We have come around to birthday season which means it gets busier and also warmer. Fathers Day seems to have crowded the start of birthday season this time but we managed to work out a one day fits all yesterday with four fathers all in one place. We also got in a happy birthday cake and song for James. He has been working on Deck No 2 out the front which required a lot more precision work than expected. Those joint angles are varied but spot on. The garden here is designed. Fertilised beds with purpose, like bulb style vegies here and climber vine type vegies there. The new developments are in the seed trays. There must be 40 small pots all with different seeds under warm light and well watered conditions. The grandies just swept on by all day with dress ups, fairy gardens and the old fave, leggo blocks.
Retiree's Occasional Blog of Time
Sunday, 6 September 2026
Saturday, 5 September 2026
Receding Hospitals
Hooray it seems the latest approach to Pembro side effects is now starting to work. The Dext is being phased out completely and the new pill dosage doubled up. Don't quote me on medical names but hequinel comes to mind. It has been a month and it seems at least three months is needed for this stuff to ramp up. If it all works this means it is only standard MRIs, skin checks and blood tests from now on. That's a four year hard work distraction that you don't need.
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| artwork while you wait |
Friday, 4 September 2026
Flower Update
In another few weeks we will step into the bush for the annual hunt to find the native orchids. Too bad they don't grow as big as the ones in the garden here. The late bloomers from the middle courtyard are out in full while in the back courtyard they have runout of Winter puff. There is also a dazzling array of colour as well in another corner. The lemon tree needs some work with a lot of clutter in amongst the established branches. At least the possums are leaving a spread of lemons this time instead of gorging on all of them.
Thursday, 3 September 2026
Dolphin Puzzle
No not actual dolphins although we do get plenty of them going passed our door. Maybe there is a dolphin season as we only seem to spy them in the warmer parts of the year. More likely we are indoors while they are outdoors during Winter. I have not done to many puzzles this time around. I did finish this one recently and picked it for the dolphins being the stars of the scene. These 1000 piece efforts are ideal for the folding table that can disappear when the clouds have gone. I have just cleaned this one away and brought out another which is topical from a year ago, being balloon rides.
Wednesday, 2 September 2026
Pan Pacs
It was 24 yar ago that a few of us entered the World Masters Games mainly because the games had come to Melbourne, so let's give it a go we said. In about two months time I will be in Brisbane and an hour down the road they are running the Pan Pacific Masters Games. Last time we picked an event (8km cross country) at the time of entry and tried to prepare as best as possible in the eight weeks that were left. It seems much the same this time around as I now have 9 weeks left having just spent my money on the entry fees. I think it will workout at $65 per throw but it does take a lot of cash to organise these things. I did a throws session this morning. It was across the road. However I found a more stable grassy patch which I could practice launching into a sandy patch. Not ideal conditions. On the way back I cleared up a mess from some party people who left empty packets and empty bottles at our favourite rock seat.
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| Two results to note. The womens list wasn't online so Debbie should have her time recorded somewhere. I note the men's shot category had seven competitors back then. |
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| for someone else to pickup |
Tuesday, 1 September 2026
Wattle City
First day of September and we have the blooming blossoms right on cue. We thought the canola was appearing but one paddock was pushing up daisies by the thousands. I am trying to ramp up some exercise yet again so we took to the bikes this morning and went for a slightly larger loop around the bypass road. The flowers are out and as well we kept a wary eye on the sky for those pesky dive bombers which are also diving into Spring. Maybe they backed off due to the dogs being walked including our beach friend Jill who we spied along the Griggs path. The North breeze is up which is giving us our first 20+ temperature today.
Monday, 31 August 2026
Views Not
From now on I am not paying any attention to the stats page that is compiled by the Google network monitoring which is supposed to report on all blog activity. I have read an article which says the Google counters are notorius for including every kind of webcrawler, search bot and AI search algorithm. These must have all made a concerted effort lately as I have seen an explosion in stats, in the hundreds of thousands, in just the last few months. I am meant to be able to turn on some better counting where spurious stuff is excluded but so far my settings are showing these options as greyed out.
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| consistent at 15,000 per day but not real |















