Trying something new

I tried something new today.

No, it wasn't a new food or drink and I didn't visit somewhere I hadn't been before.

I cut my own hair.

Now you're probably thinking my god, I wonder what that looks like. Well it's actually not too bad if I do say so myself, maybe not quite as good as when Donna does it for me, but definitely passable. In fact, I think I did a better job than I do when I trim my beard. Of course I always get a buzz cut which makes it quite easy to do. Trying to get the scissors round the right way while looking at myself in the mirror would have been just about impossible.

Donna hasn't seen it yet as she's still at work. I just know she's going to ask how I tidied up around my ears, since she always uses the scissors for that bit. I'm pretty sure she'll want to fix up the back of my neck because I can feel the bits I've missed when I run my hands over it.

I wonder if I should add it to my resume as another skill.

A busy few days

It's been a busy few days. If you've read Donna's blog, you'll know she's just spent a couple of nights in hospital.

Thursday afternoon, after a lunch of MacDonalds, we got a call from a local vet asking if we could come and pick up a Tawny Frogmouth. It had been found sitting by the side of the road somewhere in our area. Tawnys have a habit during the day of sitting in a tree pretending to be piece of the tree. The vet seemed to think that this particular bird had been doing just that.

We took the bird home but had a feeling it had been indirectly poisoned by eating a poisoned mouse, something that's quite common unfortunately.

As we don't have a suitable cage for it, we asked Jess a Brett if they could take it. They said they'd come and pick it up that evening and stay for dinner.

Not long after dinner (steak and sausages, there's a trend forming here) Donna started complaining about pains in the stomach. She has ulcers and assumed it was that and took a Somac. Unfortunately, the pain was getting worse and it didn't matter what position she got in, there was no relief. I mouthed the word ambulance to Jess and Brett and they ambos were there within about five minutes.

Anyway, if you want to read the rest it's in Donna's blog, but needless to say, not much got done around the house yesterday and a rescue I got called out for in the afternoon had to be done by someone else. It was most likely all the fatty food that we'd had that day that triggered Donna's problem.

By coincidence, I'm doing a first aid course this weekend, it's at the nearest ambulance station to the hospital where Donna was staying. It seems funny sitting not far from an ambulance when I was riding in one only a couple of days ago.

Oh, and the poor Tawny didn't make it, it died before Donna started getting the stomach pains.

A little light reading

I've got a bit of time on my hands at the moment. As my uni stuff for second semester hasn't all arrived yet I can't do much studying, so I'm taking the opportunity to read a book Donna bought me a couple of years ago.



It's about two inches thick and nearly 1700 pages. No it's not War and Peace, I tried reading a Tolstoy novel once, "Anna Karenina", it was so boring I never finished it. This one is actually a compendium of four of Darwin's books, "The Voyage of the Beagle", "On the Origin of the Species", "The Decent of Man" and "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals".

I'm not actually as far into it as the photo above suggests, I'm only a short way into "The Voyage of the Beagle", but so far I'm finding it a really interesting read. It's a bit like reading an 1830s blog about someones holiday, as it was taken from Darwin's journal on his five year journey around the world in HMS Beagle.

If you've got a bit of time on your hands see if you can find a copy. You won't regret it.

Unemployed

Or as I like to call it, temporarily semi-retired. Hey, I have enough grey hair in my beard now to get away with it.

Yesterday was the big day. Actually, it was a bit of an anticlimax. I spent the morning doing pretty much what I've been doing for the past month, reading, looking at job ads and courses, and playing solitaire and pinball on the computer. Then at noon a group of us went up the pub for two hours, the same as we did on Tuesday when one of our colleagues, Larry, had his last day.

After a final pee back at the office in preparation for a ninety minute bus ride, I just shook hands with everyone (and hugged one), said my goodbyes and was gone.

Because I've had a few big holidays and residentials in the last couple of years, it doesn't seem like I've left the job, I just feel like I'm on holidays again. Every now and then I think of something at work and I realise I won't be in that office ever again. I don't think it will really sink in properly until I start getting a wage from another employer, or until Donna starts nagging me to get a job.

Because I need time off for uni residentials and exams, I'm mainly looking for a casual job. Having said that, some employers openly advertise the fact that they will give you study leave, so if I can get a job like that it'll be great. One such job is as a ranger with the EPA, as soon as one gets advertised in this area I'll be applying for it.

Until then, I'm going to do a few courses. I've already got a first aid course booked in a couple of weeks. Donna wants to do a chainsaw course, so we'll be doing that one together. Part of my redundancy package was a lump sum payment for training purposes, so I'll be putting that to good use, even if most of it goes toward my uni fees.

I guess now I'll have to change the picture at the top of my blog, I don't think I'll change the name of the blog though.