Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 9 February 2020

Some good spells of sunshine, some heavy rain and that relentless wind!

Just Facetimed with sister in Lincolnshire who said the storm was bad there but no damage at their place. She was very bright and chatty - so nice to see/hear since she hasn't been well these last few months.  I will be going back this year, but not sure when at this point.  They are putting their house on the market with hopes of eventually moving closer to their kids. Fingers crossed, but they're in a village with no services.......

Lindybird:  What a lovely afternoon - going through old bank statements.  :-)    Maybe Bonnie would enjoy the cat joke books.

PatO: Glad you made it there and back.

WendyB:  That's pretty weather; looks like you may  have escaped the worst.

AQ:  I see NSW had buckets of rain - what's the fire situation like there at this point?

Apparently the storm was great for a British Airways flights from NY to London - the tail winds helped lop a whole hour off the trip!    We, meanwhile, have not seen any rain since before Christmas and last night's weather forecast showed the first 'drought' map for the state.  We are fine here - for now - but the inland areas in the southern half of the state are in the first stages.  The storms are all passing north of us.  

Tonight is the Academy Awards.  I used to watch it religiously in the old days when movie stars were movie stars!  Now everybody is a celebrity and they all look the same (not that I'm getting old or anything).  We'll probably hear the usual proforma political platitudes.....I'll probably have it on, just so I can shout at the TV.  :-)

A lot of rain here, not much wind but middle daughter who lives higher up in town says her garden fence has blown over. I'm not taking any chances with the wheelie bins which normally get put out on Sunday evenings !

Annette: Ditto here -- I always used to watch the Oscars and loved seeing the frocks, etc , as well as wondering who might get an award. But it got bigger and bigger, and took ages, and now it seems to be on even later for us, it's about 3 o'clock in the morning here. :-( Now I just wait to see the News on a Monday morning. This year I'm hoping that Renee Zelwegger will win for her wonderful rendition of Judy Garland.

Good that your sister is improving, I remember that she'd been very unwell, so you must be relieved.

Calmer here now, and the rain has stopped, although I think we're in for a wet week. Bonnie walked amongst the debris on the carpet --- ripped up bank statements from the past few years, plus I found I'd kept every cheque book stub since, um........1998......

Edit:   I said to my OH that we'll have to "shred" a lot of stuff. Here, that consists of his taking bags of paper down to the allotment and setting fire to them!!

Well the wind arrived around 3.30pm. It couldn’t have been too bad as both dogs went out for sometime with OH.
We have a shredder Lindy but I swear by the wood burning stove.

Well I just Facetimed my niece in the UK and thanked her for b'day gifts that arrived Saturday: A small pottery bird - sort of impressionistic - and a small silver whistle! I'd sent her a text already saying thanks and that I assumed the whistle was for when my OH forgot his hearing aids. She was quite mystified this morning and when I showed her the whistle, it turned out it was one she bought about a year ago when she was training her puppy but had misplaced it within a couple of days. We decided it must have got lost under bubble wrap and somehow got into the padded envelope with the bird. What a hoot - or whistle! :-)

LOL, ANNETTE! Sounds like when we received half a bag of barley sugar sweets in a package from OH's parents! Must have dropped out of MiL's knitting bag where she always had some.

This evening is much quieter than yesterday - barometer is staying very low (almost off the scale) and I wonder if we are in the eye of the storm, which is very wide, and will go through it all again tomorrow. Many rivers flooded in the area, including our River Annan - partly due to the tides but mostly run-off from the hills.

Stay safe overnight and tomorrow, EVERYONE!

Our cleanup of garage progresses slowly. Both of us get “fed up” very quickly but we have continued with ½ hour each morning before it gets too hot. There are piles of stuff waiting for various bin collections. Not much of OH’s found & discarded – too hard for him to decide. I have several of my boxes to work through. So far I have found my lost knitting patterns, some school books I wanted to share with Miss8 and, at last, the missing g-g-father box which may include letters. There is actually a small clear space. Hurry up Friday bin day.

We have a week of temps around 30 C. No rain here while there are floods in QLD & NSW, a cyclone in NW of WA and a serious fire in southern WA. ANNETTE – I understand most fires in northern NSW are out, but southern & Victoria fires are contained. One headline – “The Currowan Fire, which burnt for 74 days and across 499,621 hectares, destroying 312 homes, has been extinguished.”

The corona virus is big news. Aussies trapped on cruise ship off Japan. 2 planeloads of Aussies have been retrieved from Wuhan and are now in quarantine on Christmas Island (Aussie territory in Indian Ocean) and ex-miners camp near Darwin. Of course the NIMBY people are complaining even though they show no signs of illness.

I found some interesting statistics. Since the start of the bushfire season in September, an estimated 25½ million acres have burned in Australia. Last year the Brazilian Amazon fires burned 17½ million acres of rain forest. However most Amazon fires were deliberately set by ranchers & loggers to clear land, while most Aussie bushfires were started by natural causes eg lightning.

[EDIT 17½ million acres, not 17½ acres!]

Diane: Looks like they'll try again Thursday to get Cygnus up; meanwhile,Solar Orbiter seem to be on its way with no trouble...

AQ: 17.5 acres burned in Brazil?  That sounds low.   But 25.5 million acres in Oz?  Arghhhh.    Our returning quarantined folks are being held a military bases.  Good luck with the garage - sounds like a big project.

Have a good Monday all - hope the night wasn't too stormy..