tomandzoe.com - live from the northside

2004 has been a very big year. Much has changed, but much remains the same.

For us the major positives to take from 2004 are:
a) the settling down of our professional lives: Zoe’s job situation is much better than last year (she is getting more involved and is obviously much respected amongst her colleagues); my project is much more under control (it’s on track, I’ve managed to get involved in a paper for the international renowned journal Ecology, BZoNQ - hello! ), and Zoe is also now at uni (and dominating);
b) the formation of a cool group of friends in Townsville and the maintainence of all of our old friends from ‘back home’, including Syndey, Wellingtion, Port Stephens, Gisborne etc…;
c) the visits of family and friends, including my family up from Syndey and out from England (hadn’t seen them for 10 years), coupled with a visit by us to NZ in January; and
d) the vast majority of friends and family managed to survive 2004, which is no small ask these days.

As for the negatives: well, they always seem a lot worse at the time, don’t they? These included:
a) major computer trouble early in the year for me;
b) concerns over the experimental design and statistical analysis of my PhD data (now largely resolved - thank goodness);
c) the death of my beloved aquarium while I was away in Adelaide;
d) the loss of every single baseball game of the season;
e) the awful build-up weather of Townsville; and, of course,
f) the loss of Townsville to the Bulldogs in the NRL Grand Final

Here’s our year in review:
Jan - Visit NZ to tour around North Island.
Feb - Back to Aus, where a computer virus causes devestation at uni, escape to Paluma with friends.
Mar - Data entry, a spot of fishing, Zoe becomes an Australian citizen.
April - Field work, lab-work and a major PhD work push in general. Purchased a chiller for my aquarium.
May - Italian festival in Ingham, Eurovision song contest, and autumn distractions.
June - Fran visits, I’m in the lab.
July - Zoe represents first session, Andy and Bob visit, Dunk visits.
Aug - The Athens Olympics
Sept - I visit Sydney (best surf of the year at One Mil Beach) and Adelaide, my aquarium dies. tomandzoe.com starts, Zoe posts her first entry.
Oct - Australia votes (poorly), Dave and Jenny visit Australia.
Nov - Amanda visits, I head to Cairns for a couple of conferences. Dive the coral spawing on maggie.
Dec - Indoor cricket team continues to own the competition, head to sydney to escape heat.

My new-year’s resolution this year was to not eat fast food (not including pizza, Subway and fish and chips). It was more an anti Burger King, Red Rooster, McDonalds stance than anything else. And I’ve managed to do it. I’ll be carrying the good form into the new year, cutting out Subway and keeping the deep fried chips to a minimum. In 2005 I’m aiming to do one session of Yoga each week. Anyone else got a resolution?

Just for the record, I’ve set it up so that Pete (my younger cousin who is currently working in London can post entries too, so don’t be surprised if you see whinging about cold weather for once), and timtim’s party was huge. I got home at 3:30am, Dunk spewed 3 times, timtim once, and a merry time was had by all (well, if not all, then at least Dunk, timtim and I).

Next Year’s going to be HUGE!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 29th, 2004 at 7:22 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.