Katie, I hear you about the gap in our lives left by a loved dog - it's the worst.

Susan, so Smoke has three people looking after him? Do you all call him Smoke?

Max, pound system? Weights, or currency? Actually it doesn't matter, as we're decimalised.
We have a number of pigeons and doves with pink legs.

Yes, I had my flu shot just yesterday morning, and no after affects at all: The weather is cooling, though we rarely reach freezing-point in this part of Queensland - maybe one night every couple of years, and then the local media is full of it, asking for reader's photos, which they never pay for. As a photographer who sells photos for money, I never send free photos in. I think the days of the news photographer are over, with so many folk simply whipping-out their phone at the first hint of anything unusual.

The really brightly coloured birds, like parrots, tend to be sedentary, though we do get some that have annual migrations, such as the Rainbow bee-eaters.

LOL about the meat platter. So many things from recent memory are becoming history.

Susan, a few years ago I was asleep in the motorhome in a wooded area, and a huge tree limb broke with a loud crack, hit the ground on its end, bounced up, and landed again on the bonnet (hood) of the vehicle, denting it and breaking the windscreen.
You better believe that I and the two dogs leapt outta bed. I never park right under a tree for precisely that reason, but when the branch actually ups and rebounds right at the motorhome, there's not a lot to be done.

LOL about the haircut. When I was younger I'd give myself mohicans, or shave my head, or do other silly stuff for my driver licence photo.

Shelly, I'm sorry to hear that your son has to undergo chemo; it's probably better than the alternative though.

Previcid for memory? That's given to people with severe heartburn, (oesophageal reflux).

Who would've thought in 1999/2000, that so many of us on the old eBay chat boards would still be chatting in 2022?
Even without this chatboard, my Facebook Friend's list includes others from those times, such as Gayle, and Myra and Jane. I wish I could still remember their eBay user names. (Gayle is/was Trez Chic or similar).

Your crash lawsuit is starting to sound worrying.

Max, those big strong garage door springs should not be breaking like that. I wonder what causes it?

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/type-2-diabetes-dizziness

Shelly, I hope the news is good for your son, re the tests.
My hand is fine, thanks. Sylvia's foot is healing slowly, and she's walking on it without a limp.

Susan, the guy who hit you is suing you? HE hit YOU?

Max, garage door springs come in fairly standard sizes. Hopefully it won't be too long before the service guy fixes it. Um, how is it possible to break a strong spring like that?

Max, thanks for the update on Irene.

Yes, Australia has opened up again, and tourists are flooding back in. Qantas is almost back to normal numbers, which I think is due to our previous total closure making the sudden lifting of restrictions like a dam wall bursting.

Susan, if fuel-thieves drill into the tanks, then I guess it doesn't really matter whether the car has an inside lock or not.
I had my other eye done last week, yes, and I'm more than happy with it, because I'm taking photographs again.

It's soo good to be back to cooler nights. I get to sleep again.

It seems modern cars don't have an internal lock to the fuel cap because they're tamper proof - people cannot syphon fuel out of the tanks due to S bends and stuff in the pipe.

The floods affected huge areas of Qld and NSW. Inland seas, and worse along the coastline.

Sylvia is starting to put weight on her bad foot, and walk around now.

Thanks Shelly, the floods have receded in Queensland, though they're still bad in NSW.

Sylvia's foot wound where her big toe used to be, is recovering on schedule. It's a slow schedule because she's diabetic, which means slower-than-normal healing of wounds.

Yes, our birds, like many others, go out of breeding plumage in winter.

Sylvia is very active, with a wiry build, so keeping her off her injured foot is difficult.

The bird is a Rainbow bee-eater, and they live in burrows. In this image I managed to get it flying past its own burrow.

Sylvia's foot is ever so slowly improving, so they're not talking about a further amputation at this time.

Shelly, Sylvia's back in hospital again while they Xray and otherwise check her bad foot. I think their talk of removing her foot was more of a warning to her of what could happen if she continues to walk on the foot when she's supposed to be resting it.

Marson, wow, both your son AND his girlfriend injured? Um, were they sober?

The photo is a few years old now. It's a flock of wild budgerigars.

I do have my laser eye operation tomorrow, but that's in a private eye clinic, not a public hospital.

Great news about your dog, Katie. There's a song, "the cat came back". That could be changed to, "the dog came back".

The days are still hot here, but summer is slipping towards an end, with the nights much cooler. On our early morning walks I have to wear a long sleeved shirt even.

The bird is a Crimson chat. About the size of a sparrow.

I hope that by now, the really bad parts of your weather bomb has passed, and that America is again having a normal kind of winter.

Meanwhile we've just gone through several days of heat and humidity which was broken yesterday in a series of wild thunderstorms.
I had one terrified and trembling Beauty dog to calm, which I did by pressing gently on her body with my hands, like a comfort-blanket, while Duzzy, a most solicitous little dog, helped by nuzzling his face into her face. (Duzzy is not scared of thunder).

A cormorant caught a fish, then posed for a second while I clicked the shutter.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/nfl/nfl-2022-tom-brady-retirement-lets-go-siriusxm-show-latest-news/news-story/fea6e6239ac05c86cdb0027c92cafb0a

Susan, I read about those falling iguanas. That's wild. Reminds me of the moving angels in Dr Who.

The bird is a Square-tailed kite. They're listed as vulnerable, so I was pleased to get a shot of this increasingly rare species.

I saw a news item that made me laugh out loud, where a bridge collapsed yesterday under weight of snow, just hours before the President arrived to talk about - infrastructure spending.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60173771

I saw an interesting caterpillar, took photos, then researched it.
It's only found in the eastern part of Australia, it seems.

Here's an interesting article on the Saunders Case moth ...

https://alessandrabergamin.medium.com/the-summer-of-the-saunders-case-moth-a2b9bd24b52b

Sylvia is back from the hospital early, because there was a Covid scare - that virus is running rampant right now. The hospital decided to discharge as many patients as possible.

Max, great news about the furnace. What a time for it to conk out, in mid-winter.

Katie, you're talking about Mike's mild dementia?
I'm wondering how long it takes to develop into something deeper. Only I'm becoming more forgetful all the time. I even have trouble remembering my own dog's names sometimes.

RATS covid testing kits are free to people on Concession Cards in Australia, which includes the elderly, the disabled, low-income and students.
As those groups may include some who get easily confused by written instructions, it's also free for the pharmacist or other professional helper to administer the test for them, with the government paying them to do it, though as Katie mentioned, going into a place that's full of potential covid patients is not necessarily a safe thing to do.
Laying hands on the test kits is another matter, with a massive shortage right now. Though I noticed our local pharmacy advertised they had a batch delivered yesterday, and there was an almost immediate line of elderly folk all down the road until the tests were sold out again - it took less than an hour to sell and administer the test.
Right now Australia's outbreak makes it one of the world's most affected countries, which is a far cry from 3 months ago, before we opened our borders.
I think that governments around the world are now deciding that it's herd-immunity time, and those who haven't been vaccinated have themselves to blame. Trouble is, Omicron infects the vaccinated and the boosted.

Sylvia's stll recovering in hospital. I don't know how long she'll be there for.
Because I'm here to cook etc, they'll probably release her earlier. Sylvia said that this time when the social worker (she calls them 'do-gooders') came to chat to her, which they always do as she's 82 this May, there was no pressure for her to go into residential care, because I'm here.
The over 75s are on the mandatory hospital reporting list, where the hospital must report patients. Other things on the list include bullet wounds, stab wounds, people who have no Medicare card - this world really is Big Brother these days, but then we get the governments we voted in.
Susan, you're right about her bad hand and other injuries healing slowly or not al all, because of the diabetes.
Yes, my own hand has healed from the wild-cat attack now, which I guess proves I don't have diabetes.

The photo is a King parrot at the sunflowers. It's a female; the males are more brilliantly colored.

Max, they've allowed her sister to visit her, and me too, but only one of us at a time. I'm deferring to her sister, as they're blood relatives.
Sylvia and I chat on our phones, and on zoom where we can see each other.

Katie, how'd it go with that covid-exposure. Y'all ok?

The hovering bird is a New Holland Honeyeater in a flowering Grevillea tree.
I can understand how American hummingbirds hover, because they're so light.
But this bird is 7 inches long.

WELL. The emergency entrance is guarded by armed security guards and a team of nurses, to keep covid patients out - they have to go to a special Fever Entrance.
They aimed a thermometer at her head, and the infection had given her a fever, which is a covid-like symptom, so she was taken by one of the guards to the fever entrance, and I was not allowed in, so I drove the 50 kms back home.

The infection is in her toe bone, so the toe must come off, which they will do today.

The other boxed set is The Handmaid's Tale, seasons one to three, and again I'm on to season two.
I dislike this programme: Too black, too violent, too depressing. I don't know if I'll be able to finish the set.

It was a glorious sunrise this morning.