A Happy New Year (or eighth day of Christmas if you prefer) from Yvonne and Greg.
There are a number of photos in this message. Click on them, maybe several times, to enlarge them. That's why the message is a web page, not a PDF document.
We're living in interesting times, but they're not good. It seems that internationally things are going from bad to worse. Last year we said, “Hopefully things will be better next year”, but it seems that nobody listened. Fortunately we're lucky to be out of the various lines of fire.
Yvonne
Increasingly we're reliant on health care. Yvonne's heart condition didn't respond to her cardioversion in 2021 as well as we had hoped, and ultimately she had a catheter ablation in early November this year. And that also wasn't as successful as we had hoped, though the surgeon was happy. Only a few weeks later she was in hospital again for another cardioversion. Since then, with some modifications to her medication, things look acceptable.
Her pancreas issues are being observed; she had no fewer than three MRIs of her pancreas, the last of which seemed to indicate that things weren't as bad as we feared, so the next MRI will be in mid-2025.
None of this has stopped her riding, of course, despite all of Greg's concerns.
Greg
Greg has also had minor health issues, not as bad as last year, mainly related to mobility. The biggest issue was cataracts, which he had removed in March and April, along with the vitreous body. He's really happy with the results, though it gave him time to ponder on the insularity of the medical professionals involved. And the results are visible in the photo at the top of this page: no glasses any more.
Apart from that, he has accepted the fact that he is getting older. After finishing a stint on the FreeBSD Core Team in June, he is doing less and less work on computers. It has taken him nearly the whole year to update his computer system, complicated by the fact that he wants to do it his way despite the industry going in a different direction.
Other things haven't changed much either, including this paragraph. He seems to have done nothing interesting for years. For the whole year he has not been further from home than Melbourne—typically, for medical treatment. The reports from last year and the year before that could equally well apply this year. He has done nothing and reported about it at great length. He continues to mess around with computers and the technical aspects of photography, has spent some time cooking, and that's about that.
Yana
Since completing her Honours year at Adelaide Central School of Art with First Class Honours last year, Yana has returned to her old studio community at The Mill on Angas Street. There she has continued her environmentally focused studio practice. She has contributed to several group exhibitions throughout the year, including at the newly opened Gallery 42 in Magill. The end of the year saw her completing and submitting her entry to the Art Gallery of South Australia’s 2025 Ramsay Prize.
Outside of her art practice, Yana has continued her Taekwondo training. She has continued to contribute as an assistant instructor, and completed two of the four preparation tests required to grade for second dan black belt. As a way of maintaining physical equilibrium, she has also taken up weekly yoga.
She has also ventured into self employment, and started to work in disability support. She is also exploring project directions for post-graduate study.
Domestic animals
Last year our Siamese cat Piccola died, and we replaced her with Bruno, a chocolate Burmese. For the first time ever we decided not to let him outside. We're too close to the road, and we were concerned for his safety.
Bruno was not impressed, and he became quite frustrated. Would a mate help? Yvonne went off and found an adult brown Burmese, whom we bought and called Mona:
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She took a long time to adapt, especially to the dogs, but she's now friends with Bruno:
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Bruno is still not happy with being stuck inside all the time, and we're experimenting with letting him outside under supervision. It doesn't have to be a human:
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That was in mid-December, and in the following two weeks we had time to observe him. We've found the best place is in the garden on the other side of the house, where there's a lot of vegetation, and he doesn't seem to go very far from there. We're not done yet, though: Mona also wants to go outside, though she has spent all of her life indoors. Based on our experience with Bruno, we'll probably let her fairly soon.
Horses
Last year Yvonne came to an agreement with Jane Ashhurst and exchanged her mare Carlotta for Samba. Things didn't stay that way: in July this year Carlotta returned. Jane had discovered that the agistment where she lived was not the best, and that it was a long way from home. How about ideal agistment with Yvonne, even if she was 1000 km away? She'd just come here every 6 to 8 weeks and stay for a week, with the additional advantage that she would have somebody to go riding with. So that's what has happened.
Yvonne's other horse is Dana, whom she was training until a couple of years ago. But gradually she has come to realize that she is getting too old and fragile to train young horses. Currently Dana is at Chris Bahlo's place, getting some training there, and we're looking for a suitable new home for her.
House and garden
We've been in our current house for nearly ten years, as the photo at the top of this newsletter shows: it's almost the same as the photo of ten years ago (first photo):
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We've been planning to tile the verandah since we moved in, but as the photo shows, we're not there yet. Part of the issue is that it's somehow becoming less pleasant to be outside. We can't make up our minds whether that's because we're getting old, because of climate change, or because of the ambience. But even in our last house in Kleins Road we found that we were using the verandah less and less as time went on.
As always, if this letter isn't long enough, you can read about our 2024 in excruciating detail in Greg's diary. A Happy New Year to you all from Greg, Yvonne, Samba, Carlotta, Larissa, Lena, Bruno and Mona!
Housekeeping
Maintaining the email list for this newsletter is a non-trivial task. Email addresses keep changing, and we get up to a third of all messages rejected. In addition, some large mail services, notably outlook.com and bigpond.com, have broken spam recognition software and reject our mail. If you got the cover message, it's a result of much work on our part. Other messages may also be lost: you should consider changing to a reliable email provider.
Did we miss you this year? Or did you get this message via a different source? Please let me know your email address and I'll update the distribution list for next year.