Not had an update for a while so thought it was about time!
At the end of June Sarah organised a trip to see an aussie comedian called Will Anderson in the city. Andy and I went along, had a couple of beers, and laughed hard. I think I should go along to more live comedy because it’s always funnier when you’re there than if you just see them on TV or something. Thanks Sarah!
We’ve been to see both Transformers 2 and the new Harry Potter movie. Transformers was pretty good, although I think the first one was a better film really…. Still enjoyed it. Harry Potter wasn’t bad either, there were some parts that had me laughing out loud. I still think that they aren’t very good movies if you haven’t read the books though – I’m sure there’s plenty of people who’d disagree with me!
In terms of work, things have been going quite well. Still slow, but getting there! I had to present an “interesting paper” for discussion with the group and people seemed to find it reasonably interesting so that went quite well. I’ve also now finally had my first paper officially published! Hoorah! I’ve put a link to it on the chemistry page of the site although you wont be able to read the full paper itself without a subscription to the journal. There should hopefully be another couple of papers on their way out soon so keep your eyes peeled 
I’m also starting to prepare for another trip down to Sydney to do some more neutron experiments with the new post-doc that has joined our group on a related project to mine, Paul Shaw. It’s going to be pretty intense having another week of experiments running 24/7 again, but we can’t complain – that length of time is really sought after for these kind of experiments so we’re pretty lucky.
It was also Ben’s birthday a couple of weeks ago. On the day itself we went to the pub and had a few drinks while the last State of Origin game was on (QUEEENSLAANDEEER!!!!) and then on the Friday night a large group of us went along to a mexican restaurant called Dos Amigos. They do absolutely fantastic food there and it’s really quite cheap. A few of us ended up at the Down-Under bar in the city afterwards which was good fun too….. I think….
Finally, and most importantly, 14 of us spent this weekend in a cottage down in Stanthorpe, which is about 3 hours south-west of Brisbane right near the border with New South Wales and inland. I have to say big thanks to Tilly for organising it all, and to Ben for being our chef & driving me there – it was an awesome weekend. We got to go around a maze, play mini-golf, visit a specialist apple orchard that sell all sorts of apple juices and ciders and stuff, do a whole bunch of wine tasting at 3 different vineyards (including buying some to drink back at the cottage), go to an olive grove and taste all the olives and oils, taste some fudge at a fudge shop, and taste some local cheeses too! The cottage we stayed in slept all 14 of us and had 2 big open log fires to keep us warm (got close to freezing at night!) and a good kitchen with a range where Ben cooked us a fantastic roast dinner on the Saturday night which we ate with the wine we’d bought that day. The other thing I will make comment on was the stars….. I have never in my life seen so many stars in the sky. The Milky Way was so clear and had so much structure to it, it was absolutely breathtaking. We saw loads of shooting stars, satellites, and an Iridium Flare I’ve put all my photos from our trip up here and there’s some panoramic ones over on the panoramic pictures page too.
That’s all for now. I will be working pretty hard over the next few weeks I think so might not be much to report. Hope everyone is good!