So, we said goodbye to our tiny, $350/week 14th floor Carlton apartment yesterday and did the move back to Sue & Jono’s mansionesque Hawthorn home, with great anticipation. The move went very smoothly – we have this down to a fine art now, I think. Being back in Hawthorn again, it feels a little like we never left – I thanked Sue & Jono for looking after our house for us while we were away.

The relief of being in a decent-sized house after our poky unit caught us by surprise – we hadn’t really realised how cramped we had felt before. It’s a good thing we’re never going to be living out of a small space again (uh-oh…)

Also a great relief is having decent Internet access again, after suffering through highly variable 128kbps-768kbps ‘Unwired’ net access. It’s like being unshackled! I just hope we can find reasonable net access while we’re travelling.

Anyway, so here we are in luxurious (and quiet!) Hawthorn, having completed the final move until the big one in June.

Looked at a couple of camper vans, too, from Brits and an NZ equivalent. Probably not proper research, those things are custom built, I think, and wouldn’t be available where we’ll be buying anyway – but it was fun to take a peek. It’s sure going to be a different kind of living.

Katherine’s put on her calendar the beginnings of our ‘training’ regime for our hike in the Alps. Much jogging for us.

After doing way too much takeaway, I’d forgotten how satisfying it was to cook our own stuff. We often find we just can’t be bothered after a long day at work, but it’s actually quite relaxing, a good wind down.

While last night wasn’t exactly a good example, we’re gathering recipes that are quick and easy to prepare on the road with limited equipment, and getting ourselves back into good eating habits. Lots of fresh, market-bought vegies, plenty of legumes, that sort of thing. Obviously we’re not quite there yet, but it’ll happen.

One proper example was a stir fry we made a week or so ago – chick peas, zucchini, tofu, spinach/kale, etc. Very quick and delicious. It’s quite fun to picture cooking from our campervan, in exotic locations.

It was a conversation with Katherine that jump-started it – she was slapping me on the wrist for losing concentration during the day and finding myself doing other things for most of the day (replying to emails, fixing a variety of scripts/apps, etc). I knew the fundamentals – just concentrate, ignore the other things, but it wasn’t until the other day when it clicked: I just have to concentrate, ignore the other things!

So the next day I quit Mail and Twitteriffic, hid iChat and Adium and ignored incoming messages, and suddenly found myself reacquainted with an old friend, work mode.

It was euphoric! After so many months with no progress and nothing but despair when I thought about the dwindling months remaining until we ship out, it felt fantastic to finally be getting somewhere. The second day of activity, I’d finished the first draft of another chapter – on fire! Today’s no exception, with a full day’s good progress behind me.

What a damn relief – finally I can believe that I’m going to get this PhD finished by the time we leave in late June. Phew.