I found this fifty cent piece this morning while looking for money and was tremendously amused.

Look! There’s a baby inside the woman!!

What is that supposed to mean?! The pros and cons of birth in modern-day Australian society? The responsibility of Australian citizens to produce children for the benefit of their good name and country? Women as reproductive machines? ….. oh wait, that’s the Augustan legislation.

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There’s also a super funny sign on the bus that shows that certain seats are only for elderly, disabled, or pregnant poeple, but I can’t find it online.

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It’s really time for some more Faces of Nadia. What am I procrastinating about?

I find myself suddenly homesick.

Something about the smell of the air…

Today has been something of an unsuccessful day.

I spent all yesterday reading up about how the use of coinage in the Ancient Agora promoted its development and growth (or something like that) since I have to write a paper on it and I am determined to finish it this week because I shortly have another paper due and then another… and another… and another! April is full of papers. So I spent all day yesterday reading up on this stuff still I could feel my eyeballs start to vibrate…

Anyway, consequently I woke up in a grim, pudding-headed kind of mood… biked to class (rain), sat through a couple hours, and then, when I tried to go to a writing seminar that I was hoping would make me feel reassured about my new inability to write papers (well, it’s been 10 years), I just *couldn’t find it*. Walked into several rooms and sat down only to find that I was in the wrong place and had to get up and leave, to my embarassment. Thnk I seriously insulted someone, as one of the rooms I walked into and sat down in happened to be a company giving a recruiting presentation… and no one was there except a couple people… they were all so happy to see me, thinking, as it were, I was an eager recruit, and then 60 seconds into their presentation (as it dawned on me I was once again in the wrong place) I had to get up and leave again… dripping cracker crumbs and raindrops all the way.

That kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen to grownups. I don’t know if I’ve walked obviously into the wrong place since the day in Third Grade when I sat down in Chad Cooper’s seat by mistake.

Anyway, then I tried to go get a candy bar, pressed the wrong button and ended up with something I didn’t want….!

Then biked home (rain) and sat reading up about Ancient Greeks for the rest of the afternoon.

To my chagrin and simultaneous amusement, it turns out that I have taken twice as many notes as my paper needs to be long. Let me rephrase: my paper needs to be 1X words long, and I have taken 2X words’ worth of notes!

If only I could pull a Harry Potter, wave my arm at it, and have my notes magically rearrange into a coherant paper of the proper length! I’ve already done the writing now… shouldn’t it be a snap to rearrange it quickly into the Perfect Paper?

But evolution doesn’t work that way.

Today as we were leaving for hockey we found a mysterious present on our front porch — a small, extremely weathered, camoflouge-pattered pair of binoculars. (???!!!)

Perhaps the individual that stole our door a week and a half ago left it as compensation.

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Second, when we came home from church tonight and went to put the dogs to bed, guess who had decided to set up house in the dog dish?

That’s right. Mr. Toad. We don’t know if he’s a Cane Toad (can’t tell if he has those tell-tale parotoid glands behind his ears or not) buit it would be bad news if he were. Indeed, there are NO toads in Australia other than the Cane Toad. Only frogs [though I gather some look pretty similar].

Apparantly Aussies take their Cane Toad problem very seriously. They develop all sorts of odd devices and spend massive amounts of money attempting to destroy them. These toads are poisonous enough to take out a saltwater crocodile — that’s bad news for Fitz and Kettricken!

Today I drank some hydrogen peroxide. (My mother sent me email about the great health benefits of hydrogen peroxide so I thought I’d try it out on myself.)

It tasted absolutely horrible and made me foam at the mouth for several minutes.

So I washed it down with some Harvey’s Bristol Cream. I don’t know about the health benefits in that…

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Last night we were driving to see an outdoor movie at one of the state schools (I like Brisbane because they host these kinds of things all the time) and while we were blitzing along a dark hilly road we suddenly saw an animal crouched in the headlights and this woman gesturing at us. So we stopped and got out and it turned out that a possum (a rather large one) was just squatting there in the middle of the road as if turned to stone. There was clearly something off about it, but the woman had no blanket or anything and was a bit afraid to pick it up.

I had my NYC magic blue Duane Reade blanket (remember those, viacimo?) in the back for the movie, so I got it out and wrapped up Mr. Possum, and carried him off the road. He didn’t look like he had any injuries, but as I held him in my arms I saw blood trickling out of his little nose. He looked so stunned, puzzled; his eyes were pools of blackness. He felt like Elma in my arms.

Two people on a motorcycle pulled over then and it turned out they had a friend that was a wildlife protection person (or something like that) so they called him, but given the blood trickling out of his nose he just recommended we take him to the vet ASAP.

I wanted to take him to the vet myself but the woman and her teenage daughter who had first gestured at us to stop obviously wanted to take care of him so we gave them directions to get to the Uni — the closest emergency veterinary is there — and I let her hold onto my NYC blanket (gave her my phone number). She hasn’t called back yet but I’m sure she will.

I’ve been worrying about that possum all day. He had such a look in his black eyes.