Another long abscence

Well, the last time that I posted, my wife had recently arrived and we were still settling in. Since then, I've been very busy with my research project. I've run a number of samples through the geomechanics lab and done some more field work. I have a lot of other things to talk about but many of them seem a bit silly and are mostly gaming related. Crystal and I are still making slow but steady progress in World or Warcraft. We'll soon be able to join the rest of our friends in end-game events.

I have recently sent several thank you cards to people who sent birthday or other cards or gifts. They are much appreciated, I'm just of the absent minded sort. So, several people, and you know who you are, should be looking for mail in the next couple of weeks.

Crystal has just submitted her application for a work permit, so we are hoping to get a positive response back soon. We ended up sending two large envelopes stuffed to bursting, containing evidence of our "partnership". The fact that we are married was not enough for INZ last time, so we have sent in letters from friends and family, as well as copies of our chatlogs and letters to each other as corroborating evidence. I don't think that they can dispute that we qualify as a partnership anymore.

I've applied for every descent scholarship that has come my way in the last few months. I tend to be limited due to my international status, but there are a few scholarship that I'm eligible for that other people aren't. Two of these would give us enough money to mostly pay rent and food, leaving whatever income that Crystal ends up with to pay her student loans. I can only hope that one of these will be approved.

I'm going to Australia in October for a conference. I still need to make the poster, but I have a grant for the travel costs. Crystal is going to help me with the poster design, once I get around to planning the content. I need to design another poster for the University competition as well. These are parts of my important task for the next few months.

I think I'll end this post here, since I'm busy with a number of other things as well today. Take care everyone, and I hope to talk to you soon.

Return to New Zealand

Well, I certainly haven't posted for awhile. I've been quite busy, and the shear number of things that I need to report make it difficult to put them all in one post. I'll just have to summarize. In early December I went home to visit my family for the holidays. Colorado was completely dumped on by several snow storms. on January 13, Crystal and I were married. I changed my airline ticket around to stay for another month with her. I moved back to Auckland at the end of February. Crystal followed in late March, and we are now living together happily. I hope to keep updates more frequent in the future. I'd like to start podcasting again, but the "day in the life" format doesn't seem to be working for me. This is hard cause I'm a really big fan of a lot of programs that promote that sort of journalism (ie "This American Life" from NPR, check it out). But I think that the life of a PhD student might lack a certain amount of interest required for that sort of a podcast. I may instead look at making a short weekly cast of my thoughts on the current games that I'm playing. Basically an audio form of the Slaved Articles that I should be posting on the Gameslave. I really need to get back to posting those.

Also, I hope to put some pictures up eventually, but I'm feeling pretty lazy right now.