Back in Melbourne for some winter loving

Okay, so I've arrived back in Melbourne, but I'll be back in Iceland in September and October. July was spent: hosting visiting LFG scholar Ash Asudeh in Reykjavik (which turned out even better than I had hoped!), travelling to Cambridge to present at the LFG conference (which went really well, Mary Dalrymple spent ages with me working out how to formalise what I said in my talk, and I met a guy who had actually met Isaac Asimov, and written to Robert Heinlein!), met up with friends in Copenhagen (I have a new favourite saying: "Hvor det er hjerterom er det husrom" - 'Where there's room in your heart, there's room in your home' - I stayed in a 3 bedroom flat with a family of 5! Thanks Anne and family!), visited the butterfly enclosure and tried out the (heavenly) foot massage machine in Changi, and went snowboarding at Perisher in NSW for a week. I had the best instructors, each day they said, "What do you want to work on today?" So I have now ticked off everything that was on my list: bumps, jumps, tricks and t-bars :) I officially feel comfortable on a snowboard, and can't wait to get up to Buller to practice on some harder runs - Perisher is 60% blue :/

My first priority back in Melbourne (apart from finishing some writeups of conference papers and getting prepared for the next round of fieldwork in September) is to get insulation in the house - happily the government is offering $1,600 rebates for exactly this. Next priority is to get the hot water system, and the bathroom in general, fixed, and happily the government is offering rebates on solar hot water systems at the moment! #3 priority is rain water tanks, and I hope the government rebates for them are still in effect. Yay for good timing of rebates!