It's hot, but at least we're not enjoying it

It has been hot here this week - 42°C the other day. So naturally we went for a 17-18 km cycle after work to run some errands and do shopping..... We've also thoroughly impressed people that Kiwis are freaking insane, by refusing to turn on the air-conditioning, even though we have what the folks here call "central air".

We made our first beer in the new house on the weekend - an American IPA - and figured out how to reconstruct our beer-fall without stairs.

And... for your viewing entertainment: a mole.

Huh, guess that's 30 years

It was my birthday on Saturday (but I've been too busy to mention it until now). We had a pretty quiet day, and will probably have a bit of a combined birthday and housewarming party once I've finished scrambling out from under this pile of corpses. The students on diagnostic duty last week made me some excellent lemon & poppyseed muffins, and I got an appropriately tasteful card from the department.

Mort got me an awesome T-shirt, and pretty much everyone in the VDL wants one, now. The great part is that most people read the top couple of points, see that they're consistent with expected labels, and stop reading until they see me later in the day and realise how awesome the shirt really is. I know, I'm a geek.

In our current mission to learn some Mexican cooking, our grocery shopping has become relatively more exotic:

Yup, lots of beans, cactus leaves and occasional tomatillos. Coincidental bikkies in the background.

Last night, after getting back from the homebrew club meeting, we pitted 4kg of cherries. 4kg of free cherries from the tree at the place we just moved out of. They're destined for pie and beer. Summer's awesome.

Austrian chocolate and a big truck

We were well-rewarded for the time spent taking care of cats for the last couple of weeks - Patrick & Elena brought back some excellent Austrian chocolate for us.

This week we managed to get moved into the new place with the help of the awesome histotechnology lab manager and her shiny new truck. Don't forget that's a queen-sized bed in the back...

For the first time, we were able to stack up all our beer and brewing equipment in one place.... Turns out we've made and acquired quite a bit.

The bike ride to work is now pretty fast - only about 0.5km shorter than before, but a decent part is straight downhill. It's nice to pass sheep, llamas, alpacas and cattle every day, not to mention large areas of poison oak, which I won't investigate too closely.

In other randomness, we were looking at some turkey vultures the other day - apparently if you stay too still while sunbathing they get a bit interested.... I love the idea that different countries have different sunbathing hazards. In NZ, it's melanoma, here it's vultures.

The "Crime Watch" page for the Corvallis Gazette Times is also pretty good for light entertainment, especially when you see what passes for crime in this town.

• Saturday 27th June: TRANSIENT SLEEPING ON PORCH: 7:14 p.m., Law Enforcement Center, 221 N.W. Sixth Street. A nearby resident approached a deputy and asked if he could tell a man sleeping on her porch to leave. The man, a local transient, left.