Back in Canberra:

Being back in Baltimore was weird. Being at work, but not having a desk or an office or working email or, you know, anything to do other than the conference and distracting everyone else from their work, is a different experience. I guess in a way it's like I just started again, except that I actually know a lot of people.

Driving was not as good as I expected either. The roads were nice and wide, but once you've gotten used to 105 km/hr on narrow windy Australian roads, it's hard to keep to a lower speed on 295. And my rental car, while an automatic with power steering, was a boat and I had a hell of a time parking it.

However, it was great to not get any grief for pronouncing my r's or referring to chicken sandwiches rather than chicken burgers (though I had some support from another Aussie for my view on this one).

Canberra's been my home for the last 10 months and will be my home for the next nine months, and sometimes it's weird to be around people who don't recognise this. The US isn't home just because I was born there, and at the end of this time, I will have lived in Canberra almost as long as I lived in Laurel.

All griping aside (though I'll probably bitch more about the flights later), I really enjoyed my trip back. It was fantastic to see everyone that I did and I really do miss all my friends. And Mexican food, Dairy Queen, diners, bagels... I even managed to legally import some corn tortillas so I'm going to try to make chips. Mmm, fresh tortilla chips.

Back home:

I leave Saturday for my week in the US. I suspect it will be weird, home and not home at the same time. Will I be able to drive on the right? Will I have some sort of sensory overload from having more than four channels of TV? This will be different from the last return, because I've been here longer and spent less time with Americans while I'm here. Should be interesting anyway.

I've been thinking about what I want to do when I return for real. Finish my training program, obviously. But do I go back and get the engineering degree I've been contemplating? Or do I continue just doing the same job as an engineer for slightly less pay and without always understanding why I'm doing what I'm doing? I think if I go the hardware route, I need some formal training (not necessarily the whole degree, but some RF classes), but if I stick to mostly software I've picked up enough on my own.

And if I don't go to school, do I look at the position in Germany I've had my eye on? Am I willing to become a permanent expat? Not so sure about that one...

Ordinary Day:

In this beautiful life, there's always some sorrow.
And it's a double-edged knife, but there's always tomorrow.
It's up to you now if you sink or swim,
Just keep the faith that your ship will come in,
It's not so bad.

Losing weight:

I think I was pretty depressed a couple of weeks ago, and I lost another five pounds, which I've actually been able to keep off. I hate that the numbers on the scale are so important to me, more than the fact that I can run 4K easily now and am planning on upping to 6K, but so it goes.

The problem is that I'm not actually eating any healthier, just less. So I can still very happily eat a bag of jelly beans, it just will be all that I eat in a day, rather than adding in reasonably healthy food to that bag of jelly beans, like I did when I was heavier. I need to rewire my eating habits badly. I'm planning on eating piles of crap while I'm in DC (Mexican food, bagels, Twizzlers, Cheez-its!!), but once I get back here it'll be time to work on it.

Water polo:

I'm working on picking up random sports right now. So I played water polo this afternoon. It was killer, especially since we had no subs so it was 32 minutes of treading water, combined with short spurts of intense swimming. There was no blood in the water, though this one girl was definitely pretty aggressive and a couple of my teammates responded in kind (the ref can't really see that much anyway).

It was pretty fun, and a girl I met was interested in doing some training, at least swimming, so I think we'll start that once I get back from the US. I definitely don't have the eggbeater kick thing down, and swimming with my head out of the water is hard.

Oh yeah and we won, shockingly to me. The other team not only had subs and actual uniforms, but they were from ADFA, so not only were they very young, they were also fit, what with the fitness requirement and all.

The game was at the ADFA pool and I think the girl at the counter just assumed I went there. Not only did I show no ID or anything, but she directed me towards the ADFA team. Damnit, I am older than 18, even the guy in the liquor store agreed on that one (after he carded me).