:P Been feeling tired and under the weather over the past week, to the point where I just wanted to crawl under the bed and STAY there. Its so nice and dark, and warm...Its kind of worrying when you think like that, so I kind of took it easy over the last few days i.e. no experiments. The downside of that it will mean going in on weekends, but oh well, it was worth it.

Thursday I had a high school visit as part of the Melbourne Access Program. It was nice to get out of the lab, and it was a really nice day. It was one of those visits though where Murphy's law reined supreme - no one knew what was going on, because the teacher who had organised the visit wasn't there, and the teacher who was there had no idea what was going on. The classic thing was when we had other students not part of the program turning up. We would ask them if they were MAP students or not - the blank looks they gave you in return were classic :) Personally, I think we don't get enough time to speak to the students, but its hard to ask them to miss more than one class.

hee hee, Friday was a road trip to Geelong! A perfect solution to not working :) though it had a work related reason for it - we i.e. BAMBII were checking out the place to see if it would be good for the retreat. It helped a lot as it was a beautiful day to go on a road trip. For me, it was also a trip with a lot of "first times". That trip was the first time I'd driven to Geelong; the first time I'd driven the departmental car (which is a big station wagon type of car - totally different to the kind of car I have); the first time I'd driven a car where the controls for the radio are on the steering wheel (which gives me control of the music!) the first time I've have nearly smashed a car in the Bio21 Institute car park (it was very close, I was still getting used to the car); the first time I'd driven on CityLink; the first time I'd had to go on a road trip with Ryan and Chris...that's all I can think of at the moment.

I have to give credit to Ryan, because he's not a bad navigator - if I'm driving I need very precise instructions and we didn't really get lost - I only missed one turn off on the way, but it was ok, because we were pretty much in Geelong at that point, and we could go along the residentual streets instead of the main road. But I bet you're thinking, you're can't get lost going to Geelong - its pretty much a straight line from Melbourne! Also credit for Chris - some people are horrible back seat drivers, and thankfully, he's not one of them. It would've made driving stressful otherwise!

The verdict is that the place we had in mind is in fact very nice, although there was a moment where that wasn't the case, where we walked into the "conference room" of the motel, which was so small and would definetely not be able to fit all the people going on the retreat. But we found the right conference room, so it was ok! Its close to the pier (within walking distance), which I had been to before, as I went to the Smorgy's restuarant that is there. It was such a nice day that I didn't want to head back to Melbourne, but I had a lab meeting *sigh*

After lab meeting though - Brett, Roza and I went to have ice cream. It was good to relax/laugh/talk at the end of the week.

Saturday was Maria's birthday party - had a shock at the start when I turned up to the nearly empty bar and couldn't see Maria! Thankfully, some of her other friends were there, so at least I knew I was in the right place. The bar, 6 links, was quite nice - bigger than your typical bar, so there's plenty of space and chairs to sit. Not enough 80's music though. The thing I liked the most about it though was the fact it was non smoking - I don't have to worry about dying from passive smoking anymore! They also had these funny cards, which can be used as a way to pick up someone. You just fill it out and give it to the person of interest. Its a more effective way of being heard over the music! Roxanne got one *lol* It was great to catch up with the others, some of whom I hadn't seen for a couple of months. After the bar, we went for munchies at KFC then headed home. However, because Despina and her sister had to arrive home together because her sister was on a secret date, Despina and I had to wait for her to meet up with us. Thankfully, the Pancake Parlour near us is open 24 hours, so we could go there and wait. It was absolute torture, because we had already gone to KFC earlier for munchies, then there were all those yummy pancakes *sigh* I had to settle with a very disappointing hot chocolate :( Was getting tired though, it was way past my bedtime...hopefully the secret date had gone well.

Which in hindsight, it probably wasn't a good idea to go to the lab and do an experiment today. Oh well. Off to bed with me I think :)