morsla | Thursday in the park...

(written offline yesterday afternoon)

I shared my lunch with a family of magpies today.

Sometimes, having four hours between classes can be a drag. A few weeks ago the rain forced me indoors, only to find that all the rest of Deakin's student population were also hiding in the library. There aren't many "student" buildings here - lots of offices and classrooms, but little in the way of student lounges or common rooms. When it's cold, wet or both, finding a spare seat in the library is a little like parking a car in a busy shopping centre.

Today things have worked the way they were supposed to. Clear skies, warm sunlight and lots of open space to stretch out in. I took myself, my lunch and my laptop down to the creek, and set up camp on a park bench. I still have two hours left in my break, but I've already soaked up more sunlight than I've seen in the past fortnight. It's something I've needed... for a while, I was wondering if my eternal monitor-lit twilight would end up giving me Ricketts' disease, from all those days without seeing the sun.

Now it's time to work. I've decided against my original plan for the next assessment piece... I'm saving the idea (a feature article on geoscience education) for next semester, so I can try to ask lots of questions at the Australian Earth Sciences Convention. (Mental note: remember to email the organisers and volunteer for any and all dogsbody/media jobs they might have).

Instead, I'll write about the lure of the flames... how and why people exercise their inner firebug, by twirling firesticks and poi. It's topical, and it gives me a chance to read Home of Poi articles while simultaneously doing research for uni. Multitasking may be an innate skill, but it also has plenty of room for opportunistic intervention...

I briefly stopped by the Edinburgh Gardens last night, mainly as an excuse to get out of the house and see people. Lots of people, lots of very complex manoeuvres with sticks and poi. Not a lot of people with their toys on fire, though - I was really hoping to find a whole lot of people twirling at once, instead of a one-at-a-time, step-up-to-the-stage sort of thing. Oh, and

virtual_munkee? Remember Bill, from our tiny group of Carlton Gardens firetwirlers all those years ago? He seems to be one of the organisers of the Edinburgh Gardens group now, and his firestaff moves are amazing. Makes me wish I'd kept practicing in those intervening years...