Ben and Ani in Dubbo!

Sorry for the lack of new postings lately – it’s been a bit busy lately. There was Ben’s visit, revising/submitting a lynx chapter, training a student in the lab, moving again, getting Tamara to answer all the questions I realized I had after 2 weeks alone in the lab – all in the past week. So we’ll get to all these things, but we’ll start with the most important, first: Ben!!

Four weeks and two days (no, I’m not counting) after he left me here in Dubbo, Ben finally had a chance to get back out for a visit. He had gotten his first paper to a stage his advisor was comfortable with, so Dr. Phil said “Why don’t you go finish writing out in Dubbo.” So Ben grabbed Ani, hopped in the car, and drove to me! He arrived last Wednesday night and left Monday morning, so we had a good long visit together.

The first day he came out to the zoo with me, and he pretended to write while I pretended to work, but the rest of the time we just played. And tried to stay cool. We did a lot of pinkie-hand-holding – it was just too hot to have any more of our bodies touching. And the killer part was that Tamara’s place doesn’t have A/C. So we did a lot of walks to the river with Ani so we could at least get wet, if not quite cool.


We ate late dinners out on the back patio, enjoying that time of day when it starts to get cooler and the sky gets pretty and time slows down a little.

And we shared the house with 2 cats, so that kept Ani a little distracted from the heat. Mr. Underwear couldn’t get over the fact that Ani and the cats were not at each other’s throats the whole time. Merrick was not thrilled about having Ani there, but Scrappy had no qualms about it.