Connected

Tonight's the night, I am connected again. I can now catch up on those emails I haven't been able to lately. I have had a holiday from writing my blog and miss that, although I got some other things done. 

Sarah quietly slipped me a DVD on the weekend and I watched that Tuesday night. Wow what a movie, she knows me so well and knew this would be my sort of movie. August Rush is the story of a boy seeking to find his family, a love story and a story of faith all tied together with music. Special music that touches the soul. Enough said, easy to spoil a movie by telling you too much about it, suffice to say I recommend it for when you have some alone time to spare. 

Another tick or two off the to do list, I got my thesis off to be hard bound and copies posted out to my research participants. My thesis has been a  bit of a mission. Conducting the research and writing this, even all the reading, was not a drama. Getting said thesis marked and back from the university was. It got lost in the system somehow, markers disagreed on some contentious aspects and so the moderation process kicked in. It has taken from early January until mid October, lots of calls, emails and apologies from the university for me to have to change one word in the abstract. Well, changing the word meant changing the sentence, no worries I can do that. There were also a couple of apostrophes missing, now found. I hope to have my grade soon and the piece of paper I should have had in April. 

I laughed when I read my weekend horoscope. It said time to do some spring cleaning, to sort out and get rid of the old stuff that was holding me back. I read this after I had cleaned out my boxes and boxes of study stuff that's been renting a space in my head and the study. It's empowering to send all I won't need again to be recycled, bags of paper. It was also good to find some treasures amongst the dross, photos I thought I had lost jumbled in with research reports. 

I am also closer to returning to the Middle East, the UAE to be more precise. The job interview went well, other doors are opening and I have put out to the universe that traveling is the plan for 2009. Watch this space, more travel stories to come I suspect. 

The photo is of Keri and Helen connecting on our weekend together. Amazing how connected we all felt after five months of being back in the real world, back to our old lives. Strong friendships build out of challenging and enlightening times together, united by our common philosophies and passions. The next get together is in the pipeline, Taranaki in the summer. Sounds good to me.