An Update for the Sake of Updates

So, where to begin?

I guess the best place to begin would be the beginning.

The start.

Where it all began.

The problem with this beginning is that this beginning is the same as the present and will most likely be the same as the end.

This story has no beginning. It has no middle. It has no end in sight.

We are. We breathe. We eat. We sleep. We "work".

That is what we do. That is who we are.

No more. No less.

We are the epitome of boring. If they made a reality show about our lives it would be right up there with Big Brother - but without the "excitement". I guess that would make it like "the Mole" but without the inability to understand the rules. Like American Idol without the obnoxious singers and judges (read all the singers and judges). Like Celebrity Rehab without the celebrity or the rehab.

If you were to watch this faux reality show about our lives you would have seen us, when not working or sleeping or eating, watching the entire Road to Avonlea series.

A good bit of Canadian television history. That was fun but we soon ran out of episodes and now we mourn the loss of our friends, Mr. and Mrs. King, Felicity, Felix and Cecily, Sarah and of course Gus. Who could forget Gus?

We have yet to replace that excitement in our lives. We are sans DVD series to watch. We have a few movies that we haven't watched yet and Fraggle Rock but that's about it. Soon we will be left with only TV. I've grown to love Shortland Street but we've lost ESPN for some reason. One day it was just up and gone.

So we're left with just a few channels, most of which are news. News.

The news here is still only half an hour. When we first arrived it was an hour at 6 o'clock. Now, what with censorship and all, it is only half an hour. For some reason they've taken the bold step of making the second half of the 6 o'clock hour Rowan Atkinson tribute time. First it was Mr. Bean now it's the Thin Blue Line. We can only hope for Blackadder next.

I've found out that I'm able to sit for my oral exam for Fellowship in the American Academy of Optometry. This type of fellowship is gained from doing a whole lot of nothing. You have to collect mythical points (much like Pepsi points). When you reach the magic number of 50 you can either sit for your oral exam or cash them in for fabulous prizes. I debated between the exam and a nice beach towel. I chose the exam because the towel was pink.

You collect points by doing a variety of things. Mine were collected the easy way. Twenty for my graduate degree. Ten each for two published papers and the final ten for a case report I wrote about some poor kid going blind here. Mother's don't let yer kid's play rugby. It will maim and blind them as we're learning.

So the acceptance of my materials and the granting of this relative plethora of points means I need to get to Orlando in November.

How does one get to Orlando in November when one has no money? (No money? Don't you get paid? Yes we do but not very much and any money we have is owed to Mama and Tata who paid Uncle Sam so as to prevent their lovely daughter from being thrown in the hoosegow). Well how? Well the big idea is to have someone else pay for the ticket.

So we wrote an abstract that we're submitting to present at the big conference. If its accepted we can say "Hey work, pay for us(well probably not us, probably me) to go to Orlando where we'll talk about work we're doing."

So we wrote an abstract together. Well not together together. It went something like this:

Matthew writes the abstract. Nicole reads the abstract add, about, one, million, commas and says "its ok but..."

Matthew says "oh I know BUT. But its worth a shot."

Nicole says "I don't know about this."

Matthew considers Nicole's changes and adds some (but removes some of her dang commas) and then she reads it again and says "Ok I guess"

They send it to someone in their organization for approval.

He writes back and says its fine if you submit but here are some suggestions.

Matthew erases the first abstract and rewrites it completely. Nicole reads it and makes her changes (more substantial than commas but there were commas added. Lots of commas)

Matthew reads it again. Makes more changes and they finally agree on sending it in.

The limit of 2200 characters was a challenge.

It will be submitted for consideration tonight or tomorrow (depending on when the AAO adds our dang affiliations to the drop down list. They tell you to pick an affiliation from a list. We're not affiliated with any of them so you have to email them to add the affiliation to the list and then wait two days for them to do it. Why can't we just type our own affiliations in? Stoopid system).

So that took up a good amount of time. Much of it at night when I should have been sleeping.

So now that the conference abstract is done now it must be turned into a paper (to be submitted somewhere after the conference). I also have another paper I need to start on and four more I volunteered to be part of.

If only half of them get done and published I think it will have been a successful two years here.

When we're not doing the above we're going to movies. We go to the theatre here at least once a week if not twice. This is a big deal for us as we rarely went to movies back home (too expensive). Here the movies are less than $3 US. The theatre kind of stinks (the smell not the quality) and the guy who controls the volume must be deaf but its still fun. They have some new movies that come out the same time as in the US and some older ones that we're not entirely sure why they are playing (like Nightmare before Christmas).

So we're caught up on movies.

Got my first haircut here.

Had it done two weeks ago.

Nicole is still laughing at me.

We're anticipating the arrival of Nicole's parents in three weeks time. Should be fun. They'll be here during one work week so we'll only see them in the evening and will remain for one of our two fall break weeks. During that second week we'll probably go to a resort somewhere.

Then we're hoping my sister can come visit for a couple of weeks during her summer break from "teaching". Maybe others will come see us too.

We're quite homesick but making do. We're just at that "we've been gone for four months and have 6 to go" stage. Once we're over the half way hump and have had some visitors we'll be ok.

So after reading all that - would you watch our reality show? I wouldn't and I live the life. I swear its like we're 90 years old.