"I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.” - Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)

Another blog post? Without 3 weeks having passed? 

What are this?!

Kit went to Port Arthur! 

Be prepared for pictures.

  

How charming and history-ful. Added bonus, the chums that Kit went with were kind enough to accommodate her interest in history, so she actually got a chance to read all the informative signs hung up around the place! Learning! Yeeeeessssssssss!

Almost half of the Honours kids were there.

This is Miss E. B., Miss K., Miss E. H., Mr Y., and Mr T.

They're a special brand of excellent.

The other half and a bit of the Honours kids are also excellent. But they had work commitments and/or deadly hangovers which prevented them adventuring to Port Arthur.

Photos were taken and poses were pulled.

Croquet was played. It turns out Kit is baus at that game. 

 

It's difficult to organise these photos. The template may need adjusting. Nah. Too much effort. Suffer at the poorly displayed photos! 

It was a generally fun day with a bunch of generally awesome people. 

Face stayed home and celebrated the fact that Kit has friends who are willing to travel the hour and a half to Port Arthur with her, thereby relieving him of the duty. But not really. He'll have to go one day. For the ghost tour. Mwa ha!

That will probably be Kit's final weekend of freedom for a while. She has a grant application assignment due on the 11th of August, and the Maria Island and Queensland trip between now and then. It's going to be a busy month of hard work, sobbing and grumpy demands for coffee. Added to that will be an attempt to fix Kit's sleep cycle. She stays up too late at night (case in point, it's now 12:28 am), which makes her sleepy the next day. So she has a nap. Usually under her desk at uni. Which then reduces the tired, so she stays up late again. It's a darn vicious cycle. But Kit just loves naps... So, so much.

Naps are probably the best thing ever.

Anyway. Look at the teeny tiny glasses that were on display at Port Arthur! 

They're simply adorable.  

That's it, y'all!

Love love. xx

 

"Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem." - A. A. Milne

Hey y'all! So what's been happenin'?

Yet another long-overdue blog post! 

Spending all day on the computer at uni leaves Kit quite un-enthused about spending time on it at home. Instead, she just wants to nap. Going to uni makes her sleepy.

But stuff's starting to get real, so updates should be more frequent in the future.

For example, some of this real getting includes:

• A visit to Port Arthur (WHOOOOOOO!)
• Field work on Maria Island (WHOOOOOOO!)
• Adventuring to Queensland to learn the mysteries of poop analysis (Gross, yet WHOOOOOOO!)

Damn boi, that's some pretty exciting future lined up.

In the meantime, Kit has been watching videos of Tasmanian devils! So. Many. Videos.

This is part of her devil behaviour analysis. Each devil was released into a small captive pen containing a bunch of items they'd never seen before, including a mirror, a large inflated beach ball, and a sack. And a water bowl. But that was mostly cause it was Summer when the tests were done, and it would have been pretty mean to leave them without water. Devils love water. They're all about the stuff. Anyway, each devil was then recorded for 20 minutes. Kit's job is to watch through each video and record a whole heap of science.

For realsies. 

This science includes scan samples at fixed intervals (i.e. what each devil is doing every minute), how long it takes them to approach the novel objects, how frequently they interact with each object, how long each interaction lasts, any abnormal behaviours, etc. 

The videos are pretty cool to watch. Devils are hilarious, and it's really cool looking at individual behaviours. Each devil is different in all these little ways. Geronimo, for example, noticed his reflection in the mirror and responded with a "OH HELL NO" and spent most of his time in the pen trying to kick his reflections arse. Armin, in contrast, saw his reflection, freaked, bolted, and hid himself away in some bushes. Bushes are his safe place.  

But as much fun as watching devil videos is, it gets pretty old after you watch the same video for the tenth time. So in between devil videos, Kit divides her time between reading relevant stuff, and distracting everyone else in the office. The problem is that everyone else seems to have the same game plan, and the distraction breaks generally don't align. With 12 people in the room this results in a lot of wasted time. Science!

In other news, Kitcat and Face spent the majority of today with the Wittick/Guy family! Member of who feature prominently on Squirrel & Puffin! It was uber to see everyone, and additionally it was a brilliant reason to visit the Salamanca markets (Face was thrilled. Next to having his kidney ripped out by bears, the Salamanca markets are his most favourite thing ever), and take a trip to the Cascade Brewery for delicious lunch. We then parted ways with the adventurers, as they went off on one of the Cascade factory tours, which Kitcat and Face had done just a few weeks ago with parents-of-Kit.

The tour was a lot of fun. Beer brewing is more interesting than the finished product. 

Part of the tour included a beer pulling competition. Which Kit won! Yay. 

She's practically a bar-tender now.

Good job there, Face. If you like all head no beer. Looooser! 

Hullo parents-of-Kit!

Although there are no plans as of yet, cause Honours seems to get in the way of plans being planned, Kit and Face are hoping to take a trip to Melbourne sometime in the near future to visit the Wittick/Guy family again. Because they're excellent.

That's Kit's life at the moment. Face's life is much as ever. However, it is Face's 25th birthday in 17 days! 25 is one of those big birthday, yeh? Like a 16th or 21st. That means important presents! So. Um. Does anyone have any ideas what to get him? Kit's ideas all revolve around puppies and kitties and yarn and waffle-makers. But it's just possible she's confusing what Face would like with what she wants. You'll get a theoretical high-five if you manage to come up with a good option!

Love love. xx