All about Mothers

Last week I got my pixel skin treatment again which was really painful this time. After a few days the dead skin finally came off and now I'm getting all kinds of comments about how great my skin looks! I'm just hoping I can keep it that way! 

Day after treatment

A few days later

Sunday and Monday was all about Mother's! Sunday morning I made myself ebelskivers! Yumm! That night we had four of the sister missionaries over for dinner and so Sister Lowe could call her mom for Mother's Day! The next day I had them come back so the American sisters could call their mothers. We had a french toast breakfast and then I got them set up on our two computers with Skype. The elders called me because their plans fell through for calling home. Since Matt wasn't home they had to bring another male, but luckily it all worked out. We played games like Monopoly Deal and Sequence while waiting for the others to finish. It was a long day and they weren't all gone until after 2pm, but in the end all went well. I still feel bad some didn't get on as early as they had hoped and missed some of their family, but I suppose something is better than nothing. They come here because I have we have two computers with Skype and FaceTime and I have an account that lets them call phone numbers in the US. I was exhausted by the end, but it was nice to spend time with them. 

Sister Lowe - from Victoria

Sister K - from Utah

Chris building a card fortress

Later in the week I had to go to the zoo again to pick up SD cards (every 5 days). I must say there could be a lot of harder things I could have to do, and the view is always amazing!

View from the train of Luna park

This week I finally finished listening to my original two days of audio I recorded in March! Needless to say I need to spend more time on good quality recordings than the terrible stuff. I also had a fun time listening to some flapping noises which we discovered were bats! Apparently they like the tree in the tiger enclosure. 

Another much smaller accomplishment this week was that I have finished the last season of How I Met Your Mother. It seems there was a mother theme going on all week. I was a little surprised by the finale, but I wouldn't say it didn't end well. 

Just a couple of other tidbits of the week...Matt spent yesterday at the movie set again and was luckily in the perfect spot for getting some screen time. He still hasn't done any of the archery yet so hopefully they will let him know soon. So far his enthusiasm on the project has plummeted as you spend hours doing nothing, it's not that great of pay, and he hates the spray tans. Needless to say he is not likely to do much "extra" work in the future. 

I also had the unfortunate business of breaking our crock pot. We store it on top of our cupboards (I know its a terrible place) and when I tried to take it down the lid slid off, hit me in the head, then shattered on the ground. Shade was very enthusiastic about investigating so I had to lock him in the upstairs bathroom while I cleaned up. It took a while because there was glass everywhere! I'm just glad I was wearing slippers when it happened. 

Theres a little bit more that happened recently, but I think I'll have a separate blog just for that. Have a great weekend!

Just Regular Life?

Sometimes I feel as if nothing significant has happened in the last week, but upon reflection I can usually recall at least a few things that would be of interest to people to read my blog. I hope some of you find this last week of some interest.

I first need to start by saying Matt and I watched the most recent Amazing Spider-Man movie with Brock and Kaytlin for FHE last Monday. (As a side note I would like to point out that I realized writing Kaytlin and Brock sounded funny and that Brock and Kaytlin flows much better). It was a great movie and I especially appreciate the bits of humor frequently thrown in. I did not expect the ending however and am curious to see what happens in the future sequels.

The temperatures here have dropped to about 65 F on average, which is cold compared to the normal temperatures. We now have a heater on at night and I am frequently bundled up everywhere I go. Unfortunately the lack of central heating in most places here makes some really cold homes! Nevertheless, I am enjoying drinking more hot chocolate!

View from the bus back to Uni

Naturally I should always add a bit about uni life. I’ve started doing recordings again and have been making the 4.5 hour trip (total) to the zoo multiple times to get my audio recording equipment set up and exchange SD cards. My last trip I had 20 minutes before the last bus to the zoo and fortunately found a Starbucks on the corner for a caramel hot chocolate to warm me up! I may make that a future tradition. I recently discovered I had the settings wrong when I got the SD cards back so I’m hoping this next batch is correct.  

The right half of the tiger enclosure

The good news is that we have also settled on a set for surveillance cameras. We are in the process of purchasing some very high quality HDSDI security cameras. My only hope is that we are capable of setting them up and having it all go smoothly. The zoo is going to switch the lions and tigers for the set up since lions are much more calm about having people work around them. I don’t know why but it just makes me like the tigers more for being finicky. We are really fortunate that I am not going to any other sites because I would not have money in my budget for the camera system otherwise.

Currently, I spend my time going over audio files and trying to categorize them. Yesterday I spent a while going through YouTube videos of tiger vocalisations to try and find consistencies with what I have heard. I discovered that what I label as a “moan” some label as a “roar” although I now think it is just the mating call. This is exactly why my research is needed. I also discovered another researcher that has delved into tiger vocalizations – Elizabeth von Muggenthaler. I could not find any published research on this though, and she has some odd patent for a massage device that uses cats purring recordings. Weird!!

My desk space at Uni

As for some more interesting news (unless for some reason you wait with baited breath to hear about my research endeavors), Matt is going to be in a movie! During the time he was unemployed he applied to be an extra in a movie, but never heard back. Suddenly, he got an e-mail saying he’s in and needed to be at the studio the next day for costume fitting! Luckily, his painting boss is AWESOME and is willing to work around this.

He’s going to be in Gods of Egypt with Gerard Butler as a part of the bad army. He wears a mask and whatnot so you’ll never see his face or anything, but he’s having fun. Matt is worried that it’s going to mess up his back because at times he has to stand still for hours in the background while the main action happens. Yesterday he had to get a spray tan which due to the rush he had the wonderful experience of getting his finishing touches done in a room full of women with just a g-string on! He will be at the set all day for the next three days and a few days next week so more to come!

Now for our social and church lives: Matt and I have been more social than usual. Sunday night we had dinner with Dean and Crystal and Monday night we had our next big group dinner (5 couples) at Rochelle and Pete Evans place. Of course I forgot to take pictures of these events. Nevertheless, I’m glad we have the time and ability to socialize once in a while.

Church has been good, as always, and I had a wonderful experience doing splits with the sister missionaries where I visited a young 11-yr-old recently baptized and her non-member mother. They are such an amazing pair! They are from Tonga and love to serve and frequently cook treats for their friends and neighbors. I received three cupcakes while we were there, which I think may have been two too many. The youth are also doing well and we had a couple of fun activities decorating a bulletin board in the chapel and putting goodies on the cars parked at the Sydney temple. Teenagers go through some rough stuff, but it is awesome to see them serving together and their testimonies of the gospel of Jesus Christ blooming.

Until next week!

ANZAC Weekend

Eeyore was my favourite Disney character growing up.
I definitely identified with him when I was younger.

Over the last few months I have come to the realisation that I am suffering from depression. There is no single event that has caused this, but more of a mixture of things. It's not severe but for a while now it seems like SO MUCH EFFORT to do ANYTHING! I don't want to clean, work on my Master's project, or even hang out with people most of the time. Last week I was working on my literature review for my Master's thesis and I really struggled to put in the effort I knew I should. Depression is interesting because you hate being miserable, but you feel as if you can't help it. I've felt bad multiple times for getting angry at Matt for simple things. Depression makes you see the worst in everything and it takes all your willpower to just stay in control of your emotions and thoughts. This is my 3rd or 4th time being depressed and it is not the worst, but it is never fun.

I've come to terms with my depression and am working on it and not afraid if others know. I would rather people understand that if I seem irresponsible, moody, or self-centered that it is because I'm struggling with an internal battle. I have no doubts that I will win this battle, but it will take time.

There is good news to this story! I finally asked Matt to give me a priesthood blessing of comfort to help me with my depression and my school work. It was way overdue! I knew that the words from his mouth were the Lord's and He knew exactly what I needed to hear to calm my troubled heart. Did it cure my depression? No, but I felt more hope that helped me work towards finding happiness in every aspect of life.

After my blessing Matt and I went to visit Josie and Lachie Mackie. It's been ages since we have done anything with just them and it was fun to eat and chat. The best part was going to the Sydney Temple afterwards. It is always nice to share spiritual moments with close friends!

Thursday was the beginning of all the big activities! That night I finally got a much needed haircut...

After that Matt and I picked up a projector from a friend, and loaded our car with all the sweets and other food for the Young Women sleepover and headed to Cate Lynch's apartment. Poor Matt had to go back and forth from the house to pick up stuff I forgot - he's a trooper! Finally I got the projector set up and the girls started arriving. Unfortunately the pizza was late, but it was well worth it when it came! It is a MASSIVE pizza from a place called Johnny's.

In the end only four young women showed up, with one having to leave that night, but it was fun anyway. We watched Saving Mr. Banks and Howl's Moving Castle while eating lots of goodies. By the time we finished the second movie it was 2:30 am. We had planned to go to the ANZAC memorial service at 4 am, but when Cate came out of her room around 3:30 am only I woke up. We decided to let them sleep in, especially since a couple of the girls were having allergy problems and Racheal (2nd counsellor) was recovering from being sick.

The leaders all got up by 7:30 am and I made ebelskivers for breakfast before we were going to leave to go kayaking. I went to go get Matt who was one of the priesthood leaders coming on the trip and found he too had gotten little sleep. He and Racheal's husband David had stayed up till 2 am playing games that night!

We had booked kayaks for 13 people, but we had 5 people that couldn't make it and were still trying to fill up spots early Friday morning. In the end we only had two spots that couldn't be filled thankfully.

Kayaking was a lot of fun! We had our youngest girls in a double kayak with one of the priesthood leaders and everyone else had their own kayak. It was a nice stroll around the bay in Mosman, although it was difficult to keep all 9 kayaks together!

We only had one person tip over in the beginning which is so easy to do when you are first learning! Luckily it was there and not later because Matt found thousands of blue bottle jellyfish in the water later on.

After cleaning up Cate's place and going home Matt and I took a much needed nap! Later he had some friends over for games again, but this time it didn't go till the wee hours of the morning. I was glad he had people over because it motivated us to put everything away from the sleepover, and I was able to get a lot of work done on my literature review upstairs. It's so nice to have my own study room!

Saturday I had planned to go horseback riding with Alayna. I took this as an opportunity to justify purchasing some heeled boots for "riding." After a few shops I found some I liked and picked up Alayna to drive an hour to Glenworth Valley. It was a very large horse riding place and there were a lot of people. We went with a group of about 8 people and that sort of split into experienced and beginners. I felt bad that I wasn't near Alayna the whole time, but my horse did NOT like to be held back for long and so after a while I gave up trying to stay with the slower group. Sometimes beginner horses are too happy to go at a really slow pace. It was a beautiful area. We both had fun and I really enjoyed getting to know Alayna better on the drive, although she might have learned more about me since I talk so much! We completed our trip with some yummy shakes and donuts at Krispy Kreme.

I was exhausted when I got home and Matt and I decided to watch Memoirs of a Geisha. I still really like the movie, but in the end I decided a Geisha is a terrible role. It is easy to forget in the movie that the men are married and the Geisha are basically escorts to meet the men's entertainment and sexual needs. Sometimes it is difficult to understand foreign traditions.

Yesterday Matt and I were able to visit my friends Dean and Crystal after church. We have discussed hanging out with them multiple times but it never worked out. Finally we discovered Sundays are good for both of us and so we went and had dinner with them. I met Dean and Crystal when I was in the Greenwich ward (LDS church near Sydney) and was surprised to discover they are only 10 minutes away from us! We made plans to have dinner next week at our place. I am so glad we have so many young couples and friends to spend time with here! We have been very blessed.

The cat randomly decides to jump on my back, and as I bent down he jumped on and laid down - Goofball!

Animals and Easter

Last week I left off that I was going to Symbio Wildlife Park with my supervisor and her daughter. It's a very small park and we saw pretty much everything in the few hours we were there. Here are some of the highlights from that:

Tasmanian Devil

The only tiger in a large enclosure

This Red Panda was so cute and very active!

This peacock just sat calmly and let us take pictures

Two echidnas...the yellowish one is an albino

Elizabeth petting the wallabies

Wallaby with it's baby

Red-necked wallaby

Koala

Unfortunately, we decided that the tiger enclosure is simply too large to try and do audio/video recording and the effort would not be worthwhile for just one tiger that likely won't vocalise much. Nevertheless we had a good time petting some wallabies and exploring. Additionally I picked up a cute stuffed cheetah and a tiger mug so I'd call it a successful trip.

The rest of the week seemed to drag along after that. I finally finished going through my 200+ audio clips and listed each one on a spreadsheet. The only issue is I still have no idea what to call some of them. Without the videos I'm not sure what is going on and some sounds I started describing as a snotty snarl, or a loud puff of air when I had no idea what else to say about them. Later a tiger book I purchased arrived giving a classification of all feline vocalisations including the tiger. I read them but I was more confused because their descriptions and mine didn't match so a moan could be a roar. Without spectrograms to visually see each call it is impossible to really know what the author considered a moan or not. Hopefully my research can become a sort of standard for what tiger vocalisations are classified as.

Other than listening and categorising audio files I also spent a lot of my free time reading. Besides my travel time reading I was able to spend some nights finishing some books my sister recommended. I read As You Are, A Glimmer of Hope, Edenbrooke, and Blackmoore in about 5 days. They are quite short so other than staying up an extra hour than normal at night it didn't take much work. To sum it up it was like reading a ton of different Pride and Prejudice like stories and I loved them! It was also fun to call up my sister when I could and discuss the different books.

Easter weekend is a serious holiday weekend here with Good Friday (the Friday before Easter Sunday) and the Monday after Easter as public holidays with everything closed. I went to uni on Friday anyway and it was actually really nice to have the whole place quiet and I got a lot done. We had the sister missionaries over for dinner that night and for the first time ever my slow cooker roast turned out amazing! It was so good we didn't have much left over! Other than the food I had a great time chatting to the sisters about missions. Matt spent Friday and Saturday painting a neighbours house so he only had time to quickly drop by to eat. It's always good to have the missionaries over.

As for the rest of the weekend Matt and I didn't really do much. We bought a bunch of chocolate and the traditional hot cross buns for the weekend and did a little bit of needed shopping. Saturday night we rented Ender's Game. It was good, but I barely remembered anything from the book.

On Sunday I directed our first choir performance at church. We sang "He is Risen" and I think it all went well. I'm not the best director but I am learning and so are the choir members. Later I had a lesson with the young women. I had spent the weekend collecting materials for resurrection eggs - plastic eggs with an item and scripture in them to represent a part of Christ's death and resurrection. In the end we talked a lot about conference, and apostasy and restoration that I decided to leave out that part of the lesson. Oh well, perhaps they will be useful next year.

I bought a whole bunch of lindt truffles to give to the choir, but I forgot to give them out after practice. I also bought lindt eggs for our young women since I was teaching. In the end Matt and I had loads of chocolate left over. That day we ate so much chocolate that we felt sick later. Not exactly how I had intended to celebrate Easter.

After all the Easter holidays it is back to regular work and uni schedules. All is well and I'm excited for this weekend because there are some big plans!

Spiritual Rejuvenation

The highlight of this last week was definitely General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! I'd like to note that the official title includes a capital "T" in "The" which is actually a BIG statement! I'll talk more about conference later.

For some time I have still been deciding whether or not I should do a PhD. After my breakdown not too long ago I think I have come to a decision. I was once told by an awesome researcher that if I couldn't live, eat, and breath research than it wasn't for me. At the time I was studying chickens and knew that I could not live, eat, and breath research on chickens. Later on when I worked with cheetahs I knew that as long as I studied an animal I loved I could do the research!

Now I am studying the most magnificent animal I could have dreamed of - the tiger. It is really exciting to listen to their vocalisations and try to understand what it means, but somehow I still find myself dragging my feet to go to uni. My life no longer revolves around school like it used to and I find that my time is split between research and spending time with Matt and church life. I realised this last week that I am not willing to sacrifice my spare time with church and family to study tigers.

Where does this leave me then? I'm not sure. I know that an animal care-taking job is also quite demanding but at least then I would be physically working with the animals, preparing food, cleaning, etc. Additionally, I do not need a PhD to do that. My opinions were solidified as we met with the tiger keepers yesterday to discuss some unusual recordings as well as the possibility of using security cameras. Unfortunately, one of the most unique calls we had recorded were lions and not tigers What was astounding though, was that the keepers identified some of the other vocalisations as a tiger estrus call (when a female is in heat). Surprisingly, this is not in any of the scientific literature I have read and yet was obvious for the tiger keepers. This bit of info solidified my suspicions that the research is useful, but the keepers actually know much more than I do.

I recently had dinner at TGIF's with my friend Elayna who has deferred her Master of Research for next year. Instead she is just working as a research assistant doing what she was originally going to do for her research project. By the end of this year she may be able to get two papers published with the work she is done! It's funny how she will be able to accomplish more by leaving the program than if she was staying in it this year. Not to mention she seems so much happier and stress free! I'm envious.

Only time will tell what I will do, but at least I am happy to be working with tigers.

As for some other events....this week I got a horrible cramp in my left calf as I stretched in the morning. The next morning my other calf did the same thing! Afterward my calves were so sore it hurt to walk, especially up and down stairs. I also discovered that sitting around made them hurt worse. Matt gave me an hour-long massage on my calves that hurt so bad I occasionally cried from the pain! We decided it was due to my many high intensity interval training exercises that use my calf muscles, my lack of stretching those muscles, and a possible potassium deficiency.

Later, Matt and I went rock-climbing with my friends Cate and Sarah. Cate, who I usually go running with, was excited to try something new and did a great job! Sarah is just 13, but goes rock-climbing for school every week. Sarah is shorter than me and as short people we always have fun trying to figure out how to do routes that tall people have no problem with. I was worried my calves would make it too painful to climb, but I didn't actually feel the pain until after we finished climbing. It was worth it though.

Over the weekend we watched General Conference. Early in the morning I got up to go on a walk to help my calves which was a perfect way to start a Saturday morning!

We had to take a long break in the afternoon to get some shopping done for our lunch with the ward choir the next day, but then we got right back to conference! In total we watched 6 hours that day!

Sunday I took another morning walk and we started watching conference early so we would have enough time to make the sandwiches for lunch. During the two hour break we took our 20 or so sandwiches to the church where the missionaries and other choir member were meeting. We had lunch first and got to meet the new missionaries in our area. Luckily they all can sing and so our choir didn't extinguish. The only piano was in the chapel so we had to practice there with a small audience of members waiting for the next conference session to start. It was fun. Afterwards we went home to watch the last two hours of conference. I was really glad we have the opportunity to download the videos on iTunes and watch it at home because I don't think my back or calves would have survived the four hours of sitting in hard church benches at the chapel.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from general conference:

"You are infinitely more precious to God than a tree."
- Neil L. Anderson, Quorum of the Twelve

"Are we securely tied to God so that our faith shows, or are we actually tied to something else?"
- Russell M. Nelson, Quorum of the Twelve

"Of all the lessons we learn from the life of the Savior, none is more clear and powerful than the lesson of obedience."
- Robert D. Hales, Quorum of the Twelve

"Words that may be firm in information can be soft in spirit."
- W. Craig Zwick, Of the Seventy

"Vicarious ordinances are at the heart of welding together eternal families, connecting roots to branches."
- Quentin L. Cook, Quorum of the Twelve

"Those who set aside the bottle of bitterness and lift instead the goblet of gratitude can find a purifying drink of healing, peace, and understanding."
- Dieter F. Uchtdorf, 2nd Counselor in the First Presidency

"No matter how good your message is, you may not get a chance to deliver it without consistent, persistent follow-up."
- M. Russell Ballard, Quorum of the Twelve

"This life is your four minutes. While you are here, your actions will determine whether you win the prize of eternal life."
- Bishop Gary E. Stevenson, Presiding Bishop

"It will do us little good to speak of the general brotherhood of mankind if we cannot regard those who are all around us as our brothers and sisters."
- President Thomas S. Monson

"Let us remember that there is an adversary who personally seeks to disrupt the work of the Lord. We must choose whom to follow."
- Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve

"One should not roam through garbage."
- Marcos A. Aidukaitis, Of the Seventy

When conference finished Matt and I went on a walk together on a new path I had found that morning that is absolutely beautiful. We live right next to a nature preserve with a long creek that seems to go forever. It was a long walk as I wanted to see how far it would go and there aren't many outlets to the road. It took a little longer as well since Matt had to take some time to throw rocks and sticks at some termite nests on trees.

Bright orange mushroom

Yesterday was fun as I got to congratulate Brock Butler after his graduation, then go to Taronga Zoo and talk to the tiger keepers, and complete the day by going to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier with the Butlers. Not to mention I also stayed up late that night to finish my book As You Are that my sister and I are reading at the same time.

Matt in "timeout" as we waited to get our movie tickets.

Now my calves are back to normal and today I will be going to Symbio Zoo with my supervisor Jennifer to see if we can do research with their tigers as well. I hope everything works out!

Every Car Has a Breakdown

This last week has had a few ups and downs. Recently our car odometer and speedometer just stopped working. To add to that, while parking Matt scraped the side of the car on the brick which broke off some side panelling. It could be worse! Just like cars, people have breakdowns as well and that has kind of been my story this week.

The week started pretty nice with a fun jewellery making class with the young women. They all came up with some great ideas and I only wish I had taken a picture!

The following night I went out with the sister missionaries. Cate went with one sister and I went with the other and we drove off to visit church members that no one has ever seen before. Sometimes a church ward receives records for people, but the person or family never shows up. Often the person has moved or become inactive. Although we had no luck with one person not home and the other had moved, it was a fun time.

Thursday is when my theoretical car started breaking down. Over the last week at uni I had been looking at the tiger audio and video recordings that I had obtained from Taronga Zoo. Additionally I had completed a critical review which is worth 10% of my final Master of Research marks. Both of these tasks were getting me quickly discouraged. I realised early on that the tiger videos were placed well, but there was a small likelihood I would get a tiger in view with them vocalising. Struggling to think of a solution to get better videos, Jennifer told me that she had looked at my critical review and there were a lot of things to be fixed. This was my "breaking point."

Somehow all of my stress over many things got unloaded on this one paper and I just started crying! Eventually I calmed down to just fix the paper and be done with it, but I knew that there was not much else I could do about it.

That night Matt took me out to get ice cream which always helps when you're having a hard day. The next day I felt a bit better as I went to the R workshop and surprisingly remembered quite a bit from my statistical class. The rest of the weekend I decided I just needed a break from life and all the other stressors so I did some cleaning and laundry and caught up on some TV shows I had missed.

Feeling better by Sunday I was sad to hear many of our missionaries are being transferred this week. I'm at least hoping the new ones are singers so our choir doesn't disintegrate! They all bore their testimony during sacrament meeting and it was wonderful. Matt also bore his testimony which made me so proud of him! The Lord has really blessed us as he was able to have work all last week and this week he will start working for a new painting employer that we hope to be very long term!

Monday was good as I finished reviewing loads of tiger videos and found there are some very interesting vocalisations going on. I definitely think there is something worth investigating with these vocalisations. Also, I talked to my supervisor Jennifer about what I've found and we have some new ideas for getting better video.

Monday night was also our "Come Dine with Me" dinner for April. We had a yummy lasagna, salad, chocolate mousse, and pavlova! It was a great dinner and of course some fun conversation! Two more to go!

Last night I had fun with the Young Women as we planned our upcoming sleepover activity while playing Jenga and eating popcorn. In the end I was the one that tipped it over, but I'm surprised it lasted that long!! Again...I'm just sad I didn't catch it on camera.

Well I hope everyone has a great week and that for all those LDS members out there that you take some quality time to read or listen to all the General Conference talks! I'm excited!