woops

i guess this blog is what happens when life happens to you. i have a lot to say, but i am tired and have some things to work on in the immediate time being, so i'll bullet-point them and tell a brief story and have to call it a day:
-the outback: sunsets, tree climbing, boomerangs, johnny cakes, sheep shearing, niffler birds, emus, kangaroo "hunting", stars, red dirt and farming thereof, original homesteads, quiet, and drought. and a dang good time.
-further notes on the auburn gallipoli mosque
-haircutting
-the scary things you find yourself saying in class (and the resulting accountability)
-the awesome factor of snailmail
-concert practice! singing! milk!
-lots of work and papers
-preparing for the BUSH trip?! already!
-two months in. already?

all those topics, and others i'm sure, but now my story for today.
and of course it has to do with buses.

i was hopping on the 370 bus today, which takes me from my house in leichhardt to my service placement at newtown mission . i'm never quite sure if i'm going to make this bus or not, but it comes infrequently enough that i can tell from a distance by the amount of people at the stop whether i've missed it. i haven't yet!
i walk up to the bus stop, proud of my timing skills, to join the small crowd queued up there, including an elderly woman with a seeing eye dog. the bus pulled up a few moments later, and we all crowded to climb aboard. i caught a look at the dog leading the woman and had to do a double take--this dog could have been brother or sister to our dearly departed family dog, princess. it had the same black face with same greying patterns, same chilled out sort of walk. this dog was a little heftier and its tail a little less perky than the puppy i'd loved, but it made me miss her something fierce.
princess came into my life when i was about three, and remained a constant in my life until spring of 2006. when i found that she had passed away, it was like a true end of an era. today on that bus, a part of that era lived on, guiding that old lady around sydney. right on, princer-puppy.