How Low can you go?

I would say I spent around 5 hours yesterday either on the floor or in about a knee high position. There is no way around it, although I did get a cramp in my back at one stage and then Asher gave it a three second rub. After that it was straight back to the play activities.  No time to waste.  I have edited some play dough action. These were brand new containers of the stuff, but the gist of what you do with them was already apparent. 

Asher says Potatoe

She  says a lot more than that. She will repeat everything you say in her own way, which is mostly a slower more deliberate pronunciation.  For instance when the pumpkin was being mashed by the blender and started to spit outside the pot. the expletive was changed to Shivers. Then across the room there is this little voice that pipes up Shivers. 

Mr Potatoe Head

Historic Inverleigh

We have had this town on the radar for a while. It was established in 1854 so there are lots of blue stone around. We had planned on a sit down lunch at the bakery as they advertised an impressive spread on their web site. But we keep forgetting about the pesky distancing problem, so they are surviving on take away.  We had some steak & mushroom at a very polished tree trunk nearby.  We walked this off down by the Leigh River which eventually runs into the Barwon.  Highlights were the Federation Suspension Bridge, the Gaol Cell and the Craft shop.  We finished off with coffee at the Pub, which used to be the Cobb&Co station. 

Lots of tables but no chairs

used to be the Pub

tree table

Used to be a house

used to be a wind mill

Used to be the one cell gaol

Craftiwork

The Physical Gardener

There seems to be no end of hidden corners that garden beds can be placed. I had forgotten about the small area adjacent to the garage door.  Everything was covered in stones when we arrived but now that the very front has been made a bit path like, more stones can be spread to form raised pathways and so clearing some other spots to allow planting.  Debbie must be growing muscles by now with the shoveling of stones.

More shoveling

throw in some driveway karchering

cleaned and planted

Garden extension

Masked Lapwing

We were always told that these birds were larger versions of a Plover.  Even though they spent a lot of time walking like plovers they seemed much too big.  We have them here and a pair have just hatched a brood of four chicks in a vacant lot two doors up.  The docile walker behaviour has been replaced by parental dive bomber.  Dogs and cats get the treatment but especially the Kestrels we have here as well.  They get no chance to hover as the lapwings will attack. They have a spur protruding from each of their wings and use them.  They have different raucous warning calls which sets off the mayhem.   Over at Collendina we saw these birds for twenty yar and not once did I see any chicks, just adults pecking around.

Internet photo shows protruding spurs

Roof patrol

Ground patrol with chick

New Bike Trail

We tried out the new trail today.  There were still plenty of tidy up works going on with dirt, mulch and debris covering parts of it.  There are also planting works still happening as well as graders running around.  There were a group of engineers doing some final inspections and they were keen to grill us on how the bike section was working. They spent a lot of effort getting the gradients to be no more than 4%. Overall it works well as a bike track but some rural houses now have cars and bikes at their back fence.  I think they made a mistake by not building two lanes all the way for car traffic. 

The high path and the low path

Fiery Sunset

Neuromancer

It's not bad when you can write your first novel and win the HUGO award for it straight up. That's what William Gibson did with this book in 1984 and as is often the case, has since become part of a trilogy of books known as the Sprawl.  And also, as usual the last two of which I don't possess. I may try the library for them, as this was a complex reading with much jargon. At least there was no time travel!  The main gist of this one is that an artificial intelligence is attempting to break out.  The way this was written you started barracking for the computer, as opposed to say the Skynet computer in Terminator, who was the bad guy.  Neuromancer is currently in Movie production and was supposed to come out this year but who knows when that will be.

I have one quote from the book. 

Something only vaguely like a human face filled the screens, its features stretched across asymmetrical expanses of bone like some obscene Mercator projection.  

Now I studied Mercator projections about 44 yar ago and I never expected it would get some weird reference in a SciFi novel.  The projection is a way of showing a round object (the earth) on a flat surface (the map).  The features of a surface (a face) can be shown by contouring which maybe what he is trying to say.  Is this the kind of in depth that happens at a book club?  Only if cartographers are present.