With that in mind I've drawn up a mighty List, packed full of amazingly productive things to do, replete with the kind of scrawl you might expect from your General Practitioner, and liberally sprinkled with little tick boxes because I am, after all, a complete nerd for that kind of thing.
To facilitate my warming back up to the world of Graphic Design I've been trawling design blogs and looking at websites and browsing through my two design books that I managed to bring over with me in my suit case. I've set up a corner of the spare room as my little Nook of Operations, with my laptop, tablet, pens and paper and perpetual cup of tea to provide the correct working atmosphere in which to further pad out my portfolio, sign up with recruitment agencies, pretend to have important conversations on my eternally dead cellphone and peer out at the neighbours from between the blinds, plotting their demise.
Annika has found me Hill of Doom 3. It's shorter than both Mt Vic and the original Doom Hill, but by the Beard of the Prophet, it's much, much steeper. The kind of steep hill that, when you crest over it in a car, everyone reflexively leans back in their seats on the way down to prevent the car from tipping over. Halfway up this mighty beast I start passing out from oxygen deprivation and get overtaken by Sherpas on goat-back, it's that steep.
Because I hate myself and it is kinda short I go up and down the thing twice in a row. After a month of doing this I will have the lung capacity of a blue whale and legs like really strong legs.
Annika maliciously persists in being totally awesome, thus disproving my notion that Australia is peopled with shifty eyed, grasping convicts who would sooner send the dingoes after you than give you directions in the street. She moves like a ballerina (which she once was) and doesn't put up with my foolishness, and let's face it most guys out there secretly enjoy getting put in their place by an attractive woman who's much smarter than they are.
Or maybe that's just me.
Below is recorded evidence of myself with an elephant, and the last time I wore jeans and not shorts:
