Work - Tamsin spends a lot of time at her work loving her job and I spend a lot of time at my work not much caring for mine.
PhDs - We both got our examiners' reports back a month or so ago. Tamsin has since had an oral defence and passed with no trouble. My reports were good and I won't be having an oral exam.
Yay me.
Driving tests - Speaking of passing with flying colours, we both passed our driving tests. It was so easy, I actually ran over a guy in a wheelchair crossing the street and did a drive-by shooting of a rival gang house and still managed to get it.
Beach - we have been there swimming and lazing about a few times.
Softball - I have started playing in a work league and am tearing it up when I don't have to unexpectedly miss it because I have to work late.
Cricket - I am still playing a bit of cricket, although the racism is really starting to get me. Those Indians are always trying to keep the white man down.
Suicide watch - last Sunday our downstairs neighbour tried to commit suicide by taking a bottle of sleeping pills for the second time since we've been here. Last time she was back at home within 12 hours, this time it was about 18, which tells you the standard of health care here if you don't have insurance.
Canyon - we have been walking in the evenings in the canyon behind our place. People say to watch out for rattlesnakes, but the real danger is baby opossums. I was approaching a small bridge when one appeared on the other side. A stand-off ensued but was resolved when I ran away squealing like a little girl.
90210 - probably the most exciting news is that Beverly Hills 90210 is back on TV here. Brenda and Kelly are back on it and I hear they tried to get the guy who played Steve Sanders but he apparently has senile dementia and troubles remaining continent.
A large helping of desert and a run in with the law - A couple of weekends ago was Labor Day so we went to Anza-Borrego Park, which is very much in the desert, with Anna (who has just come over from the Chch med school) and her husband Tom. I like the desert, but to get there we had to go via Julian. I've made my feelings known on this town in a previous post. So about ten minutes past Julian I had my first run in with the law as I was doing 71 in a 55 zone that I thought was 65. It was surprisingly similar to getting pulled over in New Zealand in that he never shot us once. Fortunately, he saw Tamsin's SDSU faculty parking pass in the window and seeing as that's where he went to university, he didn't give me a ticket. It also didn't hurt that someone went flying past us and he decided he would rather catch them so he took off.
Once that excitement was over, we arrived at the Park and decided upon our departure from the air conditioned car that maybe we wouldn't walk too far. Turns out its hot in the desert. So we went for a look around then went further inland to the Salton Sea, which is a massive salt water lake that was formed in 1905 when the Colorado River burst a dam and flooded the salt pan. It is now the site of one of America's worst ecological disasters. Someone made a documentary about it, with the tagline "Once known as the “California Riviera”, the Salton Sea is now called one of America’s worst ecological disasters: a fetid, stagnant, salty lake, coughing up dead fish and birds by the thousands." Sounds picturesque. We visited a place called Salton City, which is by far the strangest place I've ever been to. They had put in all the streets for a small city (have a look at this map. Less than 1000 people live in in the place) but no-one ever really turned up. If it ever had a heyday then it would qualify for ghost town status, but because it never got going I would classify it as an example of disastrous town planning.
The "marina" at Salton City.
Looking over the marina towards the mountains
The aforementioned dead fish. Apparently agricultural runoff is killing them.
Despite the fact that the fish are dying, Salton Sea is supposed to be a great place for bird-watching (if you're in to that, you twitching freak) with almost 400 different bird species living on the lake. We only saw one species - the majestic pelican.
A flotilla of pelicans and an idea of how big the Sea is.
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