Apparently I'm solar powered too. Well, too complete the circle, here I am back at Toad Hall. On Thursday Mum and I drove across to Canberra where she left me in the capable hands of Peta (B). Just like old times we had a coffee/chat session at Essen followed by dinner at Sizzle Bento (the sushi place). She generously offered to put me up for the night, so we went back to her house and vegged out watching television. The next morning I had several appointments in Civic so she dropped me off early, giving me enough tie to stow my luggage in a locker and spend some time quietly in Garema Place watching the public servants rushing to work. I had an arm/eyebrow wax at my usual salon, the girl Penny remembering me from over 12 months ago and so we had a really great tme catching up. This made me a little late for my second appointment which was to meet Peta (G) at Psychedeli for morning coffee. She was her usual fun self and I managed to catch up with much of what had been going on with her. She offered me crash-space at her apartment which I will probably take up.
Thankfully Psychedeli is located right next door to my next stop, Axis Hairdressing where I had an appointmet for "the works". When my hair is good I feel on top of the world, and given the rather favourble exchange rate I had a cut, colour, highlights, shampoo/condition and blow wave which in the US would have cost me an arm and a leg. Of course, with so much hair and so much work to be done, what it did cost me was time, I walked in at 10:15 am and didn't escape until 2 pm, yes almost 4 hours at the hairdressers, a record breaking achievement even for me. Fortunately Axis is close to the University and so on my way ver I stopped by Toad to obtain some temporary accommodation for the next few days and then I continued over to the lab.

Upon my arrival I chatted away animatedly with Joe and Clem, catching up on what had been happening over the last 6 months, Mark was rsuhing around as usual, and it was great to see him. I handed over the samples and went through a brief discussion of what I was thinking of Miami and life as a postdoc (hint: it pays a lot better than being a Grad student but not a whole lot). We organized a group lunch for Monday which should be fun, and after all that I collected my excess mail. Thank heavens, the Graduation tickets turned up, all 4 of them, they had been sent to the lab some time ago for reasons unknown. After leaving the lab I quickly phoned Mum an Ally to let them know everything was ok and then wandered back to Toad. The excitment of the day, plus the imminent setting of the sun had left me rather exhausted so I crashed out for a while. After a few hours sleep I went back into Civic to do some window shopping and collect my luggage. I came back to Toad and slept for a long time.

Today I have a BBQ over at Burt St, so I may try to organize a brunch with other people who I need to catch up with. This evening is also blank so far, but I expect I shall be rather exhausted as per usual.