Midsumma festival finished with the Northside Victoria’s Pride event on February 9. It was a perfect day for the event and we stayed for a few hours. Ivan, who had started work in Maryborough, stayed with us for a few days so he could go to events in Melbourne.

At the same time, my regular trainer moved to a gym much further from home, so I started training once a week with Ryan Underwood at Doherty’s Gym which has been a great experience so far.



We went to Sydney for a short trip over Mardi Gras, seeing a few friends there and catching a performance of Hadestown. It was not our favourite musical.



Before and after Mardi Gras we went to concerts in Melbourne: Kylie Minogue and Billie Eilish. Kylie was remarkably energetic for someone my age, performing dozens of her songs. Billie Eilish had a younger and significantly louder audience so I was grateful that I had remembered hearing protection.



The GDC conference in San Francisco overlapped with my sister’s birthday this year. Jay went to the conference while Cathy and I celebrated her birthday at the Botanic Gardens in Cranbourne, where there were some interesting planting ideas which might be applicable to the house we are considering. I also finished the Lego Titanic while he was away. It had taken me three conference trips to get it finished.



We managed to get several weekends at the beach house at Sorrento between the trips away and my on-call commitment at the public hospital, which has felt more onerous this year.



My birthday was a fairly quiet one. We saw my sister for cake and had a kaiseki dinner at a Japanese restaurant. The surprise for my birthday was that the car we had been considering became available at the dealer, so we had a look at it and decided to buy it.

We sold our Mazda CX-5 shortly after picking up the Kia EV-5. It will take some getting used to. The Mazda hadn’t given any trouble, but it felt like time to change car after ten years.



This year the Easter break fell the weekend before ANZAC Day, so we were able to have a week away in the Cook Islands for only three days of paid leave. Because of our fairly late booking, we were only able to get two nights on Aitutaki and spent the rest of the time on Rarotonga. The weather and beaches were excellent: a fair facsimile of the Maldives but not much further than New Zealand. I made an album of photos online.



Now we are looking forward to visiting North America in May and June, with plans to see Jay’s parents in Canada and then friends in the US.

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