It's almost holidays for me :) exactly 14 days and all my exmas are over and I only have two written exams, one portfolio and one viva to go until total freedom for the year!

So instead of studying (which is desperately need to be doing...sigh) I decided o day dream about my upcoming three month summer break! The very best thing about uni is the summer holidays :D three months of doing what ever you want to do. Bludging, living at the beach, getting a job and getting some extra money, traveling...three months of freedom..or as close to freedom as anyone ever gets. Yay!

I have decided to write a To Do list, so I make sure I get some important things done this holidays, along will all my beach going, bike riding and gardening. Here they are;

• loose 5 kilograms- this one is important mainly because over this uni term have, as they say, let myself go. Bad sleeping habbit + no time for cooking or exercise + easy access to junk/fast food = a very unhealthy me who is approximately 5 kilos heavier then I was before. This also ties in with a longer term goal I have of getting down to 59kg before I turn 21. So over summer I will be hitting up the gym at least 3 times a week, actually cooking and eating healthy food, and being generally active (beach, bike rides, gardening! Wee!) in the hopes of crossing this off my list by the time uni gets back.

• Memorise all my band saxophone songs- I play in a ska/pop/something or other pub band which wants to start gigging sometimes soon. Nothing says lame more then people having to read music while they play a gig! So over summer I have to memories all my parts :D I already have 10 songs down and only have about 15 or so to go! Wee!

• Organise my room/house/study areas-this is one of the ones I say every year, but I want to get my areas all organise and clean so I have a good place to study to live. Give away all the clothes and things I don't need, sort out and rearrange my room, make everything spotless. Give me a nice clean slate to start the year on.

• Improve my Sax playing significantly- this one is kind of related to my other goal, but more focused on my skills in general. Although I get lessons from a really great teacher, I haven't seemed to have enough time to practice and make the most of it. I want to practice my exercises, scales and studies at least 4 times a week. The lessons I've been getting have made a big improvement to my playing, but only getting to practice twice a week is limiting. I wanna see what I can do when I really dedicate some time to it.

Those are my four main goals for now. I'll probably think of more, but for now I'll be very happy if I get all those done :)

I woke up this morning to the sounds of very loud wind and my boyfriend telling me to look out the window. My first groggy morning thought was...since when did we have yellow tinted windows? I soon realised that it was not in fact out windows but the whole world that was yellow! A crazy dust storm has blown over during the night. I have never seen a dust storm before so I was quite impressed. They are relatively common in the Northern territory and South Australia I think (apparently this is where all the dust has blown from...) but they don't usually make it to the coast!

I turned on the TV to try to get some news about it and also called my mum. She told me they're covered in dust too. They live 200kms away! HUGE! Sydney is even worse then here. We're yellow but Sydney is red! The news tells me it goes all the way to Dubbo and is heading up to Brisbane.

I tried to take some photos but my camera isn't great so it just looks smoggy. Here are some from google (they are not mine!)

 

and a news story about it.

The air is very yucky to breath. I'm not normally very sensitive to stuff like this but it's even starting to get to me, my nose and eyes feel weird. The windows had been open all night so the air in the house is very dusty. My boyfriend was having trouble breathing all morning. Not pleasant.

When I work up my thoughts slowly but surely turned to "Oh...maybe it's the end of the world...". You know, Day of the Triffids or War of the Worlds style...

In some places the dust storm is even worse. Someone on the net said that before he turned on the news he thought maybe we'd been attacked or nuked by someone.

Imagine waking up to something like this..

...and not having access to the Internet, radio or the TV to find out what it is. Would you think it was the end of the world? Or the start of a war? Hell risen up from the depths? 

A less immediately scary, but still very worrying, thought is that this might actually be a sign of the nearing 'end of the world' through climate change. We just experienced one of our hottest Augusts on record and now we're going into a Spring which is supposed to be  much hotter then usual too. We've been experiencing drought for a very long time, bush fires have been horribly swift, intense and tragic and weather patterns are supposed to be getting more and more extreme. Maybe waking up to a yellow/red haze will become a common occurrence in the near future?

(particularly interesting photo- normal day vs. today shot...)