Ridge to Bridge and other Miscelaneous Jitterings

Despite the order of the title we're going to cover the Miscelaneous Jitterings first. Or at least part of them. I have always had a fear of not living up to expectations, or disappointing people. To some extent, this has carried over to my creative work. I hate sharing anything I've written, or even drawn, with the fear that it's not good enough. Which is why it was so nice to open my inbox this afternoon and see that I have a host of emails from Fiction Press regarding the second chapter of a story I posted last night. Amoungst several reviews, I had a couple of people who'd added it as 'Favourite Story', and even one who'd labelled me a 'Favourite Author'. But it's the reviews I love most. To see people getting excited about something I won't even post under any aliases I have, let alone my real name. I honestly squee-d and bounced around because I was so happy. I can't even begin to describe what this means to me. And it's only on a second chapter of a story that wasn't really going to be continued. I still have no idea where it's going, but people are connecting with it, and right now, to me, that's all that really matters XD.

Okay, now we've gotten the emotional out of the way ...
Ridge to Bridge was last Sunday morning. It's an event that all the local fire brigades participate in, and since I joined up in time for this years, I went in it too. Basically, the Ridge to Bridge is walking through the bush on trails often not really trails down hills and up hills from the Cowan fire station to the Brooklyn fire station. Lots of very steep parts. I believe my dad measured it at being around 15.5 kms. Some people ran it (silly crazy people ... like my dad *shakes head in disbelief* - I barely made it up one of the hills) but most walked. I believe my team was the first walking team from Cowan to complete it. We did it in just over 3 hrs, which was largely due to my inability to climb rocky hills with speed. Despite the fact that the giant-steep-hill-that-just-kept-going-and-going seriously made me want to stop, I finished it, and I'm glad I did. It's actually a nice walk for the most part, and mostly downhill. Makes me realise how unfit I've become. I did mean to write about it on Sunday night, and now I've forgotten most of what I wanted to say, but there you go.

Uni started back on Monday. I'm used to it again so quickly it's scary. Unfortunately I have to get up at 5:30 4 days a week for 8am lectures, but it means I get home earlier so I don't mind too much. I'd rather have it that way around, there's more time in the day then to do other things. Like writing. I did the chapter last night, and it came really easily, which is even nicer. I got my influx of cash from ASG which is nice. It's more than double what it was for semester one, which is even nicer :).

My Living Systems biology course this semester is so much better than last semesters Concepts was. We're doing animal body plans and function at the moment, and the lecturer is a zoologist, so I'm in heaven, especially since she believes heavily in the wonderfullness of pictures as examples. On the slightly downward side of that however, is that we disected a locust for prac yesterday. Normally I'm sort of okay with disections, and I'm better when it's the whole animal and not just some random organ, and locusts don't smell when you cut them up .... but we had to pin them in the disecting dish. I am entirely against pinning insects, so to have to do it myself was not okay. I know why we did it, and I agree it helped, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Once the pinning was done, it was really fun though. We cut off the exoskeleton, and then submerged the entire insect in water. Basically the entire back two thirds of a locust is made up of it's reproductive organs, and they're bright yellow. Seriously. And they kind of went all wispy in the water. It was actually kinda cool, until they kept getting in the way. They also had a wolf skull for us to draw and label (we had to do that with the locust too), which was also cool. I think we'll shut the weird zoology nut up now. My Greek Myths and Legends class looks to be really good too, and the focus is totally on the myths themselves; the people in them, the events, symbolism etc.

Anyway, that's my rambling for the evening. I have to start making my notes for my units. If I don't start now, I won't at all, and then there shall be trouble. I keep telling myself I'll do it on Friday however ('Cause I get home at 11:45 <3), so we shall see.

Short but Sweet

Look! Second post in two weeks! There must be something funny in the water :P. Back in Sydney after a week up North with family. We had a great time the rest of last week. We went to the aquarium and Luna Park on Friday, and met some of our other cousins there. All of us ended up feeling very sick :P, although someof us (i.e. me - I was already feeling sick) skipped the Rotor (big spinny tube where you get stuck to the walls 'cause of the centrifugal force and all that). And then we went on other spinny rides after that.

I was glad we got to go to Winterfest. Luckily for me my aunt likes that sort of stuff. My cousin, not so much, but she had fun anyway :). Drove up to Ballina Sunday morning. 7 hours. Fun. We did lots of beaching and laking and general nothingness. We went to see the new Harry Potter on ... um, some afternoon. Not sure which. There didn't seem to me to be that much going on. I liked it, but not much seemed to happen, except the very end.

And we left Ballina this morning and got home about 2ish. Katherine was crying when we said goodbye. I hate that she lives so far away! I've decided I'm definitely going to England in my winter holidays next year though, and then she and I are going to go to Venice. And other random European cities/countries.

Back to uni on Monday. I have to get up at 5:30 every morning now *whimpers*. No fair. 8am lectures are only okay when teleportation is invented. This is short because I'm tired and I need to go get dinner. I hope people had a nice week.

We All Live In A Yellow Submariiiiiiiiiiine

I think the problem I have with keeping a journal is that I'm not really the type of person who talks a whole lot about how they feel. I have made several attempts to keep some sort of journal or diary over the years, and I think the longest lasting (besides LJ), lasted me a month and a half. I think I end up giving up because I think that there's not much point.

Not much has really been happening. I managed to scrape a pass in first semester Chemistry. And I literally mean scrape. 51%. Yay me :). Virtually nothing has happened in writing or art terms. My big painting is only slightly more sketched than it was a month ago. I think my problem there is that I expect to be able to do it right the first time, which is totally unrealistic, and when I can't I give up for a while. Luckily, it's only the sketching that takes a long time. So once I eventually get this done, it'll be finished nice and quickly. Or at least that's the plan.

My aunt and cousin are in Australia for the next 5 and 2 weeks respectively. They're staying with us for a week, then we're all going up to the grandparents. We don't get to see them often. Denise (my aunt) comes out generally once a year, but I haven't seen Katherine for 3 years. I haven't seen my uncle for at least 6. (They live in England). I am seriously thinking about going to England this time next year though. I already have enough money for a ticket. I do need to get a passport though. I think they're around $200.

My brother recently introduced me to Matthew Reilly's books. (Actually, he's been bugging me to read them for over a year, but I never really liked the blurb on the back ... how wrong I was...) I love them. Very fast paced, action filled books. Particularly though, I LOVE 'Seven Ancient Wonders' and 'Six Sacred Stones'. Very awesome books. I'd so love to do that sort of thing, though maybe without the being killed option.

We went to visit family with Denise and Katherine last night and ended up staying for dinner. It was nice 'cause we hadn't seen them in a while. They were coming to the airport but Ben had a seizure so they took him home instead. We watched Step Brothers, which was just a little bit stupid. I didn't like it that much, but Will Ferrell singing at the end was okay. Dave was wearing a pink towel around his dreads to help them dry. I made fun of it and he reckons he's gonna target me to get some, because he 'sees potential in my hair' lol. I think I'd prefer braids, but dreads would be fun for a while :). It'll never happen.

I want to learn to fly light aircraft. I imagine it's kind of expensive though. I know my uncle learnt on a school teachers salary though, so it can't be too bad. I've also decided I want to live in Canada for a while. And I want to go see the flooding plains in Africa that were on 'Nature's Great Events' on Sunday that I can't remember the name of.

And next time we may or may not get a more concise post rather that lots of random thoughts jammed together. Good luck with that :)