On papers, skates, and cars

August was going to be awesome. I had a whole large empty month, and only three papers to write. And now, I have one week left in August, several meetings, two papers to review, some calculations to work through, a student thesis to read, one final report and one preliminary report to write, as well as those original three papers, still unfinished, unwritten.

What happened?

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I went ice skating with Jonathan on Saturday for the first time since July. There are only two ice rinks in Melbourne. Jonathan has been to both, and he prefers the small one. He and I went to the small one on Saturday. Their rental skates are hard blue plastic, really difficult to skate in. I'm going to have to buy my own skates if I want to keep up this ice skating hobby. (Do I want to keep it up? It's a lot more expensive here.) (But it gives me something fun I can do with Jonathan.) (So yes, I guess I'll keep it up. But I need to buy my own skates.)

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Tim thinks we should not buy a car, even when we move permanently. If we want to get out of the city, we can rent a car. And meanwhile, around town, we bike or take public transit. It's a win. We get more exercise walking and biking. We pollute less. We save money on car maintenance costs and parking in the city.

On the other hand, there are a few things that become much more annoying without a car, such as shopping. Since you drag all your goods home in a cart or on your back, you become less inclined to stock up on sales. You have to go shopping more frequently. And sometimes, the shopping walk is just really painful.

Sunday morning I woke up with a bad migraine and a head cold. Without a car, it would have been a 15 minute walk to the chemist shop to buy medicine, then a 15 minute walk back. In the end, Tim walked there for me, and bought the medicine, and I am grateful to him. It would have been five minutes with a car.

So buy a car? Or buy the cold medicine while you are still healthy so you can stay in bed when the cold hits you.

I guess Tim is convincing me -- I'm leaning towards going without the car. But that means it is going to be a crazy life here, my friends.

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And now back to writing those papers....