Seeing the big animals.
23 August 2022
It has been a long time since the last entry. I started writing in early July and suddenly with travel it was almost the end of August and I had to get something together to put online.
At the start of May we had a federal election. Our seat was pretty safe for the Greens so there was not a lot of campaigning in our area. Queueing for voting was surprisingly slow, probably because of the difficulties the AEC had with staffing due to COVID.
Over weekends in Winter we tried going to gyms we hadn’t seen before. It was refreshing to get away from the place we were familiar with and to realise that there were a lot of really well-equipped gyms in the suburbs. None of them was close enough for us to consider changing from Doherty’s in Brunswick as our regular gym.
We had a couple of Winter weekends at Sorrento. Chris and Aaron came down on one of the weekends, but Chris had work commitments which meant he couldn’t stay. We went to the hot springs with Aaron.
As the COVID case numbers and hospital numbers stayed fairly stable, more normal activities started to take place. We went to the opening of an exhibition at the Victorian Pride Centre which featured posters from the last 60 years or so. We also saw the Picasso exhibition at the NGV which had excellent coverage of his work, probably better than the last one.
We also went to a club to dance as it was feeling safe enough. It was the same night as Gregg’s birthday so it was a very social night. Quite a few friends were at the club as well and we had a good night, almost enough to forget about COVID for a while. This was before the more recent scare about Monkeypox.
The Botanic Gardens hosted a show of light installations which we walked through in the evening. Some of the installations were quite spectacular, but more so as an experience rather than something captured in a photo.
Preparations for the wedding became more serious as we looked at rings and got fitted for suits. We ordered a cake and lined up catering and drinks. As we received the RSVPs we were surprised and delighted that so many people are coming from far away.
My family held a memorial for my uncle Tom whose funeral most were unable to attend due to COVID travel restrictions. It was the first time in months that I had seen so many of my relatives.
At the end of July we finally took the trip which had been planned for Jay’s 50th a year earlier (and also for my proposal). We flew to Exmouth on Northwest Cape in WA and drove down the west coast to Perth before flying home.
The landscape was extraordinary as were the beaches and marine life. We got close to whale sharks, manta rays, whales, dolphins and stromatolites as well as seeing the coral and fish at Ningaloo reef. I made an album of photos online.
When we returned, Jay left the next day for the SIGGRAPH conference in Vancouver. He took a few days at the end of the stay to go hiking in the mountains at Whistler with Derek, adding bears to the range of large animals he had been close to this year.
The next big event for us will be the wedding in November. Preparations seem to be going in an orderly way.
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At the start of May we had a federal election. Our seat was pretty safe for the Greens so there was not a lot of campaigning in our area. Queueing for voting was surprisingly slow, probably because of the difficulties the AEC had with staffing due to COVID.
Over weekends in Winter we tried going to gyms we hadn’t seen before. It was refreshing to get away from the place we were familiar with and to realise that there were a lot of really well-equipped gyms in the suburbs. None of them was close enough for us to consider changing from Doherty’s in Brunswick as our regular gym.
We had a couple of Winter weekends at Sorrento. Chris and Aaron came down on one of the weekends, but Chris had work commitments which meant he couldn’t stay. We went to the hot springs with Aaron.
As the COVID case numbers and hospital numbers stayed fairly stable, more normal activities started to take place. We went to the opening of an exhibition at the Victorian Pride Centre which featured posters from the last 60 years or so. We also saw the Picasso exhibition at the NGV which had excellent coverage of his work, probably better than the last one.
We also went to a club to dance as it was feeling safe enough. It was the same night as Gregg’s birthday so it was a very social night. Quite a few friends were at the club as well and we had a good night, almost enough to forget about COVID for a while. This was before the more recent scare about Monkeypox.
The Botanic Gardens hosted a show of light installations which we walked through in the evening. Some of the installations were quite spectacular, but more so as an experience rather than something captured in a photo.
Preparations for the wedding became more serious as we looked at rings and got fitted for suits. We ordered a cake and lined up catering and drinks. As we received the RSVPs we were surprised and delighted that so many people are coming from far away.
My family held a memorial for my uncle Tom whose funeral most were unable to attend due to COVID travel restrictions. It was the first time in months that I had seen so many of my relatives.
At the end of July we finally took the trip which had been planned for Jay’s 50th a year earlier (and also for my proposal). We flew to Exmouth on Northwest Cape in WA and drove down the west coast to Perth before flying home.
The landscape was extraordinary as were the beaches and marine life. We got close to whale sharks, manta rays, whales, dolphins and stromatolites as well as seeing the coral and fish at Ningaloo reef. I made an album of photos online.
When we returned, Jay left the next day for the SIGGRAPH conference in Vancouver. He took a few days at the end of the stay to go hiking in the mountains at Whistler with Derek, adding bears to the range of large animals he had been close to this year.
The next big event for us will be the wedding in November. Preparations seem to be going in an orderly way.
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