48 hours in the life

Man I love weekends.

SInce my shoulder is cactus I didn't have anything planned this weekend, in particular, nothing sporty. Which was sort of a nice change! Usually I play soccer on Sat morning and Sun night, and sometimes do a long run on Sun morning as well.

Not this weekend! I slept in. There is nothing better than being in nmy bed until the room is full of sunshine and the night chill has gone away. I can tell spring is getting closer, cause it's sunny earlier, which is such a good thing. I love spring. Even though it probably won't be warm in Canberra for another 2 months.

I did some cleaning, watched the olympics, read (currently reading 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' by John le Carre), went to the movies (THe Bank Job - so good!), went to a 1 year old's bday party, and cheered on my sun night soccer team in the semifinals for this season.

All in all a good weekend.

Which is good - cause next weekend I'll be travelling to Scotland for work and the following weekend I'll be recovering from my trip to Scotland.

Did I mention I was going to Scotland? :) I'll be in Aberdeen from 31 August to 2 Sep. The flight from Melbourne to London is 23 hours, 40 minutes. Holy guacamole. That ought to be a good time.

Stupid bike!

I'm sure the title of this post should actually be Stupid Katie... but I'm preferring to blame my current ills on the bike.

On Saturday morning I dislocated my left shoulder.

OUCH. OUCH. OUCH. OUCH. OUCH.

I was trying out my new cleats and pedals (racing cleats, that are attached to the bike) and lost my balance. I stopped my fall with my left arm, in the locked position, which dislocated my shoulder.

I've been drugged up the last few days since the doctor popped it back in. It is just like the movies - the doctor distracting me so that he can put me into a ridiculous amount of pain to get the shoulder back in place.

Luckily the olympics are on, so I've not ben bored on the couch, however 2 days straight is all I can take of Seven's coverage. Not comparable to NBC's repackaging of the olympics, and we're only 2 hours ahead of Beijing! I miss Bob Costas, Bart Conner's insightful gymnastics commentary, and John William's olympic music. In fact, I miss commentators that actually know what they are talking about. Aussies are good at swimming, and sailing, and traiathlon... but the commentators for the other sports sound like me - clueless.


Anyway, what is it they say about falling off a horse??? Not sure I'll be on the bike anytime soon though.

Syd-a-ney for the weekend

Last weekend I took a road trip up to Sydney. No one here actually just says Sydney though - it's Syderney, Sydainey, , Sydnay, or something equally mocking.



I drove up in my new car. Isn't it pretty and red? (Apologies to Toyota..."oh what a feeling!")




I went up to Sydney with 2 friends to run in the City 2 Surf, a 14K road race with 70,000 people - it's run each year from Hyde Park in the City to Bondi Beach. F and I stayed in Bondi and I can't tell you how great it was to reach the finish line and know that my hotel room was literally 500 feet away! It was a bloody hard race, but I ran the whole thing, even crazy Heartbreak Hill, which is about 2X as long as Cardiac Hill in the Peachtree. Oy. After the run we had fish and chips and beer and then coffee and mudcake. Just about the most perfect race recovery food I can imagine.



The race was on a Sunday so we took Monday off and we just bummed around Sydney - had breakfast on the beach in Bondi, went to the Australian Museum, and had lunch at a vegetarian yum cha place called Bodhi. Yummo!

The drive back to Canberra was okay - aside from legs cramping from sitting still for 3 hours, about an hour out of Canberra the temperature plummeted back to its normal freezing-ness. That weekend we were away, the high in Sydney was 15C (which was a cold spell for them) and the high in Canberra was 7C with sleet. So much fun in freezing arse Canberra.

Some of the crazy animals that used to exist in Australia...

The marsupial lion (most closely related to a kangaroo):


The Diprotodon (most closely related to a wombat and a koala):


And here is a wombat(stuffed for your viewing pleasure) I still haven't seen a live one in real life!: