A week later.

So much for my comment last week about Ken's health being stable.  He caught a cold which left him coughing and requiring the usual antibiotics, then I caught it, so that was the week effectively wiped off for us both.  It was so cold outside we were happy to stay in bed or at least inside with the heating on all day.  Pity the solar panels don't supply energy for gas as well as electricity, although we did have the reverse cycle air conditioner on a lot to help warm up the house, so that would have been taken care of by solar energy.

I missed out on a couple of outings with friends, but made up for it by indulging myself in an orgy of reading.  I've started utilising our online library service a lot recently.  When I read reviews of new (or not so new) books that I think I'd like to read, I add their titles to a 'wish list' in my name on the library website.  When I've read a few, I put a few more on hold, and when I've read and returned them, I go back to my list, and so on.  I really appreciate being able to reserve books and have the library email me when the books are there for me to pick up.  Saves trawling through the shelves looking for authors and titles!  I've just discovered another facet of the site; you can add all the books you've read to another list, which is great to refer to if like me, you forget after a while if you've read a certain book, or you want to see what books you've read by a certain author.  I used to write all the fictional books I read in a notebook but now and then I'd forget to do it, and so it was a pretty useless exercise in the end.

Aldi Stores had an Android tablet in their specials this week, for $149, and as Ken has looked over my shoulder enviously when I've been playing around with my Samsung tablet, he had to get one of his own, didn't he.  Ah well, we can afford these little luxuries now, so why not. 

We had an old friend come in and clean up our front and back yard for us this week.  He used to have a tree service business many years ago, but gave it up for something less strenuous.  I noticed an advert in the local paper a few months ago and realised it was the same guy back in the tree business again, so I  called him up to come over and give us a quote.  He and his brother worked all day Monday (his wife also came along and did all the raking and sweeping after trees were pruned), and they worked like trojans.  Several trees and dead shrubs were taken down, more trees pruned of dead branches, and old tree stumps were removed.  Well, actually they were pulverised by a stump removal machine, which left lots of lovely sawdust to spread on the garden.  There was one stump near the aviaries that Ken wanted removed, but after watching them get rid of the other stumps, with all the noise and sawdust flying around, I said no, the birds are traumatised enough already without you doing that right in front of the aviaries, so the guys ended up digging the stump out, much more quietly!  The next day I found the chooks had laid four eggs, so we decided that instead of scaring the shit out of them we'd scared the eggs out of them...ha ha.