The Townsville Trip.

In a few hours I'll make my weekly migration down to Townsville. The car's loaded with all the stuff I'll need down there, my books, my laptop, my clothes. I've got my staple Townsville diet of two minute noodles, despite my naturopath wife saying I'd get more nutritional value from eating the boxes they come in.

I've downloaded some podcasts of my political science lectures to listen to on the drive down, though I'm not sure if that's really a good way to keep me alert, the text book puts me to sleep faster than chloroform. The FM radio reception is pretty bad after
Tully and I end up listening to ABC local radio. It's fine for the most part, but my eyes tend to glaze over when listening to some of the  phone-in callers. If I've had a few lunchtime drinkies, I tend to go and have an afternoon nap, not ring the national radio station to tell the world my rambling thoughts on the government's latest immigration policy.

I do text them though. Well, I did it once. They had a news headline competition a few weeks ago and I entered. You had to produce a headline to go with a photo they'd found of some Chinese park keepers trying to fix up a patch of yellowed grass by spraying it with green paint. I scoffed at the feeble attempts of others: "Chinese park keepers try to fix up a patch of yellowed grass by spraying it with green paint" isn't a headline! Our broadsheet papers are getting smaller, not bigger; you'd need the arm span of an orang-outang to read a paper with that headline. My headline was smaller, neater and more succinct, "Reds paint the town green." I didn't win, the answers all go into a hat and mine wasn't pulled out. Still, I don't want to be seen as a sore loser, well done and congratulations to Dave from Kickatinalong with his winning headline "Chinese park keepers trying to fix up a patch of yellowed grass by spraying it with green paint."

This week I've decided to pack a pair of socks to wear in the library. It gets very cold in there and my toes freeze, I've tried warming them under the hand dryer in the gents but I'm not as flexible as I once was and by the time I've got a foot up high enough the dryer's stopped. I did worry how I'd look wandering around in my socks, but figured that since most of the students on campus take one look at me and assume I'm a staff member, it wouldn't matter if they now take one look and assume I'm an eccentric staff member with a sock fetish.