Moggie Madness

Earlier in the year, we were fortunate to escape to the tropics during winter. Cairns is a place I’ve always wanted to visit but the dreadful summers that we got in central Queensland as a child was enough to put me off going up that far for my summer vacation. But the winter is a perfect time to visit the tropical north - I guess the tour operators have that well and truly sussed since that’s when all their prices go up.We were driving from Brisbane to Airlie Beach in one day, staying there for a few days and then heading up to Cairns from there. For the uninitiated, it’s around 2000km to Cairns….add in the stopover at Airlie Beach and you’re looking at almost 4500km round trip and around 20 hrs driving time. It’s probably not something I will be keen to do again in a hurry but I can imagine it would have been a lot worse with furry (or non-furry) kids on board.

The morning we left Cairns to come home, it occurred to me that while we had some wonderful shots of the region and the various wildlife that we found (mostly in parks), I hadn’t taken a photo of the sunrise or sunset. This is something I try to do when I’m on holidays, particularly if the clouds and sunlight mixture is just right and you get that lovely sprinkle of pinks, oranges and reds through the sky.

So zooming along the highway at 100kph, I decided to take a few shots. The top shot is sunrise just outside of Cairns at around 5:30am….I forget the name of the mountain but if it follows the naming convention of most things Australian (that is, named in the most obvious fashion possible), it will probably be called Mt Pyramid or something like that. The next shot I took around 12 hrs later as we were drawing closer to our stop for the night in Rockhampton.

I got myself a camera as a birthday present a few years ago - it coincided with a research project for my undergrad degree so I felt the expense was easily justified. Little was I to know that the model I got (a silver Panasonic Lumix) was about to get a revamp - more compact but with the same functionality - and be cut in price by half in little under a year. Nevermind, you win some, you lose some.

Anyway, it occurred to me recently that reading the instructional manual may be somewhat beneficial if I wanted to get some half decent shots. Lo and behold, the camera has a macro function! Who would have thought that was what the little flower icon meant? So I have been playing around with the macro function to see whether it actually makes any difference.

So I took a closeup shot of Rosie’s paw, she was most obliging and actually stayed still and didn’t try to claw the lens. Ironically, that is also the paw that goes tap, tap, tap on my nose in the middle of the night when she wants something. She curls herself around my head on top of the pillow, waits for the slightest little movement of my eyelids to signify I’m in a light sleep and taps me ever so gently on the nose.

It can get annoying but I prefer her method to Mojo’s - if he wants something, he will simply howl. Failing that, he will claw my toe - having found that is one of my more sensitive spots.

I prefer to say “well cared for”.

Today I stopped by PetWise which has just opened in Underwood to have a look for a few things for the moggies. With the summer months upon us already, I thought it was time to swap out the furry sheepskin from the cat park entry for something a little less warm. I was thinking of a small polar fleece pet blanket but found something even better! It’s called a pet futon and as you can see, it fits snugly into the exit box in the cat park.

Mojo and Rosie were watching (with great amusement I’m sure) as I struggled to push it out the cat flap and work it into position through the bars of the cat park. They claim to be warm in winter and cool in summer so hopefully it will be a good all year round solution for their favourite snuggle spot.

And here they are, outside in their cat park/palace/human free area.

Surprisingly they share the area quite well, although there have been the odd standoffs at the cat flap if one wants to come in and the other wants to go out.

Part of the Carnival of the Cats, hosted 21 October 2007 by Bad Kitty Cats Journal.

Okay so I have been studying for a long time now and I have gotten pretty good at polishing off assignments in a short space of time - providing I have all the information at hand, which I usually do. You see at the beginning of the semester, I feel all gung ho about studying and I dutifully go to the library, research the available topics, decide on which one works best for me (based on personal interest and availability of material), sign up for my topic and get all the information I need to write the essay. I write out an outline, put in dot points and my sources and then…..

….I LEAVE it till the last minute to write the actual assignment!! I do this unfailingly EVERY SINGLE TIME! Why do I do this to myself???

You see dear readers, as I am typing out this little blog post about my problem with procrastination, my big fat essay on cyanobacteria and waterways is sitting open in another window. Despite the fact that it is due tomorrow, I’m instead in my blog writing about why I’m NOT writing my assignment. God is there no help for me? LMAO

It’s funny really. After so many years of not having enough hours in the day to study, work and keep up with my social life, I have grown accustomed to doing assignments at the last minute. It’s now to the point where unless I feel truly panicked that I won’t get it done in time - I just can’t think of anything to write! Fortunately, the panic is starting to set in now, so hopefully after I have finished this post, I can get back to the assignment and finish the damn thing. But I am willing to lay bets on it, that even if I have *most* of it done by dinner time, I will set it aside and do it in the few hours I have available before I go to work tomorrow at lunch time.

Well the summer storm season seems to have come a little early this year - not that I am in any way complaining! I’ve spent the last few days trying to capture an elusive photo of a lightning strike to no avail. Fortunately it seems the storms will be hanging around for a while yet, so hopefully I will get one eventually.

The onset of summer also means that my year as a post-graduate student is drawing to a close. Hooray! I enjoy studying but I am always eternally grateful to see the back of it for a while. My family jokes that I will be the eternal student in the family - so far I have completed two undergraduate degrees and soon to finish off a graduate certificate which is a prelude to a masters degree. I was planning on continuing the masters next year but I think I will give it a break for a while and concentrate on my other immediate life goals - finish landscaping, get another job and shed a few (okay many!) pounds.

Mojo enjoys watching the storms with me….we usually sit at the front door and watch them roll over, until the point where the rain comes lashing in through the front door and he heads for drier territory. One of these days I will get a photo of my fellow storm watcher in action…it seems he feels the best view is obtained from the top of the flyscreen.