I don't think I would be a very good 'lady of leisure'.  It's my first day of holidays (which, don't get me wrong, is fantastic) and I've had breakfast with a friend, hit the gym, returned some library books and dropped Jeremy off at the hospital and now I'm wondering what to do with myself.  I have a good stack of books just waiting for me to get my hands on them, which is excellent!  I also need to go to Officeworks (aka Australian Staples) and look for a 'Pak 'n Roll' (since I destroyed the one EQ bought me in two terms) and possibly a laser pointer for the cats. 

The weather couldn't be better!  After a week of miserable dreary non-stop rain, it cleared up just in time for my day off!  I worked from a different building on Wed and Thurs this week since all the other speechies at my base were away and they don't like us working alone on the holidays.  It was so luxurious!!  It actually had...get this...HEAT!  Wow.  Spoiled rotten now!  I had no distractions and managed to get a ton of stuff good, which is good, but it still feels like there's so much more.  I have this problem where I did a bunch of speech language screenings last term.  So teachers referred students to me who they thought might have some difficulties and I tested them.  Teachers are pretty good at picking up that kind of stuff, so basically 95% of the kids I screened would benefit from some speech therapy.  However, at all of my schools I already HAVE  a caseload, so this new influx of screening kids means i have to juggle everything around and find space for everyone.  My problem is that I need to advise on who gets speech tx and who doesn't, but I am terrible at saying no and not giving a student my services.  Ultimately, the school can agree or disagree and they have the final say, but I find myself just trying to fit everyone in and that's going to make for a crazy Term 3.  Aggggh.  Alright, enough work talk.

Hmmmmm...what else?  Well, Nicole flew up from Tassie last night and she's here for awhile, getting ready for her wedding on the 7th of July.  Jeremy has booked his flight to Canada and will be gone for two months, leaving on the 18th of July.  That will be pretty weird!  We were hoping to make it to Melbourne this weekend - Jeremy has an interview with a hospital there and it would have been good to do it in person but the flight prices were very high and we couldn't find any deals that would help us justify going.  so, we did the responsible thing and now he has a phone interview tomorrow.  Sigh.  I love Melbourne and it's been so long!  Seriously though, sometimes you can get flights for $80 round trip but this weekend it would have been about $400 each and that is just way too much. 

If you've been reading this blog for the last couple of years, you may remember that my favourite day ever is Canada Day.  This time last year I was actually IN Canada, visiting with Gran, Seamus and Frank and getting ready to surprise my mum at Ro's Canada day BBQ.  This year will definitely NOT be as exciting, but some friends are coming over Sunday morning and we're going to attempt to make beaver tails and poutine for lunch.  Horrendously unhealthy, yes, but...it's Canada Day! 

Brrrrrrr!

I'm sitting here in the back room of the house, or "Jeremy's room" as it is otherwise known, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and pants with a space heater making it somewhat bearable.  A stark contrast to what I saw when I Skyped my parents and Ronan this morning, who were out on their new Seadoo on a sunny Canadian day playing in the water!  It just feels so topsy turvy!  Overnight temperatures are staying steady at between 6 and 8 degrees and with no heating in the house, yes, that means my house is 6-8 degrees.  Freezing!! (Well, almost).  I work in Ipswich, which is inland and it's actually going down to -1 tonight...this morning at my base school, our office was 8.6 degrees.  Aggggh!  We can't even plug in space heaters at the base because it shorts out the system in our office.  Lovely!

Looking forward to mid-year schools holidays.  I just have to finish up the rest of the week, which should be pretty breezy.  Today I had a base day and got a ton of stuff done - like 20 screening reports and one full report!  I felt very productive.  Tomorrow I go out to a high school and do two therapy sessions and a full assessment.  Wednesday is our once per term regional meeting.  Thursday I go to  one of my primary schools for the day, and Friday is another base day.  I'll be working all of the following week and then taking the second week of holidays off (it is still pretty exciting to be paid for time off, yippee!).  I have no big plans...my week will probably consist of running extremely exciting errands such as servicing the car and bringing the cat to get some vaccinations...but actually, one of the days I've made plans to go to MovieWorld on the Gold Coast with Kim and see if I can revive my childhood love of roller coasters and scary rides, so that should be fun!

Nicole's wedding is getting closer and closer, yay!  Lisa was in Brisbane yesterday because her work paid for her to go to a conference at UQ today, so she came a day early with some other coworkers who were driving down and stayed overnight.  We went to the Winter Festival downtown, which really shouldn't be called a festival...it was cool, but not really a festival scale!  It pretty much consisted of a skating rink (the biggest outdoor rink in the southern hemisphere, I'm told) and a few food stalls.  It WAS quite amusing to watch the Australians try to keep themselves upright by holding onto the edge as they gingerly inched their way around the rink, but at $29 per person for a skating session was too expensive for Lisa and I.  Instead we ended up shopping on the Queen Street Mall...and back to Nicole's wedding, both bought dresses to wear at this event.  Lisa needs to stop visiting Brisbane because I don't usually do much shopping, but for some reason her presence causes me to buy new things.  It's okay though...OBVIOUSLY I needed a new dress for Nicole's wedding, right??  I don't feel too bad though, since it was 20 bucks.  <3 sales!

Oh yeah, one last thing - we have a new cat!  Salmon is still good and now we have Mackerel as well!!  Why?  i honestly have no idea.  We like cats.  But don't worry, the cat cap is definitely two! (pics to come)

The latest thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo

A few months ago, I signed up for this website called "Duolingo" which promised to help me learn another language.  I wasn't able to access it at the time, but was informed that I would get an e-mail inviting me to join the site at some point.  I promptly forgot all about it.

Recently, I received my e-mail and have been an avid user of this site ever since.  I chose to learn Spanish and am currently on level 7.  It's kind of hard to explain how it works, but this person does a good job:

http://classical-bookworm.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/duolingo-first-impressions.html

I've invited Jeremy to the site and he is using it to learn French.  Apparently the website is not open to the public yet and according to that Wikipedia article, there is a waiting list of more than 300 000 people to join.  It is supposed to open on June 19th, but if anyone wants to check it out beforehand, let me know and I will e-mail you an invitation.  It really is cool...and kind of addictive!

I'm excited for next weekend.  We're having a BBQ on Sunday with our new Weber grill that we got from my friend Jules.  Finally, we have a BBQ!