Dramatis persona*

helenhead Helen Chick

I've always wanted a bumper sticker that said "I'm a female, LDS/Mormon, Scout leading, geocaching, piano-playing, bicycling, mathematics educator with a PhD in maths ... and I VOTE"!

I think this makes me a minority group of cardinality 1!

* Since there's only one of me and "personae" is plural (I think), I've gone with dramatis persona.
January 2012
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Running out of time

I have just realised that I have only two days of proper annual leave left (I timed it so that this brings my old job to a conclusion the day before I start my new job). The scary thing about this realisation is that I have a list of things I want to do in that […]

Islands in the sun

A few days after I arrived back from New Zealand I decided to buy a kayak, since I live not far from a bay on the river.

The next day I managed to run it into my garage door.

Dummkopf.

This was due to not waiting for the automatic roller to reach the fully open state (and this, in […]

Here be dragons

There is a geocache up on the mountain that is just a tad difficult to get to, located, as it is, in a cave halfway down a sandstone cliff. Although someone with some rockclimbing skill could manage it without any special equipment (and there are a few notorious amusing stories about people contriving to get ladders […]

12 of 12, January 2012

Well, this month’s 12 of 12 requires a little bit of explanation.

For those of you familiar with my 12 of 12 tradition, you know what to expect, except that this month there’s a whole bunch of extra story and photos to tell and show, covering the 12th and the days surrounding it, since the 12th fell […]

Lake Waikareiti

With the great Lake Waikaremoana expedition completed, and a brief overnight return to civilisation, the next day we were ready to set off on a second expedition: three days at Lake Waikareiti. This lovely lake—almost 4km in length—is about a 5km walk from Lake Waikaremoana, and has a hut at its further end which you reach […]

Lake Waikaremoana hike, day 5

Ann, Victoria and I were glad we’d gone for our view-seeking late afternoon jaunt yesterday because when we woke up this morning it was to find the summit shrouded in mist and the lake barely visible below us. The mist burned off as the day progressed, but it made for interesting effects as we looked out […]

Lake Waikaremoana hike, day 4

With patches of blue appearing in the morning sky some of us were confident enough of improved weather conditions to pack rather than wear our rain gear before setting off for the day’s big climb. It began moderately strenuously, the track undulating its way through lush damp rainforest, which glistened in the increasingly frequent patches of […]

Lake Waikaremoana hike, day 3

The rain that arrived yesterday afternoon continued overnight and into the morning. I always find it a bit depressing to hear the sound of rain on the roof when I wake up the morning (not that I’d actually slept very well—the sand-fly bites were still doing their midnight itch-and-overheat-my-feet thing), because you know it’s going to […]

Lake Waikaremoana hike, day 2

Day 2 was a leisurely day, with the 6km journey between huts completed before lunch (just how much before depended on age, fitness levels, number of stops taken, and support of the idea of “leisurely”). It was overcast for most of the day, which meant “flat” and subdued lighting conditions for photography, but the rainforest was […]

Lake Waikaremoana hike, day 1

One of my Uni of Melbourne work friends likes to go hiking to wonderful places with some long-time friends from her own uni student days along with other invited tag-alongs. I’ve been on one of Ann’s trips in the past, to the lighthouse at Wilson’s Promontory, but circumstances had conspired to prevent me being able to […]