I just emailed the coordinator of the course asking whether my contract was ready, got an email back and hour later "just had a meeting with [school manager], might be ready by Monday but I'm not sure. Jacquie has been ill for a few days." Honestly who cares if she has been sick for a 'few days' I have been working for 6 weeks and therefore the contract should have been sorted out 7 weeks ago. I am so cross. We sat down and worked out my hours 2 weeks ago and he has just sat on it and done nothing till I prompted again. Now I will not get paid till at least week seven, which means I will get taxed a lot. When I do sign the contract I will ask if they can pay it in increments, which I think is frankly the least they can do considering how long it has taken. But past experience tells me this will be a huge issue and FAR TOO HARD. I go out of my way and fix all sorts of things up for this course and do hours of unpaid work they can't even be bothered to put in the one hour it would take to make sure I get paid. I am even on the system already, *MASSIVEGRUMBLE*

So glad to only be teaching two classes this week. Today was pretty straightforward, the students are great except that because I give them group work I'm not always sure what to do while they work, I sort of wander around asking how they are going but trying not to watch them work over their shoulders, then I usually sit and make doodles on the roll for a few minutes. Sigh.

Now I should really go and do some photocopying but feeling too lazy.

Also I am thinking of going up to Sydney in a few weeks with Dad, need a break from good ole Melbourne. Just for the weekend, he has meetings for gliding and I will go to the galleries.

Busy-ish day today. Trying to get my image catalogue sorted, I have hundreds, hundreds and hundreds and it is so horribly painful. But I think I made some decent headway today. I feel a bit like it is the image version of never really doing any footnotes till the end of the thesis. But then when I started I didn't have a scanner or even a computer that could handle much in the way of image files, or a digital camera so I guess things have evolved and arrangements for images have been constantly superseded so I never settled on anything and now it is a mess. But on the upside a lot of my images are now available to download from galleries which have digitised their collections. Making life a lot easier. I LOVE YOU BRITISH MUSEUM.

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Just had a meeting about with the Save Lonsdale House peeps. Went well, we have had some good publicity and hopefully we will have a decent number for our protest on Saturday. I think we are all a bit amazed at how it took off. I remember when we started our facebook group ages ago and we were about 15 people for ages, now it is nearly 1500. Crazy.

Had to teach all the classes again this week, not that much in hours but just boring teaching the same thing again and again. Plus I hate the feeling that it is probably everyone's least favourite subject as it is compulsory breadth. Hey ho, I am probably being over sensitive. Also in one of the classes a few students have so much attitude. They ask if they have to come to stuff, ask if they can go early when we are in the middle of discussions. So rude. Honestly if you don't want to be there just leave, but don't expect me to give you permission to leave. Anyway we actually had quite a good discussion and the mouthy students are in the other tutor's class so I don't have to worry about them any more. Spent a while looking at this lady, she can be seen to spin in either direction. Fun.

Hello blog, sorry I neglect you so much at the moment. Very tired tonight. Had to teach all the workshops, so six hours straight teaching. It isn't too bad really, mostly it is the repetition of the same ideas again and again for each new class. Trying to write a lecture for Friday now. So glad I don't have to write a lecture every week. So time consuming, no wonder I got no thesis done when I taught at La Trobe.

Seem to have a lot on at the moment. I am helping out with the Save Lonsdale House protest. Visit the website here. We have over 1000 signatures now, which is great. It is partly just good to know there are so many other people out there who love Melbourne's architecture. Have met some lovely new enthusiasts who know so much more about Melbourne than I do.

Making slightly slow progress on thesis this week, but, I think, good progress over all. Though it is hard working on so many bits simultaneously. I am going through the edits on Chapter 3, making an image catalogue for Chapters 4&5 (150 images eek!) and re-writing Chapter 6. Funny how disjointed some of my old writing is now when I look back on it, and way too much explanation, like i am hitting people over the head with my ideas sometimes! But that is good as I need to cut words as it is currently 14 000 words over.

A picture for no other reason than that I like it. From the V&A, I keep getting distracted when making my catalogue.

Portrait of Lubaina Himid from the V&A