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visiting family in Melbourne area
Having had quite enough of airport security on the flights to Australia I opted to book a train from Canberra to Melbourne and avoid having to play the whole "you can't have water" game. I could have taken a bus, but I don't like buses, and I do like trains. (The train was also noticeably cheaper than the cheapest flight I could find, which contributed to the decision.) Sadly, I found out when it pulled into the station that the first leg of the journey is by bus. The take us from Canberra, through Yass, to Cootmundra, where we were finally able to board the train (the bus took from 09:30 to 12:30).
Once aboard the train, where there is room to spread out, and a table upon which to put one's computer I was delighted, and promptly unpacked my computer. There were still a good 5 or 6 hours to go on the journey which wouldn't have internet access--I could actually make progress on my papers! Alas, when I went to turn on my computer it started making a truly hideous stretching noise that was making the other passengers look somewhat distressed. Concerned that it was a symptom of something inside the computer having broken loose and causing problems as things spin around in the turning on process I hastily turned it back off (had to pull out the batteries to accomplish that). Darn!
So instead of being productive with uni work on the train ride I finished reading a Swedish Children's book (Det lilla stuga i stora skogen av Laura Ingals Wilder, which is a translation of The Little House in the Big Woods, which I read fairly often as a child, but have not read since the early 1980's) and worked on my nålbinding project in progress. Our train was running around 40 minutes late when it picked us up, but they managed to make up enough time as to be only 20 minutes late into Melbourne. However, it did mean missing the 19:26 train out to Belgrave and having to wait for the 8:06 instead.
That train got me to my step-sister's house around 21:20, which gave us a little time to visit before heading to sleep for the night. They don't have a guest room here, so she and her husband have given up their bed for my mother's use when she is here, and they are using an air mattress in the living room. I am sharing the bed with mom, as it makes more sense than trying to put a third person in the living room. This means that I need to do my yoga fairly early each evening so as to be done with the floor before they want to set up their bed.
I opted not to try to turn on my computer that evening, because the kids (two boys, one just six, the other nearly three) were asleep, and that noise would certainly wake the dead, let alone sleeping children. However, I did come up with another theory as to the cause of the sound--one which I liked far more than some sort of damage caused in travel. When I had been talking to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
archinonlive around 03:00 (darn time difference means that the best time for us to talk is between 02:00 and 06:00 Australia time) on my last night in Canberra I was a bit loud and disturbed the sleep of vikingrose, until archinonlive came up with the cunning plan of setting my headset to "listen to this device"--as soon as I could hear the sound of my own voice in the headset I got MUCH quieter (and also became disinclined to actually say anything at all, which is sad, but it did mean that my host could sleep in peace). However, I didn't actually turn that setting off before shutting down the computer. Perhaps the cause of the noise was only feedback?
Once we were all awake in the morning I turned on the computer, waited through the painful noise as it turned on (noting that it got worse if I touched the machine near the speakers), and once it was on I opened up the speaker control properties dialogue box and unticked the "listen to this device" button. Problem solved, instantly. If only I had thought of that in the morning on the train, I could have had hours worth of work done. Oops. Sadly, our brains do not always present us the solution to our problems in as timely a manner as we might like.
That was yesterday morning. Since then I have managed to apply for a job at the uni which is 10 minutes walk from my home in Luleå, work on a booklet the Mobile Women in Science working group of the Marie Curie Fellows association is doing to provide young women scientists role models who have accepted moving to new countries as part of their research career, agreed to give a talk at UTAS on the research I did in Italy and started updating the last powerpoint presentation I had done on that research to show the latest information, and also made time to hang out with my family, including building the marble races tower for my nephew (they are going to let me play with cool toys? bonus!). I also finally got around to removing the underarm gores in my bliaut and started the process of putting them where they should have been in the first place (my arm pit, not hanging in the air to the side of my lower ribs) so that it will fit nicer. Hopefully I can get it reassembled properly before I need it again.
This month's exercise log looks pretty bad at the moment. While in Canberra I did only my daily morning sit-ups etc. routine each morning and my yoga each evening, and SCA dancing one afternoon. Today's walk helped the total though--this neighbourhood is in the hills to the east of Melbourne, and as a result the roads are so not in a grid pattern. I went out and managed to find a loop without using a map, but it took 1 hour, 13 minutes to complete it. Now if I can just do that sort of thing regularly for the rest of the month, perhaps the log will recover...
I have a few more days to enjoy here (and hopefully accomplish lots, too) before I fly to Tassie at way too early Sunday morning. I am looking forward to being there, because I hope that it will be ok to be talking to Sweden in the way early morning hours there. Here I don't dare call till after the boys are awake in the morning, which has been after 07:00 the last couple of days, which means not much time for me to chat. (We can just take it as a given that I would far rather go home and be able to talk to him in person, but we take what we can get...)
Once aboard the train, where there is room to spread out, and a table upon which to put one's computer I was delighted, and promptly unpacked my computer. There were still a good 5 or 6 hours to go on the journey which wouldn't have internet access--I could actually make progress on my papers! Alas, when I went to turn on my computer it started making a truly hideous stretching noise that was making the other passengers look somewhat distressed. Concerned that it was a symptom of something inside the computer having broken loose and causing problems as things spin around in the turning on process I hastily turned it back off (had to pull out the batteries to accomplish that). Darn!
So instead of being productive with uni work on the train ride I finished reading a Swedish Children's book (Det lilla stuga i stora skogen av Laura Ingals Wilder, which is a translation of The Little House in the Big Woods, which I read fairly often as a child, but have not read since the early 1980's) and worked on my nålbinding project in progress. Our train was running around 40 minutes late when it picked us up, but they managed to make up enough time as to be only 20 minutes late into Melbourne. However, it did mean missing the 19:26 train out to Belgrave and having to wait for the 8:06 instead.
That train got me to my step-sister's house around 21:20, which gave us a little time to visit before heading to sleep for the night. They don't have a guest room here, so she and her husband have given up their bed for my mother's use when she is here, and they are using an air mattress in the living room. I am sharing the bed with mom, as it makes more sense than trying to put a third person in the living room. This means that I need to do my yoga fairly early each evening so as to be done with the floor before they want to set up their bed.
I opted not to try to turn on my computer that evening, because the kids (two boys, one just six, the other nearly three) were asleep, and that noise would certainly wake the dead, let alone sleeping children. However, I did come up with another theory as to the cause of the sound--one which I liked far more than some sort of damage caused in travel. When I had been talking to
archinonlive around 03:00 (darn time difference means that the best time for us to talk is between 02:00 and 06:00 Australia time) on my last night in Canberra I was a bit loud and disturbed the sleep of vikingrose, until archinonlive came up with the cunning plan of setting my headset to "listen to this device"--as soon as I could hear the sound of my own voice in the headset I got MUCH quieter (and also became disinclined to actually say anything at all, which is sad, but it did mean that my host could sleep in peace). However, I didn't actually turn that setting off before shutting down the computer. Perhaps the cause of the noise was only feedback?Once we were all awake in the morning I turned on the computer, waited through the painful noise as it turned on (noting that it got worse if I touched the machine near the speakers), and once it was on I opened up the speaker control properties dialogue box and unticked the "listen to this device" button. Problem solved, instantly. If only I had thought of that in the morning on the train, I could have had hours worth of work done. Oops. Sadly, our brains do not always present us the solution to our problems in as timely a manner as we might like.
That was yesterday morning. Since then I have managed to apply for a job at the uni which is 10 minutes walk from my home in Luleå, work on a booklet the Mobile Women in Science working group of the Marie Curie Fellows association is doing to provide young women scientists role models who have accepted moving to new countries as part of their research career, agreed to give a talk at UTAS on the research I did in Italy and started updating the last powerpoint presentation I had done on that research to show the latest information, and also made time to hang out with my family, including building the marble races tower for my nephew (they are going to let me play with cool toys? bonus!). I also finally got around to removing the underarm gores in my bliaut and started the process of putting them where they should have been in the first place (my arm pit, not hanging in the air to the side of my lower ribs) so that it will fit nicer. Hopefully I can get it reassembled properly before I need it again.
This month's exercise log looks pretty bad at the moment. While in Canberra I did only my daily morning sit-ups etc. routine each morning and my yoga each evening, and SCA dancing one afternoon. Today's walk helped the total though--this neighbourhood is in the hills to the east of Melbourne, and as a result the roads are so not in a grid pattern. I went out and managed to find a loop without using a map, but it took 1 hour, 13 minutes to complete it. Now if I can just do that sort of thing regularly for the rest of the month, perhaps the log will recover...
I have a few more days to enjoy here (and hopefully accomplish lots, too) before I fly to Tassie at way too early Sunday morning. I am looking forward to being there, because I hope that it will be ok to be talking to Sweden in the way early morning hours there. Here I don't dare call till after the boys are awake in the morning, which has been after 07:00 the last couple of days, which means not much time for me to chat. (We can just take it as a given that I would far rather go home and be able to talk to him in person, but we take what we can get...)