Wow. What a crazy couple of months it's been.

Sometime it's seemed like a string of disasters ... but there have been highs as well as lows. I haven't blogged (and probably won't blog) in detail about some of the things that stressed me out at the time - partly because I'm a bit of a slack blogger (did you notice?), but mostly because I prefer not to vent on my blog. So I've waited until I've got a bit of distance on recent events, and can now provide you with a brief summary of the ups and downs of the last few months.

Low points:

  • The CEO of Qantas chucking a hissy fit and throwing my air travel plans into disarray. Fortunately it was resolved before Roxy (our cat) and I left Darwin.
  • Rental stress in Darwin caused by a horrible real estate agent, but ultimately resolved successfully by our wonderful landlord.
  • Rental stress in Melbourne caused by slack tenants and a slack real estate agent. We did a lot more cleaning than we should have had to. And our poor garden was a disaster area, with weeds as high as the fence in some places. It obviously hadn't been touched in a year.
  • The moment when our removalists in Melbourne opened the truck and found that everything had "shifted in transit". We were lucky that only a few pieces of furniture were broken.
  • Springtime allergies. The worst I've ever experienced, I spent much of my first two weeks in Melbourne in bed as a result.
  • Terrible customer service from an online bookshop (it really upset me at the time). They were in the wrong, but it was their refusal to respond to any of my queries that left such a bad taste in my mouth.
  • My Christmas was cancelled, thanks to a bout of the flu (fever, chills, sweats, aches, the whole shebang). I missed Christmas with both my family and Tim's as a result.
  • The hail and thunder storms on Christmas day resulted in flooding in our garage - eerily reminiscent of the heavy rains in December 2003 that flooded our garage when we first moved into this house! Those are the only times we've experienced flooding here.

High points:

  • I'm slowly getting into the swing of working remotely. It's a little too quiet sometimes, but my productivity has been high. And I need to work at staying connected with my team - happily we all seem to getting better at this already.
  • My little work team (the liaison librarians) won the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Exceptional Performance. We were over the moon, and even more so when we discovered it came with a generous amount of money to be used for professional development.
  • My prize for the best presentation at the Top End Symposium arrived in the mail - a bookshop voucher, and some terrific National Year of Reading merchandise.
  • I've just started doing some casual work at a university in Melbourne, which I'm very excited about. It will be a great opportunity to work with some new people and hopefully get some fresh ideas off the ground.
  • The shopping in Melbourne is pretty good, especially when you've been away from it for a while (craft shops, great restaurant food and prices, Haigh's!).
  • I loved catching up with some friends from interstate who visited Melbourne not long after I got back.
  • I did a temari ball workshop at Kimono House - a craft that I'd been wanting to try for ages! I've put some photos of my first attempt on Flickr, and a blog post will be coming soon.

I wish I could have added more about catching up with friends to this list, but there haven't been a lot of opportunities so far. I'm looking forward to making up for it in the new year :)

Anyway, there you go. I've got my positive face on now, and am looking forward to some time ahead that is a little quieter, yet productive and interesting. Wish me luck!