One of my profs was outside my house?

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore: November showers bring December flowers?

We've been having some crazy thunderstorms all week. Lots of rain with brief periods of gorgeous sunshine. Some of the rain is finally managing to land in the catchments too. That'll help the water shortage a bit. I wonder if we'll have our turn at proper water pressure again before I leave...

Laura and I made a wonderful discovery last night. I really wish we'd had Laura as a flatmate for a lot longer. She works for Maria Byrne, my favourite lecturer from Cells and Development. Maria studies echinoderms and brought her sea stars P. exigua into the lab for the class to see. I know I talked about that before, but I don't have time to figure out exactly when. I was complaining about the weather and how I need to do the sculpture walk from Coogee to Bondi before it ends this weekend. Ching and I started talking about the Manly Scenic Walk, which ends at Manly Beach. We've never actually been to Manly Beach though because I got stuck at Fairlight checking out the rock pools. I told Laura about my Marine Science field trip and she said I must have seen her sea stars.
"Which ones?"
"They are called Patiriella exigua"
"Wait, if you study Patiriella exigua, you must know Maria!"
"She is my boss. She brought me home today."
Maria had been right outside my house. Freaky. But Laura ended up telling me all about the research she's doing for Maria, as part of her PhD, on the sea stars and a gene expressed in the human brain that's also been found in sea urchins. I must have learned SOMETHING with all this studying I've been doing because Laura didn't manage to lose me even once. I had to stop and clarify that a gene she mentioned was what I thought it was, but that was it. Laura is doing some interesting research here. I'd get bored to tears with the molecular biology of it, but somebody's got to do it and it was her degree.

I need to email Maria my references from my seminar presentation. She showed up right at the end of it, and I felt incredibly flattered after when she told me she was hoping to catch mine. Because of the topic and the fact that it relates somewhat to her research, not because it was me in particular, but it's hard not to feel special when she has you show her the slides and go over things with her during one of the breaks and talks to you about it. All the other researchers/lecturers we've worked with have been obsessed with mouse models for human research and/or eye development, which is all well and good but doesn't exactly thrill me. Maria studies echinoderms as an evolutionary base for the chordate line and gets very excited about a species that's a benthic as opposed to pelagic developer and basically, well, she studies stuff I actually care about as more than a learning and research tool.