A Happy New Year (or eighth day of Christmas if you prefer) from Yvonne and Greg.
There are a number of photos in this message. Click on them, maybe several times, to enlarge them. That's why the message is a web page, not a PDF document.
Last year we said, “Hopefully things will be better next year”. But no, If anything, things in the world are worse this year than last, though we're lucky to be out of the various lines of fire.
Yvonne
We're both getting older, and it's becoming clear that we'll have more and more health issues to deal with. While Yvonne's health issues are roughly under control, there are indications that we'll have to keep an eye on them. In December she had an incident of atrial fibrillation (AF), which scared us, but not Rod Reddy, the cardiologist, who seems to think that “these things can happen”. At least there's no need for a pacemaker yet. And a routine MRI of her pancreas was enough to refer her to a specialist, which will happen in January.
Greg
Greg has also had his health issues, starting in February with leg pain that may or may not have had any relationship to the slipped disk that he then had in June. That healed pretty much as can be expected for this kind of injury, and he's only just back to “normal”. Lots of exercises, which he hates.
And then in August he was diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes. The opthalmologists recommend surgery, which will be decided in January.
Apart from that, he has spent nearly the whole year updating his computer system, complicated by the fact that he wants to do it his way despite the industry going in a different direction.
Apart from that, things haven't changed too much. He seems to have done nothing interesting for years. On reflection he discovered that for the whole year he had not been further from home than Ballarat, 30 km to the north. The reports from last year and the year before that could equally well apply this year. He has done nothing and reported about it at great length. He continues to mess around with computers and the technical aspects of photography, has spent some time cooking, and that's about that.
Yana
Our daughter Yana has qualified (in Adelaide, 650 km away) as a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours), and once again neither of us were present for the ceremony. Two years ago it was COVID-19, last year Yvonne had her riding accident, and this year she had her attack of AF.
Our daughter Yana has been busy raising recycling to an art form:
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That's Essie, made out of old inner tubes and rubbish that she picked up at the local Bunnings outlet.
Domestic animals
Two years ago both of our dogs died. This year was the turn of Piccola, our Siamese cat. She had not been well, and the real question was simply how long she would last. That proved to be in early April.
What, no cats any more? No, we'll need a new one. Greg had a very specific requirement: a male Chocolate Burmese kitten, 13 to 16 weeks old. How long would it take to find one of them? When we bought Piccola we had spent months searching for what we wanted, and the breeder was in Shepparton, 300 km away.
So we went looking online. And how about that, we found a kitten of that age almost immediately, in Creswick, only 50 km away.
But no, the breeder had moved and was now in Mount Pleasant. That's a suburb of Ballarat, and just round the corner from where Yvonne does her shopping. Clearly a good omen. And it turned out that he was born on the same day as Piccola, 31 December, so today's his birthday.
So we bought him and called him Bruno. He's the first cat we've had whom we haven't allowed out of the house: we're too close to the road, and it doesn't help that both our previous chocolate Burmese were run over by a car. So Bruno has only us and—particularly—the dogs to keep him company:
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He's quite a character, and we can't decide whether that's because he has nothing else to do, or whether it's just his nature.
On the horse side, Yvonne decided to retire Carlotta, who has problems of her own, and she arranged with Jane Ashhurst to exchange her for Samba, a horse whom Jorge de Moya bred for Yvonne 20 years ago.
Where were the animals in the photo at the top of this letter? Making a nuisance of themselves. We've included animals in every newsletter so far, but it's a lot of work, and the results aren't always good. Here's the best we were able to get:
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From left to right that's Larissa, Yvonne, Bruno, Greg and Lena.
House and garden
Somehow nothing much seems to have happened round the house. Now that the riding arena is done, there's not much left. We've been planning to tile the verandah since we moved in nearly 9 years ago, and maybe we'll actually get round to doing it next year. Part of the issue is that it's somehow becoming less pleasant to be outside. We can't make up our minds whether that's because we're getting old, because of climate change, or because of the ambience. But even in our last house in Kleins Road we found that we were using the verandah less and less as time went on.
As always, if this letter isn't long enough, you can read about our 2023 in excruciating detail in Greg's diary. A Happy New Year to you all from Greg, Yvonne, Samba, Dana, Larissa, Lena and Bruno!
Housekeeping
Maintaining the email list for this newsletter is a non-trivial task. Email addresses keep changing, and we get up to a third of all messages rejected. In addition, some large mail services, notably outlook.com and bigpond.com, have broken spam recognition software and reject our mail. If you got the cover message, it's a result of much work on our part. Other messages may also be lost: you should consider changing to a reliable email provider.
Did we miss you this year? Or did you get this message via a different source? Please let me know your email address and I'll update the distribution list for next year.