Almost 2 years

Ryan turns 2 on Easter Sunday. He has a remarkable number of clear words now - it must be close to 200. He now tells us what to do! "Mummy sit", "Daddy drive", "open fridge", "over the bridge"

It seems from some web trawling that my old boss has severed his ties with ANU. I wonder how the newer personnel are working out. Seems most of the women have left! I don't really miss that place apart from them.

I've been uploading some photos from France. It's been good to look at some of the trips and walks we did again. Pat may go to Sophia and Brest in June but I don't think I fancy flying 24 hours with Ryan.

Back 1 year

We've been back in Aus 1 year this month. It's flown by with the baby boy arriving in April.

I made contact with a colleague from Sydney Uni. He's gone to Arizona to work with another ex-colleague. Makes me *start* to think about working again or at least start getting my brain back in some shape. How do you start to catch up with academic reading? It's necessary to pick a pretty narrow topic, of real interest of course, then go to it. However, it's not that easy to get hold of some articles if you aren't in an institution with subscriptions to journals.

Better go. It's late on Christmas Eve. Handel's Messiah is playing on the TV and the boy is peacefully asleep (until he wakes between 2 and 4 am for a quick liquid snack). Long day tomorrow driving to the rels for Christmas lunch.