Good things that happened in 2023:

  • We renovated our bathroom and laundry, and spruced up the rest of the house by painting and getting rid of the carpet.
  • MEP and Paul visited us here. We got to see thousands of penguins.
  • We had an amazing holiday in British Columbia full of friends, family, and nature.
  • Spent a lot of time with friends here. Lots of meals and board games.
  • Joined a birding photography group and saw a lot of birds.
  • Went on a cool trip to the Mallee.
  • Played a lot of pickleball.
  • Knitted a lot.

PBs: Snatch 48kg -> 51kg. Clean and jerk still stuck at 58kg in comp, and 60kg in training. Back squat still 73×1, Front squat 60×2, Deadlift 88×1, OHP 34×1.

Plus 4th place in a pickleball tournament. :D

New board games: Anomia, Project L, Sabobatage, I’m The Boss!, Diner, Homebrewers, Showdown Yahtzee, Potion Explosion, Isle of Skye, Colt Express, Scoville, Gold Ahoy!, Ramen Fury, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, Sushi Roll, Welcome To.

We played 26 games with 29 different people.

Highlights included playing Welcome To with Rosemarie as a remote player, touching fingertips to make deals in Squamish, and cross-breeding chilies with pals at the board game convention.

Books (in rough order from favourite to least):

  • Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – put off reading it because it was so long but ended up really enjoying it and was happy that it was so long, really liked reading what she had to say
  • Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus – liked it! silly, science, feminist, some clever bits
  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath – not what I expected at all, it’s not a poetry book! Depressingly relatable
  • The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid – good, some overlapping characters with Malibu Rising
  • The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah – if I had read this before learning about WWII in high school, I probably would have been a lot more engaged
  • Book Lovers by Emily Henry – easy read
  • Every Summer After by Carley Fortune – lil bit sexy, very Canadian.. set in Barry’s Bay
  • Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata – short, easy, weird book about an autistic girl and an incel
  • Deacon King Kong by James McBride – slightly amusing, reminded me a bit of The Wire
  • Wanderers by Chuck Wendig – long, more modern version of The Stand, crazy that it was written pre-covid
  • Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart – some weird Scottish words, sad story
  • Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney – nice easy thriller
  • The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave – iunno, was ok
  • On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong – bit too poetic for me
  • Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann – sad history book, didn’t know they were gonna make a movie

Great new recipes: Can’t really think of anything. All we ever cook now are Recipe Tin Eats and Pinch of Yum recipes. Maybe something from the Recipe Tin Eats cookbook?

Favourite bird pics:

Year of the fairy-wren, apparently!

Last year’s goals: Use my good camera more. (I think I used it less, oops.) Become more athletic. (Maybe? I’ve started doing plyometrics in my training, and my reflexes are getting better at pickleball, however I’m getting a heck of a lot more sweaty so I dunno…) Eat more protein. (Yeah, tuna!) More knitting. (Definitely accomplished this one.) Start volunteering in migrant services. (Nope.)

2024 goals: Use camera more!!! Design bird sweaters. Be more comfortable being me.

2023 final thoughts: The first half of the year was a bit difficult to do anything because of all the renovation projects, and then the last half of the year was difficult too because Scott lost his job. Thank goodness we managed to squeeze in our Canada trip in between. Hopefully Scott ends up getting a new job soon so that we go back to traveling and doing more fun stuff again.

Lots of parties in December!

Started off with an unpictured pizza party at Naomi’s house with the old EH crew. Always nice to hear all the updates that have happened throughout the year. Since I didn’t go to school here in Melbourne I don’t really know that many people in the nuc med community, but now my old coworkers are spread out all over the place and it’s a nice little network for me.

We went to an Italian restaurant for our work Christmas lunch this year. This was my favourite dish, which was actually a special one for me while everyone else had a super duper dairy pasta dish. It was a seafood risotto, very yum. We also had really nice tender steak. Thanks Doctors!

Scott’s birthday was the same day as our pickleball club’s Christmas party. It was super hot, humid, windy with occasional downpours. Not great outdoor pickleball conditions but it was still a pretty fun party. We snuck out when the some of the oldies started getting pretty loose and got sushi for dinner on the way home.

I may have played a few too many games because I think I actually got heat stroke. Why am I so competitive??

Also LOL at how close that house is to the pickleball area!!

We had a party at our house! We made shawarmas and we played crokinole, Camel Up and Wits & Wagers. Ol’ trusty games. It was fun.

We went camping in Gippsland. Scott organised everything, including driving 45 minutes each way to look at this Shipwreck. :P

We stayed at Emu Bight, which had A LOT of bird activity. At any moment you could pick out at least 5 different bird calls. We even got a new lifer, a Red-browed Finch, but it flew away before I could get a picture. We saw quite a few fairy-wrens, Olive-backed Orioles, emus, and Eastern Spinebills, and all the usual suspect birds as well.

Hey dear.

Other than the birds, we got a bit bored. The first couple days were too cold to swim, then it got hot but we were far away from the water, and then the flies came out and it started raining off and on. We ended up packing up a night early.

We went to a few more rallies. I feel a real sense of despair about all of it. At least we’ve been able to catch up with some friends at the same time.

Scott made us a gingerbread village to decorate. Gingerbread brings up lots of memories for me, of mom and Jane, Emily, Rosemarie, Natasha and Eric. Nice memories, a little bit sad at the same time. It’s a fun tradition though.

I liked Scott’s reindeer decoration.

Christmas was pretty chill this year. It was a small Christmas year so there weren’t as many children as usual. Plus the Jorna boys are getting pretty old now! We had the usual lunch of chicken and salads. No one seemed to care that my Nanaimo bars were the ugliest batch I’ve ever made!!

Check out this amazing tea towel that Rory gave us. He designs a new one every year. I love it!

Christmas zoom with the fam back home.

Trying on my latest knitting project to see if I wanted to add an extra row of design or not. Of course I do, #longtorso.

I just had a craving for hotpot. This time I picked a broth that wasn’t spicy, after burning my face off last time. Much more enjoyable.

I got a new board game for Christmas from my Kris Kringle. It’s called Welcome To and apparently you can play with 1-99 people. I don’t think it would work very well with more people that can sit around a table though, unless you had like a projector or something. We did play with Rosemarie remotely though which was fun!! Good recommendation from Lesley.

Unpictured stuff:

  • So much more pickleball. Indoors, outdoors, Ashburton, Hampton. I still love it.
  • Did the computer at the Phoenix Christmas Hit Out. I didn’t compete because I was still doing my strength program. That’s finished though so I’ll compete again in early 2024 probably.
  • Ethiopian food for Sonika’s birthday. Delicious. The vegetarian dishes are always so good.
  • We watched a lot of movies between Christmas and New Years: Riceboy Sleeps (sad), Grease (lol), The Holdovers (good), Air (ok), The Grizzlies (cheesy), Tetris (surprising), The Mirror Has Two Faces (wtf).
  • And then I went to bed at 9:30pm on New Years Eve. :P

The Myer Christmas windows are Bluey themed this year. Adorbs. Scott planned a relaxed #SMAJ activity of Vietnamese food in the city for dinner, and a stroll past the windows. It wasn’t busy at all, which was nice. I’m doing it! I’m doing a handstand!

Robert and Jen picked me up to bring me to Maz’s for chill hangs. We played Isle of Skye, which I liked a lot! And Colt Express, which was a bit silly like Camel Up.

Another weekend we went to Meeplecon, where there was a marketplace (picked up a few cheap simple games), demos, and you could play anything from their huge collection. We picked Scoville to try because it can have up to 6 players, and had fun playing it. You cross breed chilies to make fancier chilies that you can make into recipes to get points. Unfortunately it looks like it will be hard to get a copy as the company has gone out of business.

We’ve been going to the Free Palestine rallies in the city every Sunday that we can. There were over 100,000 people there the first few weeks. It helps ease my despair a bit. I just hope it’s helping the cause.

Cardigan WIP. I had to wash and block it before I could attach the buttonband.

I made tres leches cake for the Medical Imaging Bake Off. I won second prize for taste! (Definitely wasn’t gonna win for presentation, especially by the time it got to work). I just made it full lactose cuz I wasn’t actually going to be eating much of it. It was a great event, we got to eat so many delicious things.

I also made homemade mint slices. You have to make a chocolate biscuit first, then make a peppermint fondant, then dunk in chocolate (which Scott helped). They were looking decent but unfortunately even though the chocolate tempered well, it bloomed and so they all have a weird swirl pattern on top. They taste good though!

Unpictured things:

  • So many allergy shot appointments. Thank goodness they bulk bill. They started off very uneventful but once I got to the full strength my arm does get a bit itchy.
  • So much pickleball. We started going to another club sometimes that’s much closer to our house. The people there are a bit younger, so they play differently. It’s interesting how different the clubs are.
  • We took April to the movies for her birthday. We saw Scary Girl, which I was not expecting to be Australian… at one point one of the characters said “OH NAUR!!” and it made me LOL.
  • Multiple trivia wins. Go team. Haven’t had to pay for dinner in a while, which is great while we’re still on single income.
  • Had to leave work early one day to take Scott to the hospital cuz he was in so much pain. Turns out he has a lil’ kidney stone. Thankfully by the next day he was nearly back to normal.

Last month we decided to take advantage of Scott not working with a budget-friendly trip to the Mallee. We left on Sunday afternoon after pickleball and drove north to Swan Hill.

We stopped at an Ibis Rookery along the way. It had an excellent bird hide. We saw a lot of ibis and cormorants. Like.. A LOT. There were also a lot of mosquitos so we didn’t stay too long.

A cool sunset. I thought it kind of looked like a bird as well.

Big Cod in Swan Hill.

Singing Honeyeater

The next morning we got tradie bacon and egg rolls for breakfast and then drove to Goschen, which is just a little bushland reserve recommended to me by one of the Birdlife photographers. We saw a couple new birds: White-browed Woodswallow, and White-winged Triller. And a lot of flies.

Then we continued on to Hattah-Kulkyne National Park, which is near Mildura, where we camped for three nights. It is a nice park, desert-y, but with water. It was pretty quiet, with tons of birds and reptiles. And wild goats!

Our campsite was right on Lake Mournpall, which had a lot of jumping fish in it, which entertained us in the evening. We also spent a lot of time walking, birdwatching, reading and knitting.

My DIY Detachable Lego Fly Deterrer actually worked pretty well, except for when I accidentally swatted a brick into my nose. Did I look stupid? Yes. But did it work? Yes.

Warepil Lookout Mallee sunset. Very flat land.

A visiting family.

I think these are called Shingleback Lizards. I called them Road Sausages. Or Turd Lizards. They are so stumpy!!

There was a little scenic nature circuit that you could drive around. We saw this cool Lace Monitor and lots of birds.

One day we did the slightly longer Lake Loop walk, which started off pretty fun because it’s a little bit free-form as long as you find the next sign post.

But I got pretty tired by the end because parts of it were a bit flooded and it was hard to find the next post. And the last hour or so was walking through all this stupid loose branches filled with burrs, on top of sand.

We drove out to the Hattah Outback Roadhouse for ice cream and a shower after that. I couldn’t believe the showers were free! It was very needed and appreciated.

The astro conditions were perfect so we saw some pretty good night sky. Unfortunately the aurora alarm didn’t go off while we were there… we were planning on driving back to the lookout platform if it did. Not sure we’d be able to see anything since we were quite far north anyway though? But there certainly wasn’t any light pollution.

Splendid Fairywren. So pretty! We saw a bunch of these on our walks.
A fluffy Mallee Ringneck. There were lots of these around the campsite but they were hard to get a good picture.
Cute Galah couple.
Peregrine Falcon wayyyyy up at the top of a big dead tree.
Apostlebird. I think these are special to the area but they were a bit nasty imo.
Wish I had gotten a better picture of this Bearded Dragon.

The weather was absolutely beautiful for our whole trip until the last day. We managed to pack up camp before the weather turned, but it was a long dreary drive back to Melbourne.

We broke up the drive by stopping lots of times.

  1. Lake Tyrrell. Cool to see the big pink lake, and a new bird (Bluebonnet), but it was very chilly so we didn’t stay long.
  2. Sharp’s Bakery in Birchip for 10/10 vanilla slices. They really did live up to the hype (has won best in Australia a couple times). Perfectly crisp pastry, smooth custard, and the perfect amount of icing. My controversial opinion is that vanilla slices should be half as tall, but I know that most Australian’s would disagree.
  3. Wycheproof Bakery for a panini for lunch.
  4. Bendigo Woollen Mills to replenish the yarn stash. Scott got some cotton to make another amigarumi, and I got some variegated wool that I’m not sure what to do with yet.
  5. McDonalds drive through for some fries because I was dying of starvation.

It was a great trip! We were actually supposed to go the week before but the forecast was HORRIFIC so we postponed one week and that worked out perfectly. Scott and I both ended up with covid but thankfully it didn’t come up until the last day of the trip too. We saw so much cool stuff, but no budgerigars or pink cockatoo so now I want to go even deeper into the Outback!

Scott got us tickets to see Weezer with Jemma and Damien. I hadn’t really listened to Weezer since like 2007 but it was still good! Very nostalgic. I could tell that they have been doing this show for a long time because everything was very polished. I knew every song except two or three, and I can’t think of any songs I like that they didn’t play. We were sitting up on the edge and it was pretty chill.

The concert was on Friday. On Saturday I was on call and Scott played bowls. On Sunday we played pickleball and then left for our camping trip in the Mallee, which I will write about in its own post.

I think on Tuesday or Wednesday we heard that Jemma and Damien both have covid, probably from Myles. Didn’t think too much of it as we were both feeling 100% normal.

We drove back on Thursday, Scott was a bit snotty and tired yet still did the majority of the driving. Thanks Scott!

I went to work on Friday as normal. Then mid-afternoon I heard from another friend that she had covid and I asked what her symptoms were and she said mostly ‘snotty and tired’. I’m like OH NO. I message Scott that he should probably do a RAT, and he shortly writes back that it’s positive!! I just spent 6 hours in a car with that guy!! I still felt 100% normal but of course did one at work too and it was negative so I finished my shift (we all were wearing masks like normal as well).

After work a few of us went to Tricky Wicket for dinner and attempting to hit cricket balls. It was very hard and none of us were very good at it, even on very easy settings. I was quite scared of the ball. I did touch the ball one time though at least (I am ‘regular k’).

And you can probably guess where this story is going, but the next day I also tested positive on a RAT. BLAZING positive. I was so worried that I infected my whole department, but thankfully no one else got it. We just can’t believe how long it took… like almost a full week since we saw J & D, and then why did it take me a few more days after Scott, when I was sitting in between them at the concert?! Otherwise, how did we catch covid while in the outback???

We both got pretty sick.. worse than the first time. But Scott never had much of a cough and recovered completely fairly quickly. I had pretty much every symptom possible, even losing taste for a few days, but gradually got better every day. My training took a bit of a hit but what can ya do. At least the timing was pretty convenient.

Oh yeah one annoying thing we had to do while sick was VOTE!? Australia had a referendum and voting is mandatory. According to the website it seemed like they still wanted us to go vote, just wear a mask and bring your own pen. I felt bad for the person checking my details. And the referendum didn’t even go the way I wanted it to so that was disappointing.

Back to fun stuff!

Yet another Birdlife photography outing. This time we went to Bunyip State Park. There was a big group this time! We barely saw any birds!! We could hear tons of birds, but they were all so far away. One of the downsides of going to a place that has great tall old trees.

I thought this quote from the group’s blog post was amusing:

After two and half hours, the group reconvened at the picnic ground to compare bird stories and photos – and leech bites. The latter were an almost universal experience, much more so than some of the 35 species recorded.

Once bleeding was staunched, and with suitable nourishment and caffeine on board, we motored the 10 minutes to Buttongrass Walk.

There really were a lot of leeches. I flicked about 20 off my pants, and one got me between my fingers, so I had a bit gruesome looking bloody hand for a while.

Rufous Whistler

Not only was there not very many birds, I was also struggling with my camera. I’m not entirely convinced that there isn’t something wrong with my telephoto lens. Sometimes it won’t auto-focus on anything for minutes at a time, and pointing it at something close, or something far doesn’t seem to help. By the time I get it to focus the bird is long gone. I talked to a few people from the group about it and they suggested it might just be from bad lighting conditions, but I’m not sure. More testing required, or perhaps sending it in for inspection.

Scott did a good job on this month’s #SMAJ. I didn’t even know what it was until we were nearly all the way there. We went to Luna Park at night and I finally got to ride the wooden roller coaster! It has a brake operator! It’s called The Great Scenic Railway and it’s the second oldest roller coaster in the world (1912), and one of only seven remaining roller coasters that has a brakeman. It was bumpy and fun.

We also rode a few other rides, and had some carnival food. It was pretty busy because it was almost Halloween. Lots of good people-watching while waiting in lines.

Scott made a lot of lactose free perogies. Perks of unemployment. They are DELICIOUS.

Cardigan progress. I thought this cardigan would take me a couple months to make but between camping and covid I got A LOT done. It should be ready right in time for summer. :P

Unpictured things:

  • I started getting allergy shots for my birch allergy. Despite there not being a lot of birch trees here I still seem to get a lot of symptoms and still can’t eat a lot of fruits (oral allergy syndrome). So I’m giving this a try. I hope it works cuz it’s expensive. I’ve almost finished the part where I have to go every week for a shot, and then they will be a month apart. I won’t really be able to tell if they work until next spring.
  • We had a games night at our house. Scott made vegetarian enchiladas and they were a hit. We played Tiny Towns.
  • The new sports centre within walking distance to our house opened after a year or two of construction. Scott is happy because not only does it mean his lawn bowls team gets to move back in, but the facilities are very nice, and it has a sun shade over the (fake) grass so he doesn’t have to worry as much about being burnt to a crisp. They also have a bunch of tennis courts and basketball courts. They do have lines for three badminton courts so we’re hoping that someone eventually starts a pickleball club there too. No, we don’t want to start it ourselves, that’s too hard.