desert we had a slice of chocolate pie with fresh berries and cream. Yumm!! Of course not just the food was great, but the company was just as fun. It was a great night full of good food, friends, and plenty of laughter!

An apostle, a lorax, and a spider...

"You are you, now isn't that nice!" Dr. Seuss

This last week has had a bit of a Dr. Seuss theme, but I'll get to that later. First I want to start with a major event for the area here...Elder Russell M. Nelson came! The talk by the apostle was specifically for the leaders of the surrounding stakes, but as Matt and I arrived a couple of minutes late it was clear that news had spread and more than just leaders were present. We were able to squeeze into some open seats but unfortunately I could not see any of the speakers. Here's just some awesome comments Elder Nelson and his wife made:

- What we look at matters! Sis Nelson
- There are no dead, they are living! Sis Nelson
- Men are stubborn, but none are so stubborn that they can withstand the LOVE. Elder Nelson

Gideon final test for choosing his army of 300. Judges 7

The following day we had sister missionaries over for dinner and they shared some of what Elder Nelson talked about with them. Many stories in the scriptures have the seemingly impossible occur such as the virgin Mary giving birth, or Elizabeth giving birth in her old age. These occurrences are to show evidence of God, because how could it be otherwise? In Judges 7 Gideon's army is reduced to 300 to fight an army of around 135,000 men. Elder Nelson told the missionaries that this ratio 1:500 is the same ratio of members to nonmembers today! We are the minority, but just as the Lord showed Gideon and many others...great things can come to pass in small numbers. As my old institute director Brother Richardson used to say "The Lord loves ridiculous odds!"

The rest of the week seemed to fly and on Saturday I got up before Matt at 5:30 am so I could go with Cate Lynch for a run in the city commonly called the bay run. It's a beautiful 7km path around the bay and we got to be there for the sunrise. Unfortunately, we were not in any condition to run the whole way, but we hope to return frequently and improve each time. (Photos below have been instagrammed)

Later that day I met up with Cate and Racheal so we could prepare for the Young Women New Beginnings activity the next Tuesday. Since we had a Dr. Seuss theme we created some large paintings of some key characters. It's been a long time since I had sketched or painted, but between the three of us and the help of our artistic YW Alayna it all turned out really well. We just had the activity yesterday and after tying Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hear's a Who, and The Lorax to the gospel we played Family Feud! I learned later that Family Feud and Jeopardy aren't broadcast here so many people haven't heard of them :(. It was a lot of fun though and to top it all off we had some Dr. Seuss themed treats!

On Saturday Matt and I also attended a mission farewell for a girl in our ward. We will certainly miss Natalie Payze but I'm sure she will be an awesome missionary in Adelaide. Although I didn't spend all night talking to Natalie, it was really great just to get together with many of the ward members and chat. The Scott family are great hosts!

The major downside of all these activities is that I have eaten a LOT of sugar and baked goods lately! Racheal gave me a loaf of banana bread, I had made cinnamon rolls for one of the youth's birthday, and I made snicker doodles for choir on Sunday. I also still had leftover cheesecake I had bought early in the week. Once you had all of that with the eating out at uni and other catered events - I have officially gained 2-3 lbs! So much for my goal of losing weight! I made a commitment that I wouldn't let myself get over 140 lbs or 25% body fat again. Now that I have I just really need to stick to a plan.  So at the beginning of March I am going to be calorie counting again and exercising every day but Sunday.

As for some other events. We had FHE with Brock and Kaytlin as usual. They made these awesome pizza scrolls which I will definitely need to learn how to make! They are so tasty and a little healthier than pizza. After Matt's lesson we had cinnamon rolls and played XBOX Kinect Adventures game!

Another "adventure" came the following day when I was getting ready to go to uni. I noticed the cat was hanging out in the bathroom and when I went in there I found a huntsman (click here for a funny article describing the huntsman)! This particular huntsman was average sized with the body about two inches in length and 1/2 inch in width and overall with legs he is slightly smaller than a palm. He had only four legs - one side had three and the other only had one. I wasn't sure if Shade had just caught legs and eaten them, or he found the spider that way. I kind of felt bad for the non-aggressive spider because with his disability and Shade's attentiveness he had no chance. Unfortunately I had to leave and I was worried shade might eventually eat him and throw up later (they are mildly toxic and he is still a kitten). I gave Shade an opportunity when I coaxed the spider onto a towel and dropped it to the floor, but Shade hadn't seen it and just kept meowing trying to figure out where it was while walking right over it. I decided I would just spray the spider with pesticide and then I covered it with a container so Matt could see it later. Now I have officially had the huntsman experience - time to move on with other things.

Workshops, Work, and Fine Dining

I think it is safe to say I need to add a reminder in my phone that goes off throughout the day that reminds me to take pictures of things. Kudos to all those bloggers out there that are somehow capable of taking photos of everything that goes on in their life! I will say that I do have loads of cat photos so maybe I will just start adding lots of cat photos when my life seems particularly empty of pictures. Here is one to start....

Now that I am officially at uni often it has been a boring, fun, and slow start. My lab/office mates are awesome and it is particularly great that I have Kelly who is also doing the MRes program so we can go to things together. Not to mention she's just a blast in general. 

We had multiple workshops to go to that were long and I'm not entirely positive were useful, but I tried to make the most of it. Although the one on project planning was longer than I felt it needed to be, I was excited to check out some of the project planning software they mentioned. I was sad that all of it costs money and so I will stick with my excel spreadsheets and calendar system. For those of you that struggle to get stuff done during the day though, I will recommend the Pomodoro technique. 

Besides workshops Kelly and I spent some time working on a large yearly calendar for the lab so everyone can see when our workshops and assignment type stuff was due. It is ALWAYS worth spending the time to get yourself organised. I am glad we finished it and especially that the calendar was free from the bookshop. 

Kelly was also really helpful as I edited my literature review on tiger vocalisations. There are two really awesome types of referencing software which are SUPER useful for creating citations and bibliographies. I was taught to use a free program called Zotero in the US, but at Macquarie they use Endnote which is not free but the university has a license for us to use it. They are pretty similar, and Kelly was telling me how to add in-text citations with Endnote and so I figured out how to do the same in Zotero. In the end I cleaned up my citations and bibliography! If you look up a lot of articles and things I highly recommend using one of these programs. 

As for Matt, he has had some good and bad times recently. The good news was he got a side job painting a beautiful unit right next to the Manly Wharf. The bad news was that the woman owning the unit broke her leg about an hour after he met with the woman who owned it for the first time. Additionally, he may have received multiple tickets for running a red light (they have camera red light systems for some intersections and if you run a red light you will see a flash and later get a bill in your mailbox). The other good news was that Matt was able to finish that job in three days! The bad news was that he had to work 12 hour days to finish it and we didn't do anything for Valentine's day. Unfortunately, he also had a small accident with a parked car that he slid into due to the wet roads that damaged the front bumper and hood of our car. More good news is that he's all done and back to regular work hours (until that job's done) and we did get to have a nice dinner when he finished the job. 

Manly Wharf view from the apartment

Another major event was the beginning of a "Come Dine with Me" activity organised by our friends Erika and Mike Barnett. Basically each couple makes a fancy two course meal for the others along with an activity or conversation starter. We rotate each month until everyone has done their meal and we pick the top 3. This turned out to be really stressful because Matt and I went first and two of the girls are pregnant so I had to avoid soft cheeses and things for them, and one is also gluten intolerant. I wanted to do italian but I was stressing how to make my chicken cordon bleu, pasta, and cake roll gluten free. I had just figured out what to do when that couple dropped out. In the future I think I might try making more gluten free food so I can have those skills, but in the end I reverted back to the non-gluten free options. We had chicken cordon bleu, roasted garlic parmesan asparagus, salad, mixed steamed veggies, rolls with oil and vinegar to dip, shell pasta, and an amazing homemade garlic alfredo sauce. For dessert I made a sponge roll with homemade whip cream and candy bar bits. Sorry for the lack of pictures but you will just have to use your imagination! I think it turned out well although I was surprised the cheese wasn't melted in the chicken and I made way too much pasta - leftovers? Also, a wonderful perk was that everyone gets along so well that there was no need to plan a conversation activity since everyone had no problem contributing to various topics from tattoos, movies, books, documentaries, and church stuff. It was a fun night, but I must say I am glad my night is over and the next 4 months we can enjoy someone else's big meal!

And there's just a few more things I thought I should add.....

like the view from my run one Saturday,

Matt super happy playing a Lego game with Brock,

And the centipede Matt found one day that the cat REALLY wanted to eat,

In the Nick of Time

As usual I have waited too long for posting. My goal this year was to post weekly and of course when we fail we don't give up...we keep trying!

Last week was incredibly "church" eventful starting with a fun jar making activity with Young Women, getting visited by home teachers (they do exist!), setting up a youth dance with a Chinese New Year theme, and heart attacking one of our Young Women for her birthday.

During this week, Matt and I had the upcoming doom with his last day being Friday at work. Not to mention he hadn't been paid in a while and I still hadn't received my financial aid. We had an upcoming energy bill that I wasn't sure when it was going to charge and our rent bill. My account got down to a low $70 and we were just praying that we were going to get money in time for the next bill.

I had a couple of interesting issues where I went to lunch for my supervisor's birthday with other lab members but I forgot my credit card and someone had to pay for my lunch. Although I didn't intentionally do this, it was fortuitous since I found out I had less money than I thought.

For a while I have been using Sheer Cover mineral makeup and they send auto-ship orders which means it wasn't too long till I had too much makeup. Months ago I called and I thought I cancelled my membership but when another shipment appeared it turns out I had only put a hold for six months. This made me really upset because I got charged for it without any e-mail notification that I was getting anything sent to me and of course to send it back I lose $12 in shipping. Through a lot of arguing on the phone I was able to get them to pay for shipping to return the products and cancelled my account. Somehow I got the product back and had to resend it again. By the time they got the product I had already been charged for the second payment! Needless to say I was extremely upset with the company and their customer service is atrocious! DON'T BUY SHEER COVER PRODUCTS!

Hanging on the edge of having absolutely no money Matt's employer finally paid him half of what he was owed. We wanted to put the money in my account since that's where the bills come from and I panicked as I rushed to the bank minutes before they closed. When I got there the teller was closed, but an employee showed me how to use the ATM deposit system that not only counts your money right there but it shows up instantly on your account! As I checked my bank account at home it turned out that I had also received my large financial aid deposit!

It all happened in the nick of time before our bills were due and Matt was out of work. Not to mention we were nearly out of food and cat litter. We celebrated by finally going to TGIF's as we had planned for my birthday. I must say that they have terrible service here but at least the food is good and this time it wasn't a three hour dining experience.

Matt and I also went rock-climbing where Matt managed to break upon the same blister from the last time we went as well as create new ones. It was a short trip since Matt lost so much skin, but I was proud of myself for trying harder and finally getting to the top of more than one bouldering route. I'm still at the lowest level, but hopefully I can build up the strength to do harder routes.

On Sunday I had the joyful experience of being the chorister for sacrament meeting. I messed up a lot and it didn't help that the first song actually changes the count multiple times in the song. It's amazing how bad I am at that, but having someone there is better than nothing. Additionally I held a meeting after church to start our ward choir! I'm no choir director but I'm hoping that we can all work together and come up with some good songs to add to our sacrament meetings. We have a wonderful ward!

This week Matt and I switched places where I went to uni every day and he stayed at home and slept in. He now has his ABN (tax number for businesses) which allows him to do painting work on his own. Through friends he has also had little opportunities to make money. Mike from our ward has a business doing deliveries with his van and invited Matt to help deliver pianos and things. A friend from the painting job he was at got him signed up with his wife's casting agency and he went to a casting call (basically they just call the agency if he fits the bill for an extra in their movie). Also, the builder of that same job hired Matt for a few odds and ends for the last two days. We have been very blessed with spectacular friends!

As for me, I now have a desk with my other lab members! This means that I will go to uni regularly to work on my project, read articles, etc. I'm working with Tasmanian Devil girl Kelly, Dingo girl Eloise, and Bat guy Time. I'm excited to be tiger girl and I am excited to get started!

Unfortunately, we are still waiting on Taronga Zoo paperwork before starting research and this week was mostly filled with workshops. The Masters of Research program is filled with many workshops and checkpoints, so to speak, to help us complete this large thesis. It's mostly really boring, but I'm trying to get as much out of it as I can.

I also got a fun late birthday package from my family! The best thing was the cat toy which Shade destroyed the first day and yet still plays with the mangled remains. He's a goofball!