So today was pretty blooming exciting for a few reasons.

1. I had coffee and cake before work with the wonderful Anne M. This will perhaps be our last coffee before she leaves to live in Brisbane ON MONDAY. I will miss her. Still we are going out for a farewell dinner on Saturday night as well with dear Jinx and Karen.

2. I got the letter offering me the Early Career Research Fellowship. This is an internal grant that will buy me out of approximately half my workload for two years starting June 2010. The plan in a nutshell is to continue researching and writing about the television mockumentary (journal articles, full book proposal), co-supervise a Masters by research student (given I have no supervision experience AT ALL), convene a Special Interest Research Group “Cultural Studies and Education” which belongs to the newly formed CQUniversity Research Centre – “Learning and Teaching Education Research Centre” (LTERC), prepare a grant application for once the Fellowship finishes in 2012.

At coffee Anne had said, “Make sure you let me know how you go with the application”. So the phone conversation within five minutes of me opening the letter went like this:

Anne: “Hello Anne speaking”
Wendy: (Shouting excitedly) “I got the thing!!!!”
Anne: (short pause of mystified silence while she wondered no doubt if this was a new form of telemarketing….)
Wendy: “It’s Wendy…..!!!”
Anne: “Oh Congratulations….”etc etc.

I probably should have said who I was first.

3. And then to absolutely top off the day, my Silverchair Diorama sheet music album arrived in the post and I was finally able to play “After All These Years”. The key changes are amazing, unexpected, and very beautiful. It’s too high for me to sing along sadly, but I can pretend along in my head.

All this meant that the minor plague of ants in the kitchen sink didn’t really bother me on my arrival home.

I’m exhausted now though. It’s tiring being happy all day.