More delayed blogs...

This is another delayed blog, but this one actually written on PAPER, can you believe it, and transcribed to here and now....

Sitting at work, very half asleep. I feel like a cat in the sun except I'm not really allowed to just go to sleep.

It's very hazy/ smoky outside & it's making my throat all scratchy. When I got up this morning, I thought it was about to rain because it was cold & so overcast outside & thought 'how odd, rain', but then realized it was smoke. And that orange blob in the sky was the sun trying to shine. Well, it could have been worse and pitch dark like it gets closer to the fires, and I could have gone back to bed thinking that the clocks were wrong and I still had 4 hours sleep left.

So this week everyone talks about the fires. Last week (and forever), everyone talks about no rain, and where do the fish go, and the river's been dry before. And a couple of months ago, everyone talks about hail. We love the weather.

Pete's just had his birthday, and I made him a nice steak & vegies (his choice) & he even picked the steak out for me (for which I am especially grateful b/c I think the meat aisle is grose). I bought him a cake/pie thing & stuck candles in it (no time to make one). I wonder if people ever tried sticking candles in the steak or another preferred birthday food item. Although Pete loves his dessert.

I wish we had a digital camera. I always see something I want to take a photo of. Too expensive and space consuming with an ordinary camera.

Other day, I went outside to see what Polly the dog was barking about & she's 10cm away from a half-grown magpie, barking her head off. It's just sitting there looking at her. The parent magpie is sitting on the fence just watching & maybe squawking now and then. I think everyone was a bit confused. It must have been learning to fly and landed in Polly's yard and not figured out how to get out again. I went & got Neville to help me & we threw it over the fence.

Speaking of the weather (as you do), it's been so dry that things like the gatepost to the dog yard shift in the ground. Our back flyscreen door was stuck & wouldn't close/open properly. Neville said he'd take a look at it, and so when I went to close it one day and it closed perfectly beautifully, I thought oh he must have fixed it the other day when he was over doing whatever that was (hanging blinds I think), and I thanked him the next time I saw him. He told me later he didn't fix any door and that it must have been the ground drying out and shifting it back in place. And that the ground shifting was probably the reason for it getting stuck in the first place. So we have a magically cyclically shifting door that doesn't like the weather. Long and probably not that interesting to anyone else, but I was fascinated.