Thursday, July 30, 2009

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.

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