christmas holidays start now!

Yes - I'm on holidays now! Not back to work till Monday 5th January.

Had a big day today - had to get up at 5.15am to get to the hospital for 7am to have my first immunoglubulin infusion - blogged about in my lymphoma blog. Apart from anything else, I was dying to get out of there as we were having our work Christmas party at lunchtime today, in some botanical gardens nearby. The infusion turned out to take a bit longer than I'd thought (hopefully it will be quicker in future) and so I didn't get there till 1.15pm. But they'd all waited for me to start.

And we had such a lovely time! Even though it was predicted to be an extremely hot day - 37degC! - trust us to pick the hottest day of the summer to have an outside party! But we had a nice shady place to sit and eat and talk. (And fight off the scrub turkey that was hoping for some scraps!) One of the people brought her 7-8 year old son Isaac with her. And we had a (child-sized!) cricket bat, stumps etc. and ended up having a great game of cricket after lunch. It was hilarious - lots of diving to catch the ball from the boys, and underarm bowling from the girls! Plus the work humourist Paul was shouting out lots of hilarious comments and 'sledges'. (I know a lot of these terms will mean nothing to people who don't follow cricket, but ... !)

It was a really lovely day. I looked at all my workmates and thought what a great bunch of people, and how sad it was that in a couple of months we'll mostly be scattered in different jobs either in the University or elsewhere. Kind of an 'end of an era' time. It will be really sad to see it all end. No more outrageously funny emails from Paul. Cup cakes from Kylie at morning tea. No more morning tea sitting outside the front of the building with everyone each day.

But, once again, a really lovely day, some great memories to store up!