okay, so I ... and then ... but ...

Well m'dears, the computer is back in action [ et moi aussi ] albeit temporarily until Doctor Chris, aka The Boy, all round computer genius and future son-in-law, has the time to build me a you-beaut-whiz-bang new one.

'd'ya miss me ?

because I have spent the last couple of weeks feeling as though my right arm was missing

anyway the upshot of being unable to blog since Christmas is that there's been far too much H2O under the bridge to even contemplate catching you up properly

the precis version:

Christmas was good
New Years pretty much didn't exist
I never DID get most of my cards written [ and the strike caused the PO to run out of stamps anyway ]
there has been a lot of crocheting - mostly snowflakes for next Christmas - and I've designed a new one which will be a freebie once I write it out properly
I finished a quilt at 1/4 to midnight on NYE
there have been visitors
there has been the ritual post-Christmas cleanup and concomitant annual rethink of the decorating [ ongoing ]
I've read 9 books since NYE
the aircon/heating is in and mostly working, but they need to come back because of a faulty fan and a half-arsed installation job
yesterday was 43 point something degreesC [ 109 and a bit ]
today much the same
the garden is just hanging on by its roots
the goats seem unaffected so long as they're adequately fed and watered and seem to be spending most of their time sunbathing . Silly bloody animals.
I had an echidna visit the garden last night but 't'was too dark for photography so here's one I prepared earlier
... and here's your bit of Aussie Zoology 101 for today: Echidnas are monotremes, related to platypus, in that they are both egg-laying mammals, and have no relationship whatsoever to porcupines. They eat white ants [ termites ] and although one doesn't often see them - being mainly nocturnal and also very shy - it's quite evident that they've been visiting judging by the funnel shaped holes left where they've been poking aroung looking for supper.

so that's about it

'catastrophic fire danger' warnings have been issued for most of Victoria, meanwhile a fair bit of the northern half of the east coast [ Queensland and northern NSW ] is trying to recover from equally catastrophic flooding and the northern hemisphere continues to shudder through one of the coldest winters in living memory