Little Fliss the Japanese Quail hatched on 26 December 2018. Yesterday she laid the first egg for this season.
4.5 years old and going strong! Also regular. Exactly 1 year ago she laid the first egg for last season. 🐦
I feared 'our' pair of black swans had disappeared from the small lake Puna o te Ora at the end of the road, but this morning I spotted them with a half-grown cygnet. Hooray! They must have been hanging out elsewhere. 🐦
I was lucky enough to beta read Outlaw Justice, The First Guardian, Book 1 by Cheri Baker 📚:
Mars hasn't had a murder in 70 years. Until today.
I said to Cheri in part:
What a superb book! I loved the characters, the setup, the chain of events.
Further books in the series are promised and I'm really keen to read them.
Now that iOS and iPad OS 17 are out, my first stop after updating is at Take Control Books to grab Take Control of iOS 17 and iPadOS 17.
Is it within 364 days of Christmas?
Why yes, yes it is.
Must be time to display the Christmas chocolates then …
Awake at 3 am thanks to gusty gales shaking the house and rattling mysterious things outside. 💨
I really enjoyed watching Nimona 🎥
In a medieval-futuristic kingdom, the citizens are protected by the Institute for Elite Knights, established by legendary heroine Gloreth, who, a thousand years ago, vanquished a
Great Black Monsterand enclosed the kingdom with a high wall for its protection.
On this day in 2015 we visited Batalha in Portugal, with its amazing Monastery.
Constructed in fulfilment of a vow by King João to commemorate the victory over the Castilians at Aljubarrota (15 August 1385), the Dominican Monastery of Batalha … is one of the masterpieces of Gothic art.
The first part of A Fine and Bitter Snow (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 12) by Dana Stabenow seemed to involve a lot of recaps of things we knew from previous books. Then there were some deaths and things ramped up. Mid way I recalled the who and why from when I first read it. I was wrong. 📚
It's cold (7C outside) and grey this morning so for a bit of cheer here's a photo I took of Lake Waimarie — only a few hundred metres from our place — the other morning. I love these colours.
Around Equinox and Solstice I run a casual naked eye star watching event called Starry Time for the local community.
For tonight's session I created a set of Keynote slides for me to refer to during the session. Here they are as a PDF. Probably of limited use to northern hemisphere folks.
One of the great things about taking my neighbour to the ophthalmologist in Palmerston North was that she then shouted me lunch at my favourite eatery, Mr Choi's. Superb chicken teriyaki was consumed. Yum.
My neighbour unexpectedly needed me to drive her to Palmerston North hospital today for an urgent and painful eye problem. Hospitals are so big and complicated and busy.
A very handy tip for those who don't want to be blinded by a page of notes while looking at stars:
put your ipad or iphone into red mode easily …
To enable this: Settings->Accessibility->Display and Text Size->Color filters (enable) [more specifics] … (enable Filter Shortcut)
Now press the home button 3 times fast.
This is a good book. The concepts about crime and treatment and punishment are interesting, but I can't cope with the ghastliness of it all and am stopping reading at about 25%. The Treatment: A mind-bending gripping speculative crime thriller by Sarah Moorhead. 📚
That classic looking over the shoulder pose. Kōtare | Sacred Kingfisher (Through a window.) 🐦
Dana Stabenow's The Singing of the Dead (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 11) was split between a crime on the campaign trail of a state senator and a crime that took place back in 1915.
Eventually the two crimes were shown to be linked, but I'm not sure the book really worked as a whole. 📚
At 5 am I was making a cup of tea and looking at the starry sky when I noticed a weird small column of orange light among neighbouring houses on the hill to the north of us. Maybe a fire in a house? … but it wasn't flickering.
Binoculars revealed … a mere sliver of rising moon.
Biked along the new shared path from Otaki to the cafe at Pekapeka (10 km). All gravel so a bit nervewracking. The cafe’s the best bit. Not in my top 10 of bike paths.
