I have recently been admonished for my lack of blog upkeep, so here goes nothing...

I'm lying in bed at a friend's house in Brisbane. I've been here for almost a week. I arrived last Thursday night to the wettest May day in the last 175 years. Today was one of the hottest May temperatures recorded. This is what happens when I come to Queensland! Thursday night, my flight arrived in Brisbane at about 10 pm. I caught a shuttle to the Gold Coast, arriving at about 11:45 pm. I had very prudently booked my accommodation the day before and arrived not knowing what to expect. It was a fantastic deal - huge apartment, amazingly comfortable bed, clean, modern...everything I needed and more. I didn't get to take advantage of the pool or hot tub since I was checking out promptly the next morning and attending a Speech Pathology Australia workshop, but it looked amazing. Just for fun, I checked to see what the cost would be for Friday night and it was $300...a heck of a lot more than my night cost! 

The reason for my trip to the Gold Coast was to attend two workshops: "An update on research on word retrieval impairments and their treatment" and "A journey through NARNIA: Integrating verbs, sentences and discourse in aphasia therapy". Fascinating, right? The topics were actually really interesting, but two days of sitting through 7.5 hours a day of pretty heavy stuff was extremely exhausting. The weather on Friday was also quite nasty...there was torrential rain, flooding, dangerous conditions. This led to me spending Friday night on the Gold Coast with Bruce, while my friend (and Bruce's partner) Jules and their two kids and my friend Lisa remained stranded on the Sunshine Coast. Bruce cooked us up some spag bol and we watched Anchorman 2 and made the best of the situation. I woke up early Saturday morning for my second workshop and Bruce was already gone as he had to drive to Brisbane to get an early flight out to Canberra. Luckily, the weather had done a complete 180 and it was sunny and bright with a beautiful blue sky. This meant Lisa, Jules and the kids could safely drive down to the Gold Coast.

After the workshop, I was reunited with my good friend Billy T! I thought he might be too cool and grown up to want to hang out, but I was greeted with a lovely hug. We rolled around on the floor a bunch and I was a fire girl tickle monster...completely logical, obviously. I also got to spend some time with his adorable little sis, Brooke. I hadn't seen Brooke since last August when she was only about 8 months old. There was a bit of a difference this time! On Sunday we hit up mini golf for Billy's first time. He loved it, but wasn't expecting his ball to disappear at the last hole, so there were a few tears...but all was well in the end.

We all parted ways Sunday and I headed to Brisbane. I had decided since I was coming to Qld anyway, I should probably spend some time at the university. It was great to see my advisor in person...we spent most of our time bonding over cats. I also submitted my ethics application - literally over 1000 pages with the application itself, the aphasia friendly info and consent forms for two studies, the info and consent forms for speech pathologists and communication partners, and the interview topic guides for all three groups, with one original and 15 copies of each document. Sorry trees :( I spent three full days at the university and quite enjoyed myself. Tomorrow is my last day in Brisbane and then back to South Australia! I anticipate another trip to Brisbane in November to present at one or maybe even two conferences and to have my first PhD milestone - confirmation. This is when they decide if I have done enough work to continue the PhD. It's 'due' in January but I'm hoping to get it done a little early so I can relax and enjoy a visit from Ronan and Adam.